@TheAntipopulist's banner p

TheAntipopulist

Voltaire's Viceroy

0 followers   follows 1 user  
joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC 

				
User ID: 373


				
				
				

			

		

	














	


		


			



	

		

			

			

				

					

						

							
						

						

							
							

								
TheAntipopulist


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Voltaire's Viceroy

				
				
				

				

					0 followers  

					follows 1 user  

					joined 2022 September 05 02:32:36 UTC
				


				
					

					
No bio...

				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 373


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
‎

			

				
				

					Hour
					Day
					Week
					Month
					Year
					
				

			


			
‎

			

	
	

	 Hot Bump Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
	



		

	






	

		
		

		
		
	

	

  







		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is mixing two different issues. You're arguing against fraud, as in the buyer was promised one thing and was given another (e.g. quartz vs diamond). Provenance matters in that case because the transaction is explicitly about provenance.


That's not what happened here. Nobody was sold a counterfeit Monet. The problem was that people claimed they could identify AI art by looking at the image, then confidently condemned a real Monet as obvious AI slop. The lesson is that many people are laundering provenance anxiety as aesthetic expertise. When they think something is AI they suddenly "see" flaws that don't exist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I'm fascinated that you've labeled this as a left/right thing. Is that true? Have there been studies?




Only vibes for now. If I had to guess it's something like 55% of people don't care as long the end-product is high quality, 30% are anti AI with some being very loud, and 15% are explicitly pro AI. This is pretty uniform across the political spectrum from the far right to the center left, and then there's a discontinuity at the far left where it's closer to 30% don't care, 65% anti AI, and maybe 5% pro AI.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Art has a functional component of looking nice or representing something, and the social component of representing the author or a time period. The vast majority of art in the world is aiming to do well at the former, while only a tiny percentage of high art is for the latter and ends up as museum pieces or in private collections. Oh, and there's the "my friend/child/GF made this".


If there could be a clean split in the conversation between one component and the other, then I think things would be mostly fine. But anti-AI advocates really really want to try to convince you that AI is utterly inferior at the functional component when this is just demonstrably not true. Then when another round of evidence comes up that, no really, most people can't tell the difference, the conversation shifts motte-and-bailey style to "oh the problem is AI art doesn't have the social meaning", which is true in a small sense, but then they again try to imply that means all AI art is garbage. So there's a nugget of truth in that argument, but it's almost always presented in a bad-faith way.




On a last note, in my experience there hasn't been any particular valence to opposition to AI art? I don't think it's that 'the Left' with a capital L hates AI art. I think everyone hates AI art. There are very, very few people who like this technology. Consider, briefly, that the people who like this technology are themselves the unrepresentative freaks.




You're living in a bubble if you think even close to "everyone" hates AI art. What I've seen is that most of the political spectrum has people who DGAF along with many loud complainers that AI art is evil. So you can find people opposed to AI art basically anywhere, although it's clearly not universal. But on the far-left specifically (mostly the woke Bluesky types) the opposition to AI art is monolithic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Fine art will almost certainly survive if only to continue serving as a defacto entry point to money laundering.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Interesting story. I've played a ton of modded Rimworld, though I've not made any mods for it myself. I have made mods for games like Vic 3 (here's one of my mods) and AoW4, and have used AI for the art. Nobody said anything, though granted my mods don't have a ton of users or anything. But still, it seems like there's a weird parallel world going on where all you might get is a snide comment here and there, while on the other hand are threads like this excoriating AI use in mods in pretty harsh terms. If anything it seems like the anti-AI hysteria has only gotten worse over the past few years.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is... an interesting mindset. It seems like you're cognizant of its shortcomings and aren't really trying to proselytize it so I would never be too hostile towards it when the average person has so many dumb beliefs that they're obnoxiously overconfident in.


But as a former edgy atheist I feel compelled to push back at least a little bit. I think you should value truth more highly as an end in and of itself. Sure, people want the answers that religion provide, e.g. "where did we come from", and especially "what happens to us after we die!?!" It's nice to think there's a big "plan" and that we get a nice big reward after life in the form of "heaven" to go to. But it's just not true, and the questions that faith answers are in reality either unknowable, or have mundane answers that aren't very satisfying.


You’ve redescribed faith as existential nicotine. I understand the craving, but the fact that a cigarette calms withdrawal is not an argument that smoking is good. You also have what seems like a bit of a cognitive defense mechanism towards the end with the Das Kapital and Libertarian philosophy bits. To me, that reads like you think that if a person doesn't have religion then they'd just fall back on some secular philosophy and be religiously fanatical towards that instead. And since we all have our "religion", being Christian is hardly a vice even if it's not logically supported, right? But the real lesson to draw from that is not "therefore religious faith is fine." The lesson is "humans are prone to motivated belief and ideological addiction across the board, so we should be more suspicious of all such attachments."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my experience working on an indie game, trying to commission art pre-AI was extremely hit-or-miss. Artists were extremely flaky and sometimes had weird hangups with stuff like "commercial use". Maybe you could find consistent high-quality artists willing to work for $30, but I was trying to pay well above that ($50 for a basic 2D character, $100 for more complicated 2D background images) that I was told was on the lower end of the market rate, and still found it extremely difficult to find anyone that wouldn't randomly ghost me for months at a time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You're already presuming that those of us who say "yes we do believe in the superstitions" are lying.




This is not my presumption. If you tell me that you believe in (supernatural) God and Jesus, I'll trust that's your genuine belief.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Well yes, if one were to hold themselves up as a "Christian", but didn't actually believe in (supernatural) God, then I'd qualify that as pretty hollow belief. And the term "cosplaying" would not be inaccurate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you for being honest.


My question to you would be: why is faith enough for you? Religious communities hold up faith as this wonderfully good thing, but all that faith means is that you believe something without evidence. You're giving in to wishful thinking. Granted, everybody (including me!) does that to some extent, but it's generally seen as a failure-mode of human cognition. Why admit that openly, and do nothing to try to resolve it?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Another social experiment regarding AI art: A Twitter user posts a real Monet painting and says it's AI. The results are about what you'd expect. A few people say they can't tell the difference, but a lot of people arrogantly claim the "AI-generated" image is complete trash. Lots of very confident-sounding nonsense about "composition", color theory, brushstrokes, random little details about the plants, etc. Reddit discussions are here and here. The response afterwards seems to mostly center around a motte-and-bailey that pretends nobody made any claims about how AI does on the formal qualities of artwork, but that human art is still vastly better due to vague notions of "artistic intent".


The Left's antipathy towards AI art is well-known by this point. I did a small experiment to see if the Right was as susceptible and can report that at least some users are. It seems like the Right is split with some users being open to AI art on pragmatic grounds, some liking it simply due to the Left hating it, and some are just as opposed as the Left and let it cloud their judgement. I posted some modded AI artwork for Slay the Spire 2 on /v/ and had a decent chunk of users saying the usual "ugh this looks terrible". Then I started including official card art from the game for comparison while still implying it was all AI-generated, and the response got even worse. The card art for Abrasive, Squash, and Secret Technique attracted particular scorn. Again, this is human-made art that revealed preferences show nobody really has a problem with, yet the responses they got when people thought they were AI included the following:




You're posting stuff your average pixiv prompt jockey would consider low quality.






That genuinely looks like MSPaint quality.






This looks like shit doe. But I guess AIjeets don't have taste.






By "this good" do you mean like cheap clip-art? Or do you think that's actually good art?




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I kind of doubt we have many true-believer Christians on the forum. There's plenty of cultural Christians, i.e. people who don't really believe in the superstitions but nevertheless have their arguments cosplay some hollow Christian aesthetics as a mostly futile attempt to craft a broader right-wing worldview. And I bet we have an even bigger swathe of people who don't believe in that, but see cultural Christians as "fellow travelers" in the fight against the Left, and so they give them a free pass.


When I've tried to debate some actual true-believers on here, it's always gone badly since they mostly trend towards metaphysics, which in terms of debating bears a very close resemblance to conspiracy theorists in that it's very jargon-heavy, highly specific to the individual, and ultimately unfalsifiable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I simply agree with him. No snark intended.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is a good point as an explanation for the problem, but it's also not an excuse. LLMs are really great when they have every detail they'd need to know in-context, but they're still very inefficient at gathering that context, and then they're inefficient at retaining the important bits.


The problem with LLMs isn't some far-reaching philosophical shortcoming like "they don't have world models" (whatever that means). They're implementation issues, like not having eyeballs, not processing tokens efficiently, etc. But those are still big issues.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
OK sure.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


this was widely discussed and claimed in many places, including here.




I have not seen anyone claim this, including on this site. I've been paying attention to the conversation pretty well though obviously I might have missed something. Please provide a source for this. Specifically I'm looking for evidence that people thought Iran "controlled" the straits beyond simple area-of-denial.




You should go look at today’s news.




There have been a lot of claims people in the war, especially Trump, have made that subsequently failed to hold up. On April 11th he claimed unequivocally that the US had destroyed the entire Iranian military, and that the strait would soon be open. There was also the "ceasefire" where Iran was supposed to open the strait, but they just didn't. I wouldn't trust any "breaking news" until it's been in effect for several days and verified by at least a few independent sources.




would you give me a confidence rating that your analysis will hold up? What do you think the odds are that the US will reopen the Straits of Hormuz?




I can't speak to the likelihood of the straits opening through diplomacy since that could change at any time.


In terms of a military campaign wherein the US navy tries to open the strait in the face of Iranian opposition, I'd say it's relatively unlikely by the end of April, but maybe a 50-50 by the end of May and then slightly higher by the end of June. By "open" I mean any single day in the IMF portwatch showing >= 60 ships passing, which would be on the lower end of pre-war traffic.


Now please give me your confidence rating.




Venezuela is in America’s orbit now, Indonesia is in America’s orbit now, Iran is at the negotiating table, Japan is re-arming, we control Panama, we control Taiwan — wait I’m just repeating myself. America is more isolated than ever as its power over global sea lanes and energy supply rises — sure yeah let’s go with that.




A country "being in America's orbit" doesn't mean much beyond rhetoric. Indonesia signed some minor cooperation agreement with the US but it's hardly a steadfast American ally now. It's a similar story with Venezuela -- they're a bit more pliable to US demands but they're hardly some US asset now.


These are paltry gains compared to the huge rupture of trust between the US and the rest of NATO. America actually could really use the rest of NATO's help now in patrolling the straits, but Trump failed to get European buy-in for his Iran adventure before the war, so that + threats of invading Greenland have given the Europeans no motivation to pull America's chestnuts out of the fire.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This isn't a bad move since the Dems knew they obviously wouldn't be able to succeed. It just shows they're trying (in a fake way) to stop it so they can use this as an attack ad later. Even if the Dems controlled both houses they still probably wouldn't be able to stop Trump doing most of what he wants since the Legislative branch has basically ceded almost all control over military + diplomacy to the Executive, and it would take a filibuster-proof majority to unwind that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The blockade is working, oil tanker traffic in the strait is up




These 2 statements are contradictory.




Iran was winning because they controlled the Strait of Hormuz. Not anymore!




No serious analyst claimed Iran controlled Hormuz directly, as if they had an armada guarding it or something. The point was always that they could block it through threats and asymmetric action, which they clearly did, and the US has thus far been unable to rectify.


At any day Iran might come to the negotiating table, but this war has been full of fits and starts and so I wouldn't trust any "public statements" from either side until they've been put into practice for several days at the very least.




Trump is rearranging the whole global order on America’s terms.




The only thing Trump has done has been to unite the world against the US. He's shown the world the US military is strong tactically, but is still woefully deficient in terms of long-term strategy due to a number of factors -- exceptionally low pain tolerance, overstretch, insufficient missile stocks for long campaigns, political winds shifting, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
AI could probably do all these things if you handhold it, but these things are all general computer use which is something that AI is currently quite bad at so I doubt current models could do these types of things consistently. Bad performance at general computer use is a colossal bottleneck for all sorts of things where progress has been pretty slow.


The idea we're not going to have jobs in the future due to AI is just classic Lump of Labor fallacy. Something like 80% of the world's population were simple peasants in 1500, while after the Industrial Revolution that number dropped to ~1% for most advanced countries. If national economies could go from the vast majority of people simply scratching out enough food for themselves and their immediate families to fully industrialized societies without widespread unemployment, then the same can happen for AI.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The compliance mechanism was the threat of snapback sanctions, which had been severe enough to get them to come to the table to negotiate in the first place.




the most common criticism of the JCPOA was that it lacked any enforcement mechanism or requirement to dismantle existing facilities/capabilities.




That's not correct. Iran had about 19,000 centrifuges before the deal then the deal capped them at about 5000.




the agreement was that they would pause their pursuit of nuclear weapons for 10 years




This also isn't correct. Under the NPT they weren't allowed to have get a bomb ever. What the JCPOA focused on was enhanced monitoring to make sure that was the case for the first 1-2 decades. The entire plan didn't go defunct after 10 years, there were other nuclear surveillance bits that had 15 and 20 year sunsets. Beyond that, Iran was required to sign the Additional Protocol of the NPT which would have given some amount of additional long-term monitoring, although it would have looked closer to "regular country with civilian nuclear plants" like Japan rather than the highly invasive monitoring of the JCPOA.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In 2016 they still had a large supply of Uranian enriched to higher than civilian percentages




They did not. They had a max of 300kg of up to 3.67% enriched UF6, which is well within civilian use.




still had several military grade centrifuge




A "military grade centrifuge" isn't really something that exists beyond rhetoric.




Iran was already violating its requirements under JCPOA.




The only violations were small and immediately corrected, like their stocks of heavy water went briefly over the cap before they transferred some out of the country.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's just silly to rage at a politician once he's out of office. The buck stops with the voters: they chose him for nearly 10 years. I don't recall any massive protests against immigration before it became clear it was a problem. Ditto with COVID restrictions, which were broadly popular across the much of the West for quite a while. It's just dumb to demonize elected politicians doing things that are popular.


It's like Republicans rewriting history to imply the Iraq + Afghan wars were forced on them somehow by "the elites" or "the establishment", when in reality they were very popular at the beginning especially among the right. Then the public never stopped wanting a politician to somehow come in and make a square circle and "win" the wars in some nebulous way rather than just cut losses as they should have done.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
they came to negotiate an end to the sanctions in 2015, and were willing to give up their nuclear program to do so.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It would have done it through monitoring and snapback sanctions that were severe enough to get them to come to the table in the first place.


Sure, it wouldn't have been enough if Iran was willing to become a permanent pariah state like North Korea, but they didn't want to become like that. The only foolproof method would have been regime change and another forever war, but the political will for that didn't exist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


More seriously, a blockade is an act of war. Arguably, it is not only an act of war against the country being blockaded, but also against any neutral country who wants to peacefully trade with the blockaded country.




This doesn't follow.


The UK blockaded Germany during WW1 and WW2, and it's not like this was the UK was declaring war on the entire world by doing so. The US is just moving to option 4 in the escalation ladder list. Blockading a country from trading with neutrals is generally seen as acceptable wartime behavior, and although it can cause consternation with 3rd parties, it's not seen as overtly hostile to them.