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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This verb implies a movement from a good state to a bad one; the language was previously not shit. Except, the people using LLMs in this way already can't communicate. The original english translation you posted below is incomprehensible. You suggest
but I can't see how anyone would suggest the AI translation is worse than the original. It might screw up some of the meaning, but that comes with the tradeoff of being more readable.
Or are you just using this example to push your point that native speakers are going to degrade the quality of their communication? This seems far more to reinforce the argument that smart users of LLMs will use them to leap forward, while poor users will get left behind. As I write this post I am using the Grammarly add-on; it's a useful spelling and grammar checker. It will also pop up "writing improvements". Almost without exception, these improvements are shit, and they've been shit long before ChatGPT came along. However, it hasn't changed the way I write, because I am capable of judging the quality of its suggestions. Do you think that Grammarly has been degrading the quality of English for years because some users implement everything it says?
It's the same story with translation. 15 years ago, a non-native speaker might go to babelfish.com and pump out something completely useless. 10 years ago, they would have switched to Google translate, and got something better, but still missing a ton of meaning. 5 years ago, DeepL was the standard, but still a long way off human translation. Now it's LLMs. When learning any language, one of the first lessons a student learns is not to blindly trust any machine translation.
Eh, it was comprehensible enough, the most mistranslated part was "reacted really disgusting me" vs what I assume was meant to be "reacted really disgusted with me" - and the true meaning can be error-corrected from context. The AIsloppy editing destroyed more meaning, originality, dare I say soul than the lack of English skills of the author.
More options
Context Copy link
EDIT: Sorry, replied to wrong post.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link