The Russell Conjugation Illuminator - Publicly Available!

[u/Timmy127_SMM]

Hey everyone! Today I publicly released the AI tool I've been working on for over a year that automatically finds Russell Conjugations in given text. Eric Weinstein wrote about in his 2017 Edge Essay, and I've posted a couple times about this topic here before.

The basic idea of a Russell Conjugation is that there are words and phrases with the exact same factual meaning but opposite emotional meanings. "Firm" vs "Pigheaded" was Bertrand Russell's classic example.

But this rhetorical technique is extremely prevalent in media and daily life, and very often people have no idea how much a different connotation can change their interpretations of a situation.

My website, https://russellconjugations.com finds Russell Conjugations in pasted text, and provides alternatives with reversed emotions. It's not perfect, but it's the first tool of its kind to be capable of anything like this, and I think there's a lot of potential.

Feel free to share any interesting results here, or around elsewhere. I'm trying to find more places to share this. I think when more people try it out they will find it really useful and valuable.

I also made a short YouTube video describing the concept and promoting the tool if anyone wants to check it out: https://youtu.be/yeVz45yf5HM

I appreciate any feedback! Thank you!

PS: Here's a really good example I stumbled on while preparing the tool for release: Illuminated Example - Russell Conjugation Illuminator. The framing of the sentence makes it seem like "unity" and "groupthink" are distinct things, but the factual basis is exactly the same. Once the Russell Conjugation is stripped away, the only substance this statement has is, "they think it ⁠⁠shows unity that I approve of, but it really shows ⁠unity that I disapprove of". The power of Russell Conjugations makes it hard to notice that until you use this tool.

[u/Objective-Outcome811]

So in easier to understand terms you've made an AI that calls out propaganda?

[u/Timmy127_SMM → u/Objective-Outcome811]

Yes. Though propaganda would be a negative Russell Conjugation for that ;)

[u/manchmaldrauf]

Apparently it's from a joke he made on the radio in 1948. Maybe that's all it is. You don't need an ai tool to understand that undocumented migrant is the same thing as illegal alien. Frank Luntz "found that the majority of opinions weren't based on the underlying facts." But what difference would a tool make? What is a death tax if it isn't an estate tax.

A tool won't help someone who supported an estate tax but not a death tax, and if you already do consider the underlying facts then you don't need a tool to highlight so-called emotive conjugations. Seems like one should just consider the underlying facts. Synonyms have the same or similar meanings. Firm actually isn't identical to pigheaded. Unity is not necessarily the same as groupthink as the latter implies poor decision making and unity is just consensus somehow formed, but not necessarily unconsidered. The only way to know is to look into what they're talking about. Highlighting words doesn't do anything.

[u/Timmy127_SMM → u/manchmaldrauf]

I think you're missing the point.

Frank Luntz "found that the majority of opinions weren't based on the underlying facts."

Yes! This is exactly why a tool that reverses emotional content would be useful. By providing factual equivalents with opposite emotions, you can make sure you're not just making conclusions based on emotion, and are actually considering factual content.

A tool won't help someone who supported an estate tax but not a death tax, and if you already do consider the underlying facts then you don't need a tool to highlight so-called emotive conjugations. Seems like one should just consider the underlying facts.

If Frank Luntz "found that the majority of opinions weren't based on the underlying facts," how could the solution possibly be to "just consider the underlying facts"? I don't actually think that's anything anyone is capable of just doing. Even after spending a year and a half sifting through different russell conjugations, I know for sure that there are many I am not aware of, and that even the ones I am aware of can still color my emotional judgments. This is why having a tool to assist in considering the underlying facts would be useful.

Firm actually isn't identical to pigheaded.

Sure. In the sense that it has a different emotional connotation.

Unity is not necessarily the same as groupthink as the latter implies poor decision making and unity is just consensus somehow formed, but not necessarily unconsidered.

Without any extra information, is that not just a difference in connotation? Unity is consensus "not necessarily unconsidered", and groupthink is consensus that "implies poor decision making." What, besides emotion, is doing this implying?

The only way to know is to look into what they're talking about.

I 100% agree. Russell Conjugations allow you to insert an emotional judgment into something, implying that it is bad or good, without needing to refer to any details of why you came to that conclusion. I think that by revealing the shallowness of these constructions, and providing their emotional opposites, you can force people to think more critically and actually consider the underlying facts.

I might be wrong. But that's the whole point behind having this discussion and making the tool public. People will figure out for themselves 🤷‍♂️

[u/manchmaldrauf → u/Timmy127_SMM]

There's probably a reason why nobody has tried to do this before. Either you look into the facts or you don't. The tool doesn't help you do that. It could only harm, actually, since if it was correctly reported as groupthink one could then discard that because some tool says groupthink is the same as consensus formed through reason. The tool doesn't assist in considering the underlying facts. You don't need ai to identify nouns, adjectives or verbs that might be loaded. That list is endless, and humans would still be much better at that anyway, at least those capable of considering the underlying facts in the first place.

[u/Timmy127_SMM → u/manchmaldrauf]

You haven't addressed the substance of any of my comments here, besides saying "there's probably a reason why nobody has tried to do this before," so according to your own framework you might need to get better at looking into the facts.

We are emotional creatures capable of reason. No one is 100% capable of turning off their emotional responses, and if you think that you are, I don't really know what to say to you.

Time will tell if what I've made is actually useful or not. Good to meet you!

[u/manchmaldrauf → u/Timmy127_SMM]

Timmy! The reason it hasn't been done is because the premise is retarded. The tool cannot be useful, but maybe it can be misleading.

Look at what it does to this Weinstein sentence "we see that traditional media ⁠has all but lost control of gate-keeping our information." If you hover over the sentence the tool points out that they've "allowed more voices to be heard..." lol or they've "embraced a free flow of information." double lol. What about allowed? Apparently that could mean failure to successfully prevent?

You can't have ai think for people. If you can't be bothered to investigate any further about what "death tax" means, simply by asking, and instead just oppose it because of your initial emotional response to "death," then why would you be bothered to use a tool to help you do that. So even if the tool could work, nobody would use it.