Comment by runarberg 3 days ago
And that makes it all alright doesn’t it?
There are also gangs making money off human trafficking? Does that make it OK for a corporation to make money off human trafficking as well? And there are companies making money off wars?
When you argue with whataboutism, you can just point to whatever you like, and somehow that is an argument in your favor.
How is ai sex chat like any of those things, whataboutism indeed
I was using whataboutism to demonstrate how bad of an argument whataboutism is. My arguments were exactly as bad as my parent’s, and that was the point.
Pointing out an inconsistency isn't always whataboutism (and I don't think it was in this case). An implied argument was made that we should regulate LLMs for the same reason that we regulate drugs (presumably addiction, original commenter wasn't entirely clear). It is entirely reasonable to wonder how that might extrapolate to other addictive activities. In fact we currently regulate those quite differently than drugs, including the part where alcohol isn't considered to be a drug for some strange reason.
The point being made then is that clearly there's far more to the picture than just "it's addictive" or "it results in various social ills".
Contrast that with your human trafficking example (definitely qualifies as whataboutism). We have clear reasons to want to outlaw human trafficking. Sometimes we fail to successfully enforce the existing regulations. That (obviously) isn't an argument that we should repeal them.
> including the part where alcohol isn't considered to be a drug for some strange reason.
It's not a strange reason. IIRC, most cultures have a culturally understood and tolerated intoxicant. In our culture, that's alcohol.
Human culture is not some strange robotic thing, where the expectation is some kind hyper consistency in whatever narrow slice you look at.
It's bad because people are engaging in it without getting permission from runarberg on Hacker News.
They aren't doing whataboutism. They are comparing prohibition/criminalization of a harmful industry to regulation, and the effects of both. Gambling isn't exactly good, but there is definitely a difference between a mafia bookies and regulated sports betting services and the second/third order effects from both. Treating drug use as a criminal act, as opposed to a healthcare problem, has very different societal effects.
Whataboutism is more like "Side A did bad thing", "oh yeah, what about side B and the bad things they have done". It is more just deflection. While using similar/related issues to inform and contextualize the issue at hand can also be overused or abused, but it is not the same as whataboutism, which is rarely productive.