site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

24
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

...pretty much every example of AI generated text and images I've encountered has struck me as painfully obvious.

Am I really an outlier in my ability to notice that randomly strung together words, even if they are grammatically correct, aren't conveying any meaning?

Yes. You are an outlier. A majority of people are consistently failing the reverse turing test for text and images. Literally everyone will at least have some of their time wasted reading the first couple sentences of AI generated text before realizing something is off. Nobody is immune to info-chaff.

Nobody is immune to info-chaff.

While I'll grant that this is true in the sense that it's always possible to tank the signal to noise ratio by cranking up the noise, I'm not following your reasoning here. What do you think telemarketing calls and internet spam are? and what is it that makes AI generated media different?

Telemarketing and internet spam are so predictable that we generally don't have to process it to ignore it. A script is enough in most cases. AI comments show up where you expect human content. We don't have any automated way to differentiate between AI and human yet, and if we did, AI makers would just use it to become more humanlike.

Also, the less intelligent half of the population falls for telemarketing, internet spam, media manipulation and botting all the time and we all suffer the consequences of this.

Telemarketing and internet spam are so predictable that we generally don't have to process it to ignore it.

Ditto most AI generated media. Which is kind of my point.

Nobody is immune to info-chaff.

The internet is already full of info-chaff (otherwise known as spam) and things are, for the most part, working fine. If AI is going to change that then it needs to do a lot better than fooling people for a couple of sentences. Spammers can already do better than that.