I’m not sure why this is being treated as a novel development when the same kind of thing has been extent in video games for decades. Chatbot ethics are the same question as NPC ethics.

The reason conspiracy theories are so unproductive is that in general, pretty much no one is in a place to have the information to investigate their veracity. Watergate was worthy of derision from everyone not involved with the investigative process until information came out to verify it. Sometimes odd or irrational things are true, but we’ll have to accept being wrong about them until sufficient evidence is available.

This seems to be bordering on bad advice. It seems like what the state department tells people stationed in unfriendly countries. Most interactions you have with people aren’t adversarial and sharing information is a good way to socialize. Better advice would be to have a couple of go-to anecdotes for when you meet new people.

The Thirty Years War and just how devastating it was isn’t talked about enough. It’s impossible to understand how religious toleration came about without knowing the scale of the suffering caused by religious war.

This reminds me of Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “thought terminating cliché.” The Holocaust by bullets on the eastern front could be rationalized by the Germans through simplistic statements such as “It’s awful and inhuman, but such is the way of war.” Similarly, the concept of racial Darwinism appeals to nature to justify atrocities. In both cases, an appeal to a deeper, unchangeable logic lets the perpetrators make the appeal that they’re morally impotent.