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Anonymous ID: 4ad44d Sept. 13, 2024, 6:11 a.m. No.21582673   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2703

Activists Push For National Ban On Running Down Wolves With Snowmobiles

In a case of a hot-button issue making strange political bedfellows, conservative firebrand Mat Gaetz is joining Democrats to push a national ban on running wolves and other predators down with snowmobiles.

Mark Heinz

September 11, 2024

 

While Wyoming ponders a legislative response to the abuse and killing of a wolf in Daniel that sparked nationwide outrage, an animal welfare group is pushing a bi-partisan bill for a federal ban chasing predators on snowmobiles.

 

In a case of a hot-button issue making strange political bedfellows, conservative firebrand Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, is joining with Congressional Democrats to introduce the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons (SAW) Act.

==Response To Daniel Wolf Killing=

The act is being promoted by Animal Wellness Action, a national animal welfare group that was among many outraged by the killing of a wolf in Daniel in February.

 

According to accounts, that incident started with Daniel resident Cody Roberts running a wolf down with his snowmobile and then capturing the injured animal. He then reportedly took the wolf to his house and at some point duct-taped its mouth shut, then showed it off in the local Green River Bar before finally killing it behind the bar.

 

Reports of the incident sparked widespread calls to ban coyote or predator “whacking,” a term for running the animals down with snowmobiles or other vehicles.

 

‘Very Weak Response’

The SAW Act aims to ban predator whacking on all federal lands across the country. It’s set to be introduced in the U.S. House by Gaetz, along with U.S. Reps. Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina, Don Davis, D-North Carolina, and Troy Carter, D-Louisiana.

 

Animal Wellness Action president Wayne Pacelle told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that he was motivated to get the SAW Act moving by the “very weak response” of the Wyoming Legislature’s Treatment of Predators Working Group.

 

He declined to comment any further on Wednesday, saying that he and others will provide more details during a virtual press conference Thursday morning.

 

The working group is an offshoot of the Legislature’s Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee.

 

It will likely recommend a proposed bill when the full committee meets in October. That bill calls for continuing to allow people to pursue predators such as wolves and coyotes with vehicles, but the animals would have to be killed as quickly as possible and not be subjected to prolong suffering.

 

State Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily that he thinks the Legislature’s process probably won’t be affected by the proposed federal legislation.

 

“Right now, I would tend to doubt it (having an effect),” said Gierau, who is a member of the working group and the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee.

 

“I know the speed at which Congress works, and I know the speed at which the Legislature works, and we’re a little faster,” he said.

 

Cowboy State Daily sent inquiries to the offices of Wyoming’s congressional delegation — U.S. Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso, and Rep. Harriet Hageman — asking whether they would support or oppose the SAW Act.

 

Only Barrasso’s office responded by publication time for this story.

 

“This legislation hasn’t been introduced yet. Senator Barrasso will review the details of the bill if it’s officially introduced in the U.S. Senate,” spokeswoman Laura Mengelkamp stated in an email response.

 

Shaming Might Work Better Than Legislation

There might not be widespread support for predator whacking, even among hunters, but trying to ban it through legislation might not be effective, said Park County resident Richard Jones, a retired U.S. Forest Service and Park Service ranger.

 

While he understands the outrage generated by the wolf killing in Daniel, trying to change policy though “narrow legislation” probably isn’t the answer, Jones told Cowboy State Daily.

 

“Every time you get an incident, you get a bunch of people want to jump on a bandwagon and say, ‘Something has to be done,’” Jones said.

 

Jones said that predator whacking goes against his personal ethics, and probably the wider concept of fair chase in hunting. It’s his belief that predators should be shot rather than run down.

 

However, bringing in more government regulation isn’t a good idea, he said. Instead, “public shaming” could effectively curb predator whacking.

 

“I’m a big fan of peer pressure and guilt rather than legislation,” he said.

 

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/09/11/activists-push-for-national-ban-on-running-down-wolves-with-snowmobiles/

Anonymous ID: 4ad44d Sept. 13, 2024, 6:28 a.m. No.21582710   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2712 >>2734 >>2770 >>3018 >>3054 >>3137 >>3210 >>3237

Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI

Editor’s summary

Beliefs in conspiracies that a US election was stolen incited an attempted insurrection on 6 January 2021. Another conspiracy alleging that Germany’s COVID-19 restrictions were motivated by nefarious intentions sparked violent protests at Berlin’s Reichstag parliament building in August 2020. Amid growing threats to democracy, Costello et al. investigated whether dialogs with a generative artificial intelligence (AI) interface could convince people to abandon their conspiratorial beliefs (see the Perspective by Bago and Bonnefon). Human participants described a conspiracy theory that they subscribed to, and the AI then engaged in persuasive arguments with them that refuted their beliefs with evidence. The AI chatbot’s ability to sustain tailored counterarguments and personalized in-depth conversations reduced their beliefs in conspiracies for months, challenging research suggesting that such beliefs are impervious to change. This intervention illustrates how deploying AI may mitigate conflicts and serve society. —Ekeoma Uzogara

Structured Abstract

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Widespread belief in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories is a major source of public concern and a focus of scholarly research. Despite often being quite implausible, many such conspiracies are widely believed. Prominent psychological theories propose that many people want to adopt conspiracy theories (to satisfy underlying psychic “needs” or motivations), and thus, believers cannot be convinced to abandon these unfounded and implausible beliefs using facts and counterevidence. Here, we question this conventional wisdom and ask whether it may be possible to talk people out of the conspiratorial “rabbit hole” with sufficiently compelling evidence.

RATIONALE

 

We hypothesized that interventions based on factual, corrective information may seem ineffective simply because they lack sufficient depth and personalization. To test this hypothesis, we leveraged advancements in large language models (LLMs), a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that has access to vast amounts of information and the ability to generate bespoke arguments. LLMs can thereby directly refute particular evidence each individual cites as supporting their conspiratorial beliefs.

To do so, we developed a pipeline for conducting behavioral science research using real-time, personalized interactions between research subjects and AI. Across two experiments, 2190 Americans articulated—in their own words—a conspiracy theory in which they believe, along with the evidence they think supports this theory. They then engaged in a three-round conversation with the LLM GPT-4 Turbo, which we prompted to respond to this specific evidence while trying to reduce participants’ belief in the conspiracy theory (or, as a control condition, to converse with the AI about an unrelated topic).

RESULTS

 

The treatment reduced participants’ belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by 20% on average. This effect persisted undiminished for at least 2 months; was consistently observed across a wide range of conspiracy theories, from classic conspiracies involving the assassination of John F. Kennedy, aliens, and the illuminati, to those pertaining to topical events such as COVID-19 and the 2020 US presidential election; and occurred even for participants whose conspiracy beliefs were deeply entrenched and important to their identities. Notably, the AI did not reduce belief in true conspiracies. Furthermore, when a professional fact-checker evaluated a sample of 128 claims made by the AI, 99.2% were true, 0.8% were misleading, and none were false. The debunking also spilled over to reduce beliefs in unrelated conspiracies, indicating a general decrease in conspiratorial worldview, and increased intentions to rebut other conspiracy believers.

CONCLUSION

 

Many people who strongly believe in seemingly fact-resistant conspiratorial beliefs can change their minds when presented with compelling evidence. From a theoretical perspective, this paints a surprisingly optimistic picture of human reasoning: Conspiratorial rabbit holes may indeed have an exit. Psychological needs and motivations do not inherently blind conspiracists to evidence—it simply takes the right evidence to reach them. Practically, by demonstrating the persuasive power of LLMs, our findings emphasize both the potential positive impacts of generative AI when deployed responsibly and the pressing importance of minimizing opportunities for this technology to be used irresponsibly…

 

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq1814

 

Science started with conspiracy theories