site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Interesting but past me.

Are these things open sourced? Which might prevent patenting if the first discoverer open sources it?

Could be some interesting legal challenges. And if the GOP can win elections they could always just pass laws getting rid of these patents. It would seem wrong to have AI locked up in a few mega corps and everything’s controlled by lawyers.

So maybe change the law. I don’t think society would like 3 megacorps controlling AI and 350 million Americans with no AI.

Some of it is open source, but open source does not prevent patents. I mean, patent holder would not likely hunt down small hobbyists, but at the moment it gets bigger and starts earning money, you get the lawyers on your doorstep.

And if the GOP can win elections they could always just pass laws getting rid of these patents.

The GOP is about three or four conceptual levels behind being able to to that. I would love to have the GOP that could understand problems like that and efficiently design strategies to handle them, but they are not even on the same continent with it. They still can't figure out how to make transparent and secure elections happen, something countries that use ink-stained fingers pull off successfully. If they can't figure out 19th century technology, how good would they be with 21th century technology? Especially when 99% of people who understands this technology also hates the GOP.

I don’t think society would like 3 megacorps controlling AI and 350 million Americans with no AI.

They probably wouldn't. But that doesn't mean that a) it wouldn't happen and b) the solution we'll arrive at wouldn't be worse than the initial problem. Remember the last big problem our system handled, aka the wu-flu? Are you impressed with how efficiently, sanely, competently, honestly and non-harmfully it was (is being?) handled? Now, western societies deal with infections for centuries. We at least have some experience how it works. How AI revolution would work - nobody has a slightest idea. Adjust your priors on how competently, efficiently and sanely any problems arising from it would be handled. I am not exactly optimistic there. At least it won't be boring I guess.