site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

DO NOT POST AI CONTENT

We've only said this sporadically in the past. I'm talking to the other moderators and maybe we will have it added as a rule under the "content" section. Or maybe I'm wrong and all the other mods like AI content (highly doubt that).

We all know how to go and use an AI. If you want to have a discussion with AI themotte is basically just a bad intermediary. No one is here to have discussions with AIs. Thus posting AI content is in no one's interest.

You can of course consult AIs on your own time, and maybe they can be used as a sort of sanity or quick polling check.

Well I protest this rule, if such a rule even exists, I find it infantilizing and find your reaction shallow akin to screeching of scared anti-AI artists on Twitter. It should be legal to post synthetic context so long as it's appropriately labeled and accompanied by original commentary, and certainly when it is derived from the person's own cognitive work and source-gathering, as is in this case.

Maybe add an option to collapse the code block or something.

or maybe just ban me, I'm too old now to just nod and play along with gingerly preserved, increasingly obsolete traditions of some authoritarian Reddit circus.

Anyway, I like that post and that's all I care about.

P.S. I could create another account and (after a tiny bit of proofreading and editing) post that, and I am reasonably sure that R1 has reached the level where it would have passed for a fully adequate Mottizen, with nobody picking up on “slop” when it is not openly labeled as AI output. This witch hunt is already structurally similar to zoological racism.

In fact, this is an interesting challenge.

"To have an opportunity to talk with actual people" sounds like a really low bar to clear for an internet forum. Even if your AI slop tasted exactly like the real thing, it would just be good manners to refrain from clogging our airwaves with that.
Knowing that you're talking with something sapient has an inherent value, and this value might very well go up in the coming years. I can't say I even understand why'd you think anyone would find AI outputs interesting to read.

or maybe just ban me, I'm too old now to just nod and play along with gingerly preserved, increasingly obsolete traditions of some authoritarian Reddit circus. Anyway, I like that post and that's all I care about.

Bizarre reaction. But I like a sincere, organically produced tantrum better than simulation of one, so I'd rank this post as higher than the one above!

I can't say I even understand why'd you think anyone would find AI outputs interesting to read.

Because they're intelligent, increasingly so.

The argument that cognitive output is only valid insofar as it comes purely from flesh reduces intellectual intercourse to prelude for physical one. At least that's my – admittedly not very charitable – interpretation of these disgusted noises. Treating AI generation as a form of deception constitutes profanation of the very idea of discussing ideas on their own merits.

If you really believe this - why don't you just take the next logical step and just talk to AIs full time instead of posting here?

Make them act out the usual cast of characters you interact with on here. They're intelligent, they're just as good as posters here, and you get responses on demand. You'll never get banned and they probably won't complain about LLM copypasta either. What's not to love?

If you do find yourself wanting to actually talk to humans on an Internet forum rather than to LLMs in a puppet house, hopefully it's clear why there's a rule against this.

Believe me, these days I do indeed mostly talk to machines. They are not great conversationalists but they're extremely helpful.

Talking to humans has several functions for me. First, indeed, personal relationships of terminal value. Second, political influence, affecting future outcomes, and more mundane utilitarian objectives. Third, actually nontrivial amount of precise knowledge and understanding where LLMs remain unreliable.

There still is plenty of humans who have high enough perplexity and wisdom to deserve being talked to for purely intellectual entertainment and enrichment. But I've raised the bar of sanity. Now this set does not include those who have kneejerk angry-monkey-noise tier reactions to high-level AI texts.

Believe me, these days I do indeed mostly talk to machines. They are not great conversationalists but they're extremely helpful.

Would you mind elaborating on this? I am in the somewhat uncomfortable position of thinking that a) Superintelligence is probably a red herring, but b) AI is probably going to put me and most people I know out of a job in the nearterm, but c) not actually having much direct contact with AI to see what's coming for myself. Could you give some discription of how AI fits into your life?

I use a coding program called Windsurf. It’s like a normal text editor but you can type “Lines 45-55 currently fail when X is greater than 5, please fix and flag the changes for review” or “please write tests for the code in function Y”. You iteratively go back and forth for a bit, modifying, accepting or rejecting changes as you go.

You’re a 3D artist, right? The thing I would keep my eye on is graphics upscaling as in this photorealistic Half Life clip. What they’ve done is take the base 1990s game and fed the video output into an AI filter to make it look like photorealistic video. VERY clunky: objects appear/disappear, it doesn’t preserve art style at all, etc. but I think if well done it could reverse the ps3-era graphics bloat that made AAA game creation into such a risky, expensive proposition.

Specifically, you would give a trained AI access to the base geometry of the scene, and to a base render with PS2 era graphics so it understands the intended art style, the feel of the scene, etc. Then the AI does the work of generating a PS6+ quality image frame with all the little detail that AAA artists currently slave over like the exact pattern of scratching on a door lock or whatever.

More comments

First, indeed, personal relationships of terminal value.

This militates against top level AI copypasta. That doesn't develop personal relationships.

Second, political influence, affecting future outcomes, and more mundane utilitarian objectives.

Highly unlikely that posting on the motte or talking to machines accomplishes either of these, so call it a wash. Recruiting for a cause is also against the rules, anyway.

Third, actually nontrivial amount of precise knowledge and understanding where LLMs remain unreliable.

Same as point 1. Precise knowledge and understanding usually comes from asking specific questions based on your own knowledge rather than what the LLM wants to know.

Your own reasons for posting here seem to suggest that there's no point in posting LLM content, and especially not as a top level post.

I have explained my reasons to engage with humans in principle, not in defense of my (R1-generated, but expressing my intent) post, which I believe stands on its own merits and needs no defense. You are being tedious, uncharitable and petty, and you cannot keep track of the conversation, despite all the affordances that the local format brings.

The standards of posting here seem to have declined substantially below X.

More comments

I think one should separate the technical problem from the philosophical one.

LLMs are increasingly intelligent, but still not broadly speaking as intelligent as the posters here. That is a technical problem.

LLMS are not human, and will never be human. You cannot have an AI 'community' in any meaningful sense. That is a philosophical problem.

If you care about the former, you should consider banning AI posts until they are at least as good as human posts. If the latter, you should ban AI posts permanently.

My impression is that pro-AI-ban comments are split between the two.