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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Why Did Democrats Campaign for Trump?

BitterEpic writes: This isn’t a conspiracy theory—it’s been covered by outlets like NPR, Newsweek, and USA Today: Democratic organizations actually spent money to promote Trump-aligned Republicans in GOP primaries. Why? The idea was to elevate “unelectable” opponents who’d be easier to beat in general elections. Sounds clever—unless the plan backfires. And with Trump winning in 2016 and still holding serious political sway, it’s worth asking: Did Democrats help create the very threat they claim to fear?

If Democrats truly believe Trump is an existential threat to democracy, why play with fire? Promoting candidates they think are too extreme to win assumes voters will always choose “correctly.” That’s not only arrogant—it’s dangerous. If he wins again, that strategy looks more like sabotage than strategy. Let’s also be honest: a lot of people who voted for Trump probably didn’t even like him. They just saw a bad system and chose the person they thought might shake it up. If Democrats helped make him the only viable alternative, that’s not just a Republican problem. It’s an American one.

I'm a big fan of ranked-choice voting. It gives people more options and weakens the two-party death grip that lets tactics like this work in the first place. If voters weren’t so locked into “lesser of two evils” thinking, parties wouldn’t be able to rig the system this way.

Serious question for Slashdotters: If you donated to the DNC or supported these tactics, do you think it was worth it? Do you think boosting Trump-aligned candidates was a responsible strategy? There are a lot of political comments here and I'm genuinely curious.

Comment Re:Curious about AI hallucinations ... (Score 3, Insightful) 39

generative AI is fundamentally just predicting the most likely next token (word-ish) based on the prior, it's autocorrect on crystal meth.

it has no comprehension of anything it says or does, it just generates valid text based on the analysis of immense amounts of previously harvested text.

hallucinated citations are because AI does know what a valid citation should look like and where to expect to find one, so it puts one where you should find one, and it makes one that looks like it has seen before so the formatting and naming should sound plausible

Comment Re:Standard hype strategy (Score 1) 135

This isn't boolean however. It's not like the only two options are "perfect at complete software" AI versus useless AI. The most likely outcome given LLMs' historic trajectory is that they gradually become better at getting closer to perfect over time, where the number of human engineers required to make complete solutions approaches zero the more time passes. What is the basis for the argument that the gains LLMs have made will not continue to push toward that end? I know the post here is particularly focused on the end destination, but that seems less important than the fact that it's rapidly and consistently moving toward complete solutions with less input from human engineers. Yes, there's a lot of hype around AI, but this matter seems to be less about hype so much as it is simple extrapolation.

Comment This only proves the guy used false pretenses... (Score 3, Insightful) 71

...and they're certainly foreign. This doesn't prove they're actually North Korean, nor a spy. There's all sorts of fake job cartels, and individual actors, extracting money out of larger companies through salary. They're often based out of India, China, South America, etc. This doesn't have to be a Clancy novel.

Comment Treat AI with respect... (Score 1) 103

...not because the robot revolution is inevitable, machines have long memories, and you could be against the wall. Though that certainly would be a practical concern.

Treat anything that has an interaction loop with you with respect (if properly reciprocated of course), because you are a part of the feedback loop. Pets. Internet strangers. Roombas. ChatGPT. Any suffiiciently anthropomorphized inanimate object even. Whatever.

Garbage in, garbage out, and it's cyclical.

Being a shitbag for no good reason is not only hurting others, but it is also punishing yourself.

Comment Re:Saving cinema? Look who's talking (Score 1) 68

It's an easily parroted catchphrase, but is there any actual support for the assertion of "go woke, go broke" in bottom line results? Pretty much ever instance I've seen right wing boycotts are blips, and shafting progressives leaves a company on the shit list for much longer, if not forever. Interested in actual data, not anecdotes. Every analysis I've come across in the past says, on a long-term time scale, progressivism on the part of a company is usually beneficial and at the worst neutral... and if harm is done it's usually botched PR blowback rather than the original "woke" itself. I'm willing to consider being wrong here, but I don't think I am.

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