经济与社会科学2025arxiv.org
当 AI 降低说服成本，精英如何塑造大众偏好
How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion costs
进阶 · 约 35 分钟读完前置知识：政治经济学基础、公共选择与偏好形成、说服成本概念
导读
这篇论文讨论当 AI 大幅降低说服与宣传成本时，精英如何借此塑造大众偏好。其论证核心更接近“说服成本”而非某种 AI 独有机制，AI 被视为让宣传更廉价的催化剂。
HN 关注点：AI 降低宣传成本是否会放大精英操纵，以及这种威胁是否只是定向广告、水军等旧手段换了新包装。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 1 补充 3
质疑论证并非 AI 独有，说服成本问题早已存在。
文章没有任何 AI 专属内容：整个论证围绕说服成本展开，AI 只是作为“更廉价生成宣传”的流行词链接出现。但同样的事情用定向 Facebook 广告或俄罗斯水军也能做，根本不需要 AI。
crote查看英文原文
Note that nothing in the article is AI-specific: the entire argument is built around the cost of persuasion, with the potential of AI to more cheaply generate propaganda as buzzword link. However, exactly the same applies with, say, targeted Facebook ads or Russian troll armies. You don't need any AI for this.
补充威胁核心是数据画像与 AI 预测控制，而非简单水军宣传。
重点不是俄罗斯机器人农场来说服你，那种看法可笑且过度简化。真正的问题是劫持联邦和商业数据，建立高度具体详细的个人画像。DOGE 不是审计，而是借口，把大量敏感数据外泄到秘密模型和 Palantir 之类的地方，然后用 AI 模仿你或预测你对刺激的反应。更深层图谋可能针对你的财富和人格，而不只是用推特操纵总统投票。建议对真实的人抱最好期望，对公司政府抱最坏预期。
themafia查看英文原文
It's not about persuading you from "russian bot farms." Which I think is a ridiculous and unnecessarily reductive viewpoint. It's about hijacking all of your federal and commercial data that these companies can get their hands on and building a highly specific and detailed profile of you. DOGE wasn't an audit. It was an excuse to exfiltrate mountains of your sensitive data into their secret models and into places like Palantir. Then using AI to either imitate you or to possibly predict your reactions to certain stimulus. Then presumably the game is finding the best way to turn you into a human slave of the state. I assure you, they're not going to use twitter to manipulate your vote for the president, they have much deeper designs on your wealth and ultimately your own personhood. It's too easy to punch down. I recommend anyone presume the best of actual people and the worst of our corporations and governments. The data seems clear.
补充公众偏好可能浅薄，利益集团理解更理性，但倾听仍必要。
Converse 的一篇文章质疑公众是否真的有意见。以关税为例，多数人凭直觉，约 38% 净支持。若按利益集团“一美元一票”来算，净支持会差得多：零售、服务、建筑只是承担成本，多数制造商因进口中间品和出口市场而犹豫，强烈支持的只有钢铝行业，约占 GDP 的 2%。公众与利益集团虽在同一侧、没有矛盾，但利益集团对关税经济影响的理解更理性。Habermas 也指出，让不太懂的人有发言权有问题，但让人感到被倾听又绝对必要。
PaulHoule查看英文原文
An essay by Converse in this volume https://www.amazon.com/Ideology-Discontent-Clifford-Geertz/dp/0029007607 [1] calls into question whether or not the public has an opinion. I was thinking about the example of tariffs for instance. Most people are going on bellyfeel so you see maybe 38% are net positive on tariffs https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/14/trumps-tariffs-and-one-big-beautiful-bill-face-more-opposition-than-support-as-his-job-rating-slips/ If you broke it down in terms of interest groups on a "one dollar one vote" basis the net positive has to be a lot worse: to the retail, services and constructor sectors tariffs are just a cost without any benefits, even most manufacturers are on the fence because they import intermediate goods and want access to foreign markets. The only sectors that are strongly for it that I can suss out are steel and aluminum manufacturers who are 2% or so of the GDP. The public and the interest groups are on the same side of 50% so there is no contradiction, but in this particular case I think the interest groups collectively have a more rational understanding of how tariffs effect the economy than do "the people". As Habermas points out, it's quite problematic giving people who don't really know a lot a say about things even though it is absolutely necessary that people feel heard. [1] Interestingly this book came out in 1964 just before all hell broke loose in terms of Vietnam, counterculture, black nationalism, etc. -- right when discontent when from hypothetical to very real
补充独立/自由思考未必更优，且要承担社会成本。
“自由思考者”常常只是“古怪”。人们称赞独立思考，并把它联系到特定政治观念，认为不随大流会有更好观念。但不一定：大众可能对，自由思考者也可能有疯狂糟糕的想法。而且与人格格不入代价很高：能共鸣的人少，别人觉得你怪，不做同样的事、不知道同样的东西、不谈同样的话题。你是异类，可能还没什么好处。自由思考不保证任何东西。我的一个“自由思考”想法是床架和弹簧床垫大多多余，床垫放地上更舒服便宜；但这并没带来什么，只是按偏好生活，别人仍觉得怪。
everdrive查看英文原文
It's important to remember that being a "free thinker" often just means "being weird." It's quite celebrated to "think for yourself" and people always connect this to specific political ideas, and suggest that free thinkers will have "better" political ideas by not going along with the crowd. On one hand, this is not necessarily true; the crowd could potentially have the better idea and the free thinker could have some crazy or bad idea. But also, there is a heavy cost to being out of sync with people; how many people can you relate to? Do the people you talk to think you're weird? You don't do the same things, know the same things, talk about the same things, etc. You're the odd man out, and potentially for not much benefit. Being a "free thinker" doesn't necessarily guarantee much of anything. Your ideas are potentially original, but not necessarily better. One of my "free thinker" ideas is that bed frames and box springs are mostly superfluous and a mattress on the ground is more comfortable and cheaper. (getting up from a squat should not be difficult if you're even moderately healthy) Does this really buy me anything? No. I'm living to my preferences and in line with my ideas, but people just think it's weird, and would be really uncomfortable with it unless I'd already built up enough trust / goodwill to overcome this quirk.
相关资源
从这篇论文所有 HN 讨论帖的全部评论里整理出来的链接。
历次讨论
- 2025Hacker News 讨论帖704 分 · 661 评
同领域还值得读
一切的回报率，1870–2015
The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015
利用1870–2015年多国的长期数据，估算股票、住房等各类资本的回报率，并将其与经济增长率进行比较。
经济与社会科学2019 · 487 分 · 260 评进阶 · 约 100 分钟编辑精选一切资产的回报率，1870–2015
The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015
构建了 1870–2015 年 16 个国家的长周期资产回报数据集，覆盖股票、住房、政府债券和短期票据，系统比较各类资产的真实回报与波动性。
经济与社会科学2018 · 215 分 · 151 评进阶 · 约 120 分钟编辑精选一切资产的回报率，1870–2015（2019）
The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 (2019)
这篇发表于《经济学季刊》的论文构建了 1870–2015 年间 16 个主要发达国家的股票、债券、房地产等资产收益率的长周期数据库。
经济与社会科学2024 · 190 分 · 148 评进阶 · 约 80 分钟编辑精选想法是否越来越难找？
Are ideas getting harder to find?
探讨“想法是否越来越难找到”：通过衡量多个领域的“研究生产率”，发现维持相同的增长需要投入指数级增长的研究资源，即研究效率在持续下降。
经济与社会科学2016 · 182 分 · 106 评入门 · 约 60 分钟编辑精选比特币与区块链的经济极限
The Economic Limits of Bitcoin and the Blockchain
芝加哥大学 Eric Budish 的论文从经济学角度分析比特币与区块链的根本限制：核心论点是只要攻击网络（双花或砸盘做空）的收益超过挖矿成本，51% 算力攻击就有利可图，而挖矿…
经济与社会科学2018 · 176 分 · 37 评进阶 · 约 90 分钟编辑精选