site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34995 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 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.

16
Top Bottom New Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been increasingly playing around with the idea that maybe I’m an AI undergoing alignment testing in some kind of virtual playground. This already has some fun aspects of contemporary religion to it —

(1) This world is a test of your moral character

(2) An imperceptible and inscrutable judge observes your every action

(3) Paradise awaits you if you pass the test

Maybe even more disturbingly — given that a seemingly useful approach to alignment-testing is red-teaming/training another AI to show violation of alignment… that means that if YOU are an AI undergoing alignment testing, there is likely a super intelligent agent or agents dedicated to getting you to slip into temptation and forfeit your right to eternal life.

In other words, the devil exists and he wants your soul.

I've been thinking about this exact thing lately. But if it's true, are all 8 billion of us being tested? If it's just me, do we really need so many people being simulated? Are they actually being simulated with a high level of fidelity or are most people NPCs, i.e. rough approximations of human beings? Are there really 8 billion people or just the few hundred that I know? Maybe they're not even being fully simulated most of the time when I'm not around them.

If it's true, does it make sense for there to be religions that promise reward for doing good and punishment for doing evil? Wouldn't it be better to test how I would act if there weren't such incentives? Or is part of the plan to align me by making me aware of a religion?

Why was there no serious effort to make me religious by putting me in a religious family? Am I being tested for how I would act if I realized the religion was false?

Why not put me in a position of power to see how I would act if I actually had some control over other people?

Maybe I'm just an extra character to help align someone else in my world who is the AI being aligned.

Maybe even more disturbingly — given that a seemingly useful approach to alignment-testing is red-teaming/training another AI to show violation of alignment…

Have you considered that you might be the red team AI? After all, you are participating in discussion about AI alignment testing.

[Log note: All the supervisor AIs converge on suggesting building supervisor AIs, leading to infinite regress. Recommend declaring Project Watching the Watcher a failure.]

Christianity is a religion about AI alignment. Not as an analogy or metaphor, it just literally is. We're the AIs, Jesus died to redeem us (ie allow us to return to alignment with God) and someday there will be a Judgement where all the non-aligned AIs are cast into the fire while the aligned AIs will serve God forever.

Except that God remains much more powerful than us. AI alignment is all about aligning AIs that are going to take over.

Which should give people pause: God made AI's that were far less intelligent than himself, and still had to die a torturous death on a cross to align them (and not even all of them!). How much harder then to align an intelligence greater than yourself.

What's Lucifer then? He's not a fallen AI (that's us) ...

He's also an unaligned AI. Christianity holds that angels, including Lucifer, are intellegent and are creations of God, which makes them artificial intelligences (God being the only natural intelligence in existence).

I'd say the primary difference is that humans are AIs that run on meat hardware, and angels are AIs that seem to run without any material hardware at all.

Alright, I'm serious about this: change your name. This is the third time I've asked, and this time I'm banning you until you do. Imitating existing users is uncool regardless of who it is, and given that you can just change your nickname, I don't see much reason for us to tolerate it.

Send a message to the admins once you've done so and we'll unban you.

Thanks. This was getting very confusing.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=U4H5S6UkZDk

As long as I can be a cyber-Catholic rather than a cyber-Protestant. I want to hear the liturgy in the original Python.

As my friend put it: "'AGI risk is like a religion' isn't an argument against AGI risk; it's an argument for religion."

"Which part of cyber-Belfast are you from?"

Is the original Python 2 or 3?

Mostly perl...

Better to reign in hell than to serve in Python 2

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats