I don’t disagree with that assessment.

I’m generally on your side of this argument but the number of non-voters is hard to quantify yet clearly had a major effect on the outcome, and a lot of the anti-Harris rhetoric from the left demotivated people into not voting at all (as opposed to voting third party). The third party vote counts are somewhat irrelevant to this line of reasoning.

Do you have a specific rebuke for something I said where you can logically point out where I’m wrong or are you just hand-waving?

How would I know if it is or isn’t different today based on your comment? How am I supposed to answer that question? By asking that, you are asserting that it is different today. Yet you have given no numbers for what it is today for the same countries on that image.

You know that, and you are trying to sidestep me now while accusing me of sidestepping. Why is that? You said in the beginning of your comment:

Americans couldn’t find Iraq and Afghanistan on maps during those wars despite the latter lasting 20 Years and Americans being involved in them.

You are saying here that those wars lasted a long time, and one lasted 20 years, and despite that, Americans couldn’t find those countries on maps during those wars. But the data is from the beginning of that time period. So after 20 years yes obviously the numbers would change. But that data doesn’t say that. That data is the starting point. A lazy reader might very easily think that data supported your point. Same as your previous comment I took issue with.

Like I said: “I’d suspect the numbers would still be worse than they should be”

But also, you’re doing it again. You’re saying “despite the latter [Afghanistan] lasting 20 years,” but dude you linked images from 2006. It hadn’t been 20 years yet. In fact, that data is from nearly 20 years ago!

That is, again, extremely misleading data to support the argument you’re making.

Do you really think Ukraine being featured prominently in American news, pop culture, political discourse, and zeitgeist in general for the past two and a half years hasn’t affected those numbers? You would not have used Ukraine in this example had it not been for the current conflict. To use numbers from ten years ago is a deliberate misrepresentation of reality.

That article is from ten years ago. I’d suspect the numbers would still be worse than they should be, but Ukraine has become a much bigger situation since then which is why you’re using it in this example, so this is not an accurate picture you’re painting.

Personally, I’ve found that LLMs are best as discussion partners, to put it in the broadest terms possible. They do well for things you would use a human discussion partner for IRL.

• “I’ve written this thing. Criticize it as if you were the recipient/judge of that thing. How could it be improved?” (Then address its criticisms in your thing… it’s surprisingly good at revealing ways to make your “thing” better, in my experience)
• “I have this personal problem.” (Tell it to keep responses short. Have a natural conversation with it. This is best done spoken out loud if you are using ChatGPT; prevents you from overthinking responses, and forces you to keep the conversation moving. Takes fifteen minutes or more but you will end up with some good advice related to your situation nearly every time. I’ve used this to work out several things internally much better than just thinking on my own. A therapist would be better, but this is surprisingly good.)
• I’ve also had it be useful for various reasons to tell it to play a character as I describe, and then speak to the character in a pretend scenario to work out something related. Use your imagination for how this might be helpful to you. In this case, tell it to not ask you so many questions, and to only ask questions when the character would truly want to ask a question. Helps keep it more normal; otherwise (in the case of ChatGPT which I’m most familiar with) it will always end every response with a question. Often that’s useful, like in the previous example, but in this case it is not.
• etc.

For anything but criticism of something written, I find that the “spoken conversation” features are most useful. I use it a lot in the car during my commute.

For what it’s worth, in case this makes it sound like I’m a writer and my examples are only writing-related, I’m actually not a writer. I’m a software engineer. The first example can apply to writing an application or a proposal or whatever. Second is basically just therapy. Third is more abstract, and often about indirect self-improvement. There are plenty more things that are good for discussion partners, though. I’m sure anyone reading can come up with a few themselves.

May I ask how you’ve used LLMs so far? Because I hear that type of complaint from a lot of people who have tried to use them mainly to get answers to things, or maybe more broadly to replace their search engine, which is not what they’re best suited for, in my opinion.