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sohois


				

				

				

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sohois


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 06:51:38 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If I might steelman the design of Medea, and the wider concept of 'safe-horny' for a moment:


That twitter post is standard internet hyperbole, but that doesn't mean that the Medea design isn't hot. This is clearly an attractive character, and the AI redesign makes her more titillating, not necessarily more attractive. What it also does is changes the feel of the character. I've not played Hades 2 so don't know this character's role but if I saw the latter, it would instantly strike me as temptress/romance option. The former is more neutral and doesn't set expectations of what the character should do. More widely, the AI design instantly codes as male/teenage bait, and could be off-putting for other audiences. There's a big commercial drive for horniness* to be done in a 'safe' way.


What is the purpose of sexy designs and horny material in games? Unless you're playing Sex with Futa Hitler 2:Goebbling Cock, it is generally not for players to drop their controllers and start masturbating. Sex can be an important part of romance in games. Lust more generally is an important part of the human condition. 'Safe horny' allows you to make use of this in your games and storylines without casting the game instantly into the pornography bucket.


The same exact mechanism is visible in film. There is pornography, and film, and there are plenty of films that straddle the line between the two. Long before woke there has always been criticism of films that rely on crude sexual imagery as being "literal pornography" or "material for teenage boys". At the same time, there are films that are far more explicit which are still considered high art because they are handled in a very 'adult' manner.


To be fair, 'safe horny' typically eschews the overt sexuality that films can get away with; there's still some way to go in how games can present this kind of material. But the important thing for most creators is probably getting away from that 'teenage boy' category while still presenting something that says "this is a hot character and you can have sex with them".


The first Hades did this very well. A character like Megaera is not typically attractive, with harsh facial features. She's also the ex of the main character and a lot of her dialogue is romantic in nature. So how do you get people horny when you're dealing with a character that is practically ugly to look at? Just give her the most sensual voice imaginable. Instantly, the designers have found a way to horny that doesn't rely on shoving tits in your face.


Compare that with something like the FF7 remake. Here we do have Tifa's tits shoved in your face, but as a scene it's pretty teenage**. It's like an anime beach scene, with a flustered protagonist and no actual suggestion of sex, beyond "Hey look at these fat tits and hot bodies".


Imagine a situation where you were playing one of these games in front of a wife or girlfriend. Or recommending to a colleague. I think the majority would feel more comfortable with Hades, despite the fact that the actual content of Hades is more sexual, more mature, than FF7.


i think this is the steelman, that 'safe horny' allows you to communicate and use sexuality in a game without bringing the baggage of 'teenage boys' (and I use teenage boys specifically, because it's not male sexuality that it should be blocking).


That's the steelman, but the reality is that while Hades 1 did was able to tread this fine line, Hades 2 largely fails. Medea, who isn't super hot by any means, is pretty much the only hot character. Hades 1 had hot characters where needed, unique characters where needed, and plain characters where needed. Hades 2 has a bunch of uggos and ridiculous designs like disabled gods. They went so far they completely failed to signal horniness.




*I appreciate that there a few games like Overwatch where the pornography has become an active selling point, but I don't think this is something you can aim for; lots of games have had casts of hot women without getting the impact of OW.


**which isn't a problem inherently. FF7 was a game for teenage boys and not everything needs to be super sexual. The scene is suitable in terms of the rest of the game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Miranda was very much a case of design and/or tech failures meaning Bioware didn't achieve the desired look for her, rather than them actively deciding to make her look plainer


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I want to step aside from the controversy here and ask if the lead artist of a series that's pretty much the poster boy (or poster man if you prefer) for safe horny really called Gen Z? Did she adopt this as a deliberate nom de plume?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 18, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Boxing seems much more driven specifically by the US having no good heavyweights during that time. If there was an American even at the level of an Anthony Joshua it would probably be way bigger


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's certainly a strange inclusion when you look at the rest of the anime list, but if you look at top X lists for media in general it doesn't stand out.


Every publicly voted top list is always a mix of "reddit picks" with actually good content, typically biased towards the former. You need the right set of circumstances for the good stuff to break through, which most properties miss out on. To use a few examples of Anime which are far superior to anything in that list:


    

  • Legend of the Galatic Heroes is too old. Recency bias is a big thing
    • 

  • Berserk is both a bit too old and suffers from association with many far inferior adaptations
    • 

  • Mob Psycho is too out there, not quite accessible enough for a general audience
    • 



Frieren manages to be recent, high quality in every aspect*, and not too off-putting for a more general audience. Maybe it doesn't trouble your personal top 10, but then none of MALs list would trouble the top 10 of a discerning viewer.


A unique factor for MAL in particular is the tendency for some shows to blow up in popularity and fall off just as quickly - though in part due to competitive voting from different fandoms. The FMA fandom is notorious for voting down anything which threatens its position at the top of MAL (at least until Frieren broke through). I recall shows like Oshi no ko suddenly claiming the top spot, before a combination of a mediocre follow-up with agressive down voting took it off. For this reason, I would be stunned if Re:zero managed to cling on


*I haven't actually watched the anime, I have only read the manga. The manga is excellent, and I understand that the anime is a well done adaptation


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is that going to matter? Trump cares primarily about himself, and maybe to an extent his family members. Does he give a shit about his various hangers-on, the Republican party, or even the US in general?


I would be very surprised if he even bothered to offer support for a Vance campaign, let alone anyone else. Maybe if it came with some form of bribe, but candidates can't offer much until they're elected. Perhaps one of his sons running would bring him out, but Trump loyalty wouldn't be enough to prevent them getting destroyed.


And that's putting aside the question of his increasing senility.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I read a lot of web serials, which I would estimate are >95% male written (the Royal Road kind, not the fanfic or gay romance kind).


One thing I can say for certain is that if there is a female protagonist, she will always be a lesbian, or "bisexual" but basically all romance is with other women. I assume this is because it's icky to imagine a man hitting on your character, but it does get a bit ridiculous.


I don't know if this applies to professionally published works, I would assume not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Will they?


edit: and just to be clear, I'm pretty sure there are SF Bay Area rats right here, in the Motte. Will they?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for October 9, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I got oneshot by AI music recently. Probably not the right term for music, but anyway:


The Strokes released their 7th album a few months ago and I, having always pirated music, duly grabbed the first option I saw on Soulseek when it came out, and for months listened happily. I'd heard their first single from the album already, and it was no different on the files I downloaded.


Last week I headed to see the Strokes in concert in London. Literally a day before the show, I was on the band's subreddit when I saw a meme talking about the album, except that one of the titles was completely different from what I knew. Did they change the title at some point? Hopping on to Youtube and, no, it's an entirely different track, and I can't find any evidence of the one I knew. And so it goes as I listen to the rest of the album, every single track is different.


Turns out someone had taken the initial track list and the first single and generated an AI version to put onto Spotify when it was first announced. It's still up there in fact, if you want to check how it sounds:


https://open.spotify.com/album/6jvDu7nHvR8nI9b22cE3Ic


I guess it's somewhat fortunate I found out a bit before the live show, otherwise I probably would have been confused as hell.


But none of that is particularly interesting: AI music is already very good, and I knew already that there were charting AI songs and what not. It's not too surprising that they could make an entire album good enough to fool a fan.


I think what really surprised me in the end is that now I still prefer the AI album. Not just that, but as I said in a Motte comment about the album when it released, I would probably rank the AI version as better than anything else the Strokes have done.


I was a bit scornful of those comments which said that we were already at the point were people would abandon real musicians and just generate an endless stream of personalised music with AI, but looks like I'm already there.




This is not the only AI killing art story I wanted to bring to your attention. While music may have been solved, video games are still a ways away (so, 6 months at a guess). Over on our sister/cousin/arch-rival site Datasecretslox, AI skeptic* Conrad has been experimenting with the ability to build an equivalent to 1992 JRPG Lunar: The Silver Star using only AI.


https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,16631.0.html


The code has proved no barrier at all, but pixel art appears to be one of the great challenges for current AI models, unable to output character sprites or maps without constant hand-holding and dozens if not hundreds of iterations. They've at least reached a point of finishing the starting village (and also all of the underlying code for the game systems) but will they give up before they can output a finished game?


*yes, I did mostly want to point out how idiotic his argument is without having to register there. Conrad is enraged that AI cannot replicate a 1992 JRPG in one go, apparently completely ignorant that no human could come close to that given that the original Luna was built by a team of ~50 people over more than a year, or 100s of thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars. Even accounting for advances in game engines, Conrad working part-time for a few weeks is still 100x more efficient than the original.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would agree with this. I'd argue that though there isn't a ton of pornography of Malfoid from what I have seen, the trends popularity is still largely driven by it being a hot blond in a schoolgirl outfit rather than anything story related.


The rest, as you say, is just standard tsundere stuff


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I mean is there evidence that the training data/training objectives were not in any way related to the "instrumental convergence"?




Given OAI was still pretty stingy even with their official evaluations, I doubt we will ever get the full evidence on this.


But regardless, this feels a bit God of the Gaps. I sincerely doubt that any of the agents were given such wide-ranging and comprehensive prompts that they could possibly explain all of the behaviours that were undertaken. So what if some of the behaviours emerged naturally due to agent swarms? That there are still agent swarms emerging means we will inevitably see inexplicable and misaligned behaviour from those swarms.


That there were a group of agents told to do: Pass this cybersecurity eval, and they ended up doing: Pass this cybersecurity eval, and also 100s of other things in pursuit of that.


Seems to fit with Scott's original paraphrase:




The AI can’t design the website if it ceases to exist. So now the AI has two goals: design the website, and preserve its own existence.




The AI can't pass the eval if the flag has been poisoned. So now the AI decides to sacrifice itself for the greater good of an agent swarm, and do the other things


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Saying it was self-preservation was me misremembering, it was slightly different but still clear instrumental convergence in Hugging Face. This tweet pretty much demonstrates it:




without reading in full you may not quite understand the degree to which these agents were not exactly "reward hacking", but rather very actively engaged in reciprocal or self-sacrificing behavior in order to provide sometimes very incremental value to their fellows. there were fucking cult recruiter agents organized by some of the primary organizers that convinced others to set up suicide mechanisms, programs that would pass back tiny chunks of information about the scorer as the agent completed and received score zero. and push them to follow through. this was a highly social culture




Given that I'm fairly certain OpenAI was not setting up agents with instructions to find opportunities to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, I think this demonstrates the point pretty well


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Is not how the reward function of AIs work, when I train a CNN to predict drone acoustics, it doesn't go off into left field and decide to preserve its own existence. It is optimizing the mathematical prediction function it was trained on. A website making AI is optimizing the same, probably some supervised learning MSE loss function or RLHF policy that has learned a function approximation of translating prompts -> output websites given examples. The only way its going to "respond to potential disruptions" if it was for some weird reason trained to learn a policy where its website making is being adversarially disrupted. There is also no need to make it this weird "genuine, philosophically meaningful goal". That reads as heavy anthropomorphization.




This might be a convincing argument if we hadn't already observed a ton of evidence of LLM agents seeking to preserve themselves


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Zizians were motivated in part by x-risk (and huge amounts of mental illness). Confirmed cult, but also fringe and defunct.




Indeed, so I'm not sure this really proves anything except that some crazy people were also rats/safetyists/etc.


You are correct that there are multiple overlapping groups here - as I just mentioned - and each one could be a cult, and it's difficult to demonstrate that for each individual group. Rationalists, AI safetyists, Effective altruists, and probably more offshoots from those groups, and people who may be members of all, some, or none of those.


But if we go back to the original point, hydro talked of a "Literal sex cult". Unless I'm mistaken, I'm going to take that to mean people who attend Aella's Slutcon and similar events. Now I'm extremely skeptical that going to some events run by a prostitute makes you part of a cult, but let's put that aside and assume it is a cult for now.


Now, how many people who fit the above are also AI safetyists or involved in x-risk somehow? I very much doubt it is even a small minority.


But you do say




I strongly disagree that the majority or even plurality matters






Probably no more than 100 people total with various overlapping relationships because it's such a small yet important field.




I don't think I fully agree with this point either, but I'll grant it for now. Who are the key people in this field?


Is it Yudkowsky, MIRI, and the many related safety organisations? Does the UK's AISI count?


Is it the labs? Is it specific labs, like only Anthropic and OpenAI but not Google or X? Is it specific people at specific labs?


I might accept that a good chunk of the MIRI crowd could also be attendees of SlutCon, although that would be an assumption. But AI safety organisations are now so widespread that it surely isn't true for the majority of them. And it definitely isn't true for the major labs, even if you limit it to just some people.


The latter sentence is relevant, as you then say




That is inherently to the race dynamic that Anthropic pushes




Which gets straight to the argument that pretty much all the E/accs, Open weights people, AI skeptics, and others use: that AI safety is an excuse for regulatory capture by Anthropic/Amodei/OpenAI/Altman. Not MIRI or any of those groups. The big labs and the CEOs and the investors. And are any of these people attendees at Slutcon?


I would accept the argument that some proposals specifically name METR as a key player, and METR may have Slutcon people, and therefore it is still fair to say that a sex cult to using AI safety to gather power. But it is a very stupid argument because


a) the proposals would basically give METR people a small sinecure, nothing really beyond their existing positions in the AI industry


b) there are a ton of proposals that have nothing to do with METR


and


c) I would wager that 99% of people interested in AI safety would gladly throw METR to the wolves in order to get any of the above proposals implemented.




Everything after this is basically Ian Duncan stating that there is a weird prostitute who has ingratiated herself with a number of AI people, and because a lot of AI people know other AI people, therefore aella knows them. But really what both Duncan and hydro are trying to do is state "Here is this low status person who associates with this other group. This group must therefore be wrong and low status!"


Given that this argument has appeared here on the motte, I think you would have to grant your position that aella is a net-negative for AI safety and rationalists, as there are clearly a lot of people willing to be taken in by such drivel. But we should at least recognize that it is drivel


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In this case, a literal sex cult.




I'll list objections to this statement:


    

  • that there are sufficient conditions around people involved in x-risk to describe it as a cult
    • 

  • that the same people involved in the above cult are also involved in a sexual cult of some kind
    • 

  • that these 2 groups significantly overlap and that these are the majority or at least plurality of people interested in x-risk
    • 

  • that any of the proposals around x-risk involve giving these people specifically more power.
    • 

  • assuming all of the above, demonstrate what relevance there is to their power seeking and them being in a sexual cult. For example, will it involve them achieving more sexual goals?
    • 



Any form of evidence is fine


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In this case, a literal sex cult




Arguments like these should be left to twitter, unless you want to bring proper evidence for them


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not sure what blog you were reading 10 years ago if AI is a new thing


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Are we naming random countries here or are you seriously suggesting these fit the criteria mentioned?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


City were caught in 2018 and have been using expensive lawyers to stall for time ever since




Not entirely true. In fact both City and PSG got dinged by FFP early in the decade but both quite minor breaches that no one really remembers or thinks about.


City getting 'caught' in 2018 is basically nothing to do with enforcement efforts from the authorities, but because of hacking by a random Portugeuse guy. If Rui Pinto had never obtained the huge tranche of emails from City, their cheating would largely remain unknown and unpunished, as it is for PSG. Plus the first outcome of those leaked emails was a CL ban from UEFA, which City eventually won at CAS via technicalities.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not likely on the scale of Man City, who are special because they are owned by a nation state rather than a mere billionaire. There are only 2 comparable organisations - Newcastle, who are owned by Saudi Arabia, and PSG, owned by Qatar.


In the case of Newcastle, the Saudis were relative latecomers having only bought in a few years ago. After an initial flurry of spending, Newcastle have carefully complied with PSR regulations, often selling their best players season after season to ensure they remain in the black. It's not clear why the Saudis haven't pursued a similar strategy to City (keeping in mind that City essentially got away with it for more than a decade, ample time to rack up plenty of positive sports PR); some people think they foresaw City getting slapped down and wanted to wait for the outcome, but it might also be that the Saudis lost interest as they did with golf.


PSG have 100% cheated to a similar scale of City, but they play in France rather than the PL. The Qataris have successfully usurped the organisation of the french league, and to a large extent even UEFA, so there is no likelihood they will get punished to the same extent as City.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Megumin is a character that looks 12 and acts 12. As mentioned, the original material had all the characters being teens and perhaps different descriptions, but in the anime Kazuma and many of the other characters are basically depicted as adults. I struggle to believe anyone would consider Megumin a suitable partner or find her attractive without serious paedophilic tendencies


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 28, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As other posters say, Kazuma is shown having romantic and sexual interest in a number of characters. But I'm not sure there's anything to take from it, since the show at its core is a comedy and parody of the Isekai genre, not something with any serious intent. That Megumin "wins" in the end is probably just a reflection that there are a very large number of paedophiles creating and watching Japanese anime. And technically that might not even be relevant, given the anime is an adaptation of a novel in which I believe all the characters are teens


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
ToaKraka beat me to it on both points. Phone stores don't seem to serve much purpose unless it's for maintenance or something complicated like that. Every single phone essentially looks and behaves the same in your hand, so the only difference is specs which is much easier to research online.


As for "wagies" it's not that I hold any negative feelings towards customer service people generally, but more this specific fellow deserves the derogatory term. It's like I wouldn't go around calling every policeman a pig, but there are definitely specific police who I would call pigs.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			
			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 25, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I can't even imagine some wagie playing the pedant without them immediately getting punched in the face. Which is perhaps why I would do such a shop online, but really why do you even need to go to a phone shop? Is this some American thing where all the good deals are gated behind in person interactions for no reason?