> On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

- Charles Babbage, https://archive.org/details/passagesfromlife03char/page/67/m...

EDIT: This is a new iteration of an old problem. Even GIGO [1] arguably predates computers and describes a lot of systemic problems. It does seem a lot more difficult to distinguish between a "garbage" or "good" prompt though. Perhaps this problem is just going to keep getting harder.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out

There are plenty of other more recent examples in this thread.

I was simply replying to the original statement that China doesn't kill protesters in the street. The notion is so risible that in hindsight it may well have been sarcasm or bait.

But, if you wish to expand the scope of this discussion, sure. There are several clear distinctions between the (horrible) events you list and what happened in Tiananmen Square.

The most obvious is that we are free to talk about them now. I submit that the Chinese state's continued censorship of the subject is a sign that (1) the state is still complicit in these crimes and (2) it is not "doing great".

The scale of brutality is also just incomparable. I say this fully agreeing the events you list were terrible. The horrors committed at Tiananmen Square were simply on another level.

This is an especially hilarious comment given what happened in June 1989 [1].

It's the prototypical example of authoritarian crackdowns and mass slaughter of innocent protestors.

Discussion or even mention of it is still forbidden in China.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

> This idea that there's some kind of difference between me watching you from a park bench in public and hundreds of thousands of clones of me watching you from every street corner in public is, quite frankly, bogus

To paraphrase the quote, quantity has a quality of its own.

Yeah, this feels like another reincarnation of the ancient "who watches the watchmen?" problem [1]. Time and time again we see that the incentives _really really_ matter when facing this problem; subtle changes can produce entirely new problems.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...