System prompts themselves have many contradictions. I remember hearing an Anthropic engineer (possibly Lex Fridman's interview with Amanda Askell) talking about using exaggerated language like "NEVER" just to steer Claude to rarely do something.
I'm not sure what article about looting is being referenced, but NPR did interview author Vicky Osterweil about her book "In Defense of Looting". It would be extremely surprising to hear that NPR endorsed looting as a form of protest. The interview was definitely not an endorsement.
I wonder if the low literacy rate is partly an artifact of non-English speakers. The 54% stat seems to come from PIAAC which only evaluates English literacy in the US https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/faq.asp
The US hasn’t historically had high literacy rates though I definitely agree we are back to McCarthy levels of anti-intellectualism. Probably worse.