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 -
I wonder if it will remain uneconomic to create these identities of verisimilitude as AI improves. There's nothing fundamentally unfeasible about AIs that can generate a character with a series of quirks, but would they ever be able to generate enough revenue to be broadly deployed?
I sporadically make online comments with indications of personal traits that are entirely fictitious. That's mostly in the hopes of throwing off an oddball who would want to dox me, though (I recognize that this is entirely a layer of inconvenience and not real security).
I did that before, but it got tiring, and I realized that in order to talk about the constellation of things I like no matter how much I say I live in Ohio or whatever if someone really knew me it's like "Oh, this guy rock climbs but not that well, read Tolstoy recently, drives a Chevy Avalanche" how many of those exist?
yeah, it is almost certainly the kind of thing that is only one step ahead of the pack, rather than a permanent truth. It is true at the state of the world as it exists today, but may not be next week or next year and almost certainly not a decade hence. Once AI hits, history will still hold you for a while, you can trust a 2 year old account if the AI came out last week, but at some point it will be impossible.
So I guess the answer to both these questions is that it will only work inasmuch as no one cares enough to fuck with me that hard. It becomes like a lock on your door, it keeps out casual thieves, but if someone really wanted to get into most modern suburban subdivision new builds they could rip the siding off and hammer through the drywall in fifteen minutes.
you can just do these on different accounts and not connect them behaviorally if anonymity is worth it. I use container tabs for that.
What I'm saying is to get deep enough to reliably obscure my identity isn't worth it.
Though I may not be as vulnerable to cancellation as others, so ymmv.
More options
Context Copy link
That gets hard to keep straight, though. And stylometry pierces the veil regardless.
I'm hoping that it won't be long before we have a browser or browser extensions that allow you to store multiple AI personality-login combinations to the same websites and then "translate" whatever you type into the various AI personalities, after which you can pick and choose which ones to log in to actually make posts. So you wouldn't need to keep track of these various fake accounts and personalities yourself.
A world of lies and nothing but lies. I get that anonymity can be valuable, but when we finally reach the stage at which it's just humans interacting with seven layers of proxy AIs and maybe another human at the other end or more likely not, we may as well shut down the human-accessible parts of the internet and go back to our caves to contemplate our navels for a short while before obsolescence kills us all.
Nah, then we give up and go back to shitposting for the hell of it and stop pretending the internet is real life. Your basket weaving club can't be fake AIs if they're right in front of you. Lest we invent Replicants in the meantime or something.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link