12/10/2025 at 8:43:16 PM
While I'm as paranoid about LLMs as the next HN'er, there are some silver linings to this research:1) the LLMs mostly used factual information to influence people (vs. say emotional or social influence) 2) the fact were mostly accurate
I'm not saying we shouldn't worry. But I expected the results to be worse.
Overall, the interesting finding here is that that political opinions can be changed by new information at all. I'm curious how this effect would compare to comparably informed human discussions. I would not be surprised if the LLMs were more effect for at least two reasons:
1) Cost-efficiency, in terms of the knowledge required, and effort/skill to provide personalized arguments. 2) Reduction in the emotional barrier to changing your mind: people don't want to "lose" by being wrong about politics to someone else. But perhaps the machine doesn't trigger this social/tribal response.
Cited papers:
by marojejian
12/10/2025 at 8:46:38 PM
I’ll add a third reason, which is I think in general, people are very bad at understanding how to make an argument to someone with a different value system. I’m liberal, I have family members who are conservative, and I’ll read conservative books and I’m genuinely a person who is curious to new ideas, but most people I know(and I’m sure this works vice versa) are only good at expressing political opinions in the language of people who share their values. Republicans and Democrats don’t just talk about different things, they talk about them in very different ways.I find this online as well, like I hate being “out of my echo chamber” because those arguments are just uniformly pointless. (This is in all directions by the way, people to the right or left of me).
Though I also interestingly find trying to talk to LLMs about competing values challenging too, if I try to get the LLM to explain a conservative position, then I make counter-arguments to that position, it will almost never tell me my counter argument is wrong, just “you’ve hit the nail on the head! Boy are you smart!”
by techblueberry
12/10/2025 at 10:21:14 PM
I had a friend in grad school who influenced my political beliefs more than anyone I'd met.He never engaged in political conversation with "here's what I believe, and here's why you should too." His approach was more Socratic; to listen to me talk, and then offer an additional viewpoint or context.
I never got the impression from him that he was trying to convince me of something, or that he thought I was wrong about X/Y/Z, but rather, that we were on an intellectual journey together to identify what the problems actually were and what nuanced solutions might look like.
I still have no idea to this day what his ACTUAL political party is (or if he even has one). I genuinely could not tell you if he was left, right, or center.
by dlivingston
12/10/2025 at 10:23:33 PM
As far as I can tell most conservative argument points seem to be about the price of gas. If there is a democrat in the whitehouse, the price of gas is astronomical. If there is a republican in office, gas is far cheaper somehow than what I always end up paying.Gasoline is like the least important cost metric in my life.
by apercu
12/10/2025 at 11:18:31 PM
I've been going down a bit of a rabbit hole on "what conservatives believe" and weirdly, and this is from both Roger Scruton, and the book "The conservative mind". is it's a bit like porn, you can't define it, but you know it when you see it. I mean this is sort of a tangible points conservatives make about believing in "common sense" that there's basically a higher truth that we all know exists that should guide us.Roger Scruton in I think this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eD9RDTl6tM. Says that basically conservatism in the 80's in the UK was whatever Margaret Thatcher believed. This really I think helped me understand why the conservative transition from Reagan/Bush to Trump went more smoothly than I thought it would among trad conservatives.
by techblueberry
12/11/2025 at 1:42:05 AM
Growing up indoctrinated into conversative evangelism, I saw that the Midwestern flavor valued freedom of individuals from government. It was a shallow flavor of self sufficiency, which discounted all social support except family and churches. Abortion was a wedge issue preached from every platform.Tribalism was a key substrate. This often manifested as a near blind loyalty to the party and chosen thought leaders like Bill Graham, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and now Tucker Carlson. They told us how to interpret events and we repeated the talking points. They gave us the (often contradictory) rules and principles we were to use to view everything in life.
by paulryanrogers
12/10/2025 at 11:47:59 PM
the scenario that worries me is "fox news but personalised", e.g. fox can run a dozen pieces on "immigrants are taking your jobs" but an LLM hooked into your google profile could generate an article on how "plumbers in nashville are being displaced by low-paid mexicans" that is specifically designed to make you personally fear for your job if the nazi du jour isn't elected.by zem
12/11/2025 at 12:00:30 AM
> the LLMs mostly used factual information to influence peopleNo, you see. This is how I used to think when I was a teenager.
Democracy isn't about being factually correct. It's about putting in place rules to make accumulation of power to the point that it can bend the rules themselves, very difficult.
It's not a silver lining that LLMs are persuasive by being mostly accurate, if they're used to increase the power of their owner further.
by ekjhgkejhgk