• lily33@lemm.ee
    108·
    6 months ago

    Well, Columbus himself didn’t conquer much. He established a few settlement, but the real conquering was done by others.

    More accurate comparison would be:

    Describe Hernan Cortez in one word.

    (GPT-4) Conquistador

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
        10·
        6 months ago

        He is far from distinguished in that endeavor. What makes him relevant to history is the part where he found people to brutalize, way the fuck elsewhere.

        The Mongols just saw some towns out across the grasslands and said “I’ll have that.” Ad nauseum.

    • voodooattack@lemmy.worldOP
      28·
      6 months ago

      Yet they both committed atrocities (torture, murder, rape and god knows what else) and only one is being hailed as “explorer”.

      Edit: I’m not saying we should hail Genghis Khan as an explorer, I’m saying that Christopher Columbus should be deplored as a murderer and a marauder, not praised as an explorer.

      • TheControlled@lemmy.world
        30·
        6 months ago

        Being a murderer and explorer are not mutually exclusive. If ChatGPT said “Murderer” one might presume that he was simply a local killer, captured by the law, and convicted a la Ted Bundy. Explorer is a more appropriate title for Columbus, like “Dictator” is likely more appropriate than “Murderer” for Hitler. Murderer, sadly, is too commonplace for people of their evil.

  • TheControlled@lemmy.world
    95·
    6 months ago

    But this is accurate. Columbus was an explorer, that was his mission. I’ve read his letters to Spain and he wanted to find bounty for the Spanish crown to convince them to give him more money. He murdered, tortured, enslaved kidnapped, interrogated, and raped people to find even more bounty. But he was an explorer, not a conquistador or conqueror. Those were military positions.

    This post is ignorant.

    • voodooattack@lemmy.worldOP
      25·
      6 months ago

      Do you think Native Americans would agree to define him as an explorer too, then?

      But this is accurate. Columbus was an explorer, that was his mission. I’ve read his letters to Spain and he wanted to find bounty for the Spanish crown to convince them to give him more money.

      And Adolf Hitler was a politician. That was his “mission”. We don’t define Hitler by his career though.

      He murdered, tortured, enslaved kidnapped, interrogated, and raped people to find even more bounty.

      I guess he went above and beyond on that mission, yeah? By your definition he seems more like a bounty-hunter/privateer and not an explorer, but worse in every way. (And how is rape supposed to tie into this narrative about his goal of securing more funding anyway?)

      But he was an explorer, not a conquistador or conqueror. Those were military positions.

      So by your logic, not having a military position pardons any atrocities he committed and waives the reason to call him anything other than “explorer”? He was a butcher and a rapist. That’s a fact.

      You don’t need a rank and a hat to become a sanctioned piece of shit. That can happen sans the hat.

      This post is ignorant.

      Is this your opinion, or an “accurate” fact too?

      • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
        18·
        6 months ago

        “Look, I get it, everyone has a story and contains multitudes and all, but the paperwork from the children’s hospital clearly says he was officially contracted as an “Entertainer and Humorist,” so that’s the title we need to refer to this John Wayne Gacy with. It’s just basic professionalism.”

      • TheControlled@lemmy.world
        13·
        6 months ago

        Your defensiveness betrays your ignorance. That’s my opinion.

        No body is pardoning anything, and insinuating that I am invalidates everything you just wrote, embarrasses you, and removes all my interest in talking to you further.

    • drmeanfeel@lemmy.world
      15·
      6 months ago

      Man, you gotta know if ChatGPT returned Hitler as “interested in ancestry and hotel art” it wouldn’t be good no matter how pedantically true it is

      • TheControlled@lemmy.world
        9·
        6 months ago

        I would think he should be called “Dictator” or are we straying from the one word examples? It is not pedantic to call Columbus an explorer. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to use other single words, maybe “Colonizer” but he wasn’t really that either. Most of what people are suggesting are highly colored by emotion. I’m not seeing the controversy in “Explorer” unless you have a very childish/naive connotation with that word to mean only fun, exciting, and adventurous. Exploring can be evil.

  • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
    12·
    6 months ago

    POV: You’ve discovered an example of how LLMs are biased by their training data.

    This is expected behavior. LLMs can’t reason. They only return a representation of their statistically weighted input data. Most of the internet calls Columbus an explorer who “discovered” turtle island and Kahn a conquering warlord.

    Edit: just discovered that OP has probably figured this out, too; judging by the post title.