site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25837 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

They're not evaluating GPT-4. They're using 4o.

4o vs gpt4 is my mistake, but gpt4 is generally considered obsolete and nobody uses it. It's true that 4o is a mixed bag and underperforms gpt-4 in some aspects, but we have no reason to believe that it's significantly worse than gpt-4 at translation.

4o is also what powers chatgpt.com so it's the model that most casual users will get the output from.

4o, even at the time of publication, was not the best model available.

4o was released well before gemini 2.0 or claude 3.5, so it likely was the best model at the time, along with the original gpt-4. I agree that right now 4o is not good.

My core contention was that even basic bitch LLMs are good enough

My core contention is that deepl is good enough, as it's within spitting distance of chatgpt. But on the other hand ChatGPT has given people ways to do much much worse when they use it wrong.

The paper seems to have been published on April 2025.

Gemini 2.0 Pro and 3.7 Sonnet came out in February 2025. Claude 3.5 Sonnet came out in June 2024 and was better than the version of 4o out then.

At the very least, the authors should have made a note that they weren't using the SOTA, or that the SOTA would have moved significantly by the time of publication. To do less is mild dishonesty. This isn't 2022, the pace of progress is evident.

4o is also what powers chatgpt.com so it's the model that most casual users will get the output from.

True, but that's OAI being cheap, and not an indictment of the utility of LLMs for translation. It's akin to claiming TVs suck, and then only using a cheap and cheerful $300 model from Walmart as the standard.

My criticisms stand, namely that LLMs only get better, they're "good enough", and that this is a net improvement over the status quo. It remains to be seen how much better the SOTA is over 4o or DeepL.

oh oops, I misread your comment, I thought you said that 4o was not sota when it was released. Yes it was obsolete when the paper came out.

LLMs only get better, they're "good enough", and that this is a net improvement over the status quo.

Won't change the fact that people who use them wrong will still do worse than not using LLM at all.

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