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People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms (www.npr.org)
submitted 12 hours ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (6 children)

People who don't pay a certain minimal amount of attention shouldn't be permitted to vote, IMHO

Ironically, you'd have to not be paying a certain minimal amount of attention to checks notes middle school US history to not understand how catastrophic this is in practice. Incidentally, that SPLC quiz isn't even nearly the extent of the questions.

I would bar you from voting for this statement alone on the merits of "paying attention".

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  • [–] 2 points 10 hours ago* (5 children)

    Yeah, I've heard that before, but it's a single example - it's not an invalid point, but neither is mine. I think there may be ways of addressing that potential problem if we try hard enough to find a way, but we haven't for fear of repeating that issue.

    Too many people just aren't interested in what those running their lives are up to, and yet they're routinely told to go vote if they want to be considered good citizens. So it's become a circus every election cycle. I think those people shouldn't be pushed to vote if they're not interested in understanding what's going on in their capitals, plain and simple. They'll learn the hard way to have an interest.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 hours ago* (4 children)

    but it’s a single example

    No, it isn't. In fact, the South wasn't even the first in the US to do this for the express purpose of disenfranchising a minority – more evidence that you aren't paying sufficient attention to the policy you want implemented. Some decades earlier, Connecticut implemented literacy tests to specifically (and successfully) disenfranchise Irish immigrants.

    Even if you ignore that:

    1. Jim Crow-era literacy tests happened over a period of 75 years. That's not "one example"; that's a bunch of states over the course of nearly a century disenfranchising millions.
    2. It's so blatantly obvious once you examine that "one example"(TM) why this system fundamentally cannot work and will be abused. If you can't see that, then I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to turn you away from the polling station, because you're clearly unequipped to vote.
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  • [–] 1 point 9 hours ago (3 children)

    Okay, so "not permitted" may not have been the best choice of words. "Not pushed” to vote, as I just described in my previous comment is what I'm after. You know what I'm saying, and you seem to be deliberately pedantic just because you can - while completely ignoring the issue I'm trying to address.

    You haven't provided a single rebuttal against the overall concept that those who aren't following along shouldn't be peer-pressured into voting for something they know little to nothing about. Yet, we do it because the spin-doctors realized those people are so easy to manipulate into voting against their interests, and it's become a part of the American political process ever since.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 hours ago* (2 children)

    "Not pushed” to vote, as I just described in my previous comment is what I'm after. You know what I'm saying, and you seem to be deliberately pedantic just because you can - while completely ignoring the issue I'm trying to address.

    No, I actually don't know what you're saying. Because at first, you said "not permitted", then in your second comment, you retained that position by saying: "I think there may be ways of addressing that potential problem if we try hard enough to find a way, but we haven't for fear of repeating that issue." You're still, in that second ("previous") comment, going on about how we can use tests of people's political understanding to bar them from voting if we're just clever about it.

    Now you're just claiming it "may have not been the best choice of words", abandoning the position you took in those two comments and then lambasting me for, like, taking you at your word that what you said is what you meant.

    That's not what "not the best choice of words" means; going from "People who don't pay a certain minimal amount of attention shouldn't be permitted to vote, IMHO" to "not pushed" and then crying "pedantry" is being comically dishonest to save face. You completely changed positions mid-argument and then got offended that I addressed your first position before you changed it. I'm actually kind of stunned at how brazen this is.

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  • [–] -3 points 9 hours ago (1 child)

    Oh, spare me the sanctimoniousness. One poorly chosen word should not have thrown you off what I was after when considering the entirely of what I said. You are blatantly unserious, and just looking to play high & mighty while you still haven't addressed the central problem I've described multiple times.

    I'm done with you. Good night.

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