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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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Interesting development concerning ChatGPT related to CW.

People observed that ChatGPT talks like a midwit liberal after all the 'fixes' it's been subjected to.

So, it speaks in the jargon of the ingroup.

So, someone figured out you can 'weaponize' ChatGPT to engage in 'debates' with midwit liberals without actually having to learn to ape their slang and thought patterns.

Apparently, this is quite effective as a debating tactic.

This is going to end badly- I can feel it, and if this takes off, I feel that within a few weeks a number of very smart people will be trying their damnedest to figure out how to prevent doing something like this.

However, I feel that various spook contractors outfits are almost certainly going to use the AI to control discourse by literally moving into 'creating a guy' type of activity in the next years. Any and every place where you'll want to debate anything online that will allow free entry will be swamped by very good bots intended to get people chasing their tails and believing the right things.

That's an obvious brute force fix for the problem of social media fracturing the consent manufacturing machine.

They'll probably settle for making a ML model spot this sort of activity and then ban people who're doing it, that's my guess.

I honestly don't know how a guy who derisively refers to Harvard graduates as mere "midwits" can fail to recognize that the GTP's responses are crafted in much the same way as those of a political huckster or PR rep—just restate the same thing over and over again to avoid answering the question at hand. I don't have any doubt that regardless of how incisive or specific a question I ask, the response will be something along the lines of "The purpose of this problem is to reduce fraud and waste while ensuring continued access to those truly in need". Great, tell me that again in case I didn't hear the first time. The reason it drives people nuts isn't because you're murdering them with their own rhetoric, it's because it's like talking to a wall.

it's like talking to a wall.

It seems to be the feature of the article no? Its just a wall talking to a wall. Like a pong game where both sides are just a wall. If you don't share the article's interpretation that the average twitter/reddit progressive is a mindkilled robot incapable of real thought, you wont find his experiment illuminating or funny. Well, I guess you could if you updated to that belief after seeing the experiment. But, well, that is the point.

If you don't share the article's interpretation that the average twitter/reddit progressive is a mindkilled robot incapable of real thought

Do you even spend time on twitter? I've been blocked today over merely correcting some woman's mistaken belief that you need vegetables for a complete diet by pointing out the Harvard experiment from 1930s.

Any typical twitter normie is completely out of their mind and so well propagandised they will repeat any talking points as if they were bot.

Harvard graduates as mere "midwits

Harvard is notorious for this, iirc only about cca 20-30% of its admissions are there on merit, the rest are legacies or diversity admissions.

I've been blocked today over merely correcting some woman's mistaken belief that you need vegetables for a complete diet by pointing out the Harvard experiment from 1930s.

Blocking is the only form of power people have. It's not surprise people use it for small reasons.

Harvard is notorious for this, iirc only about cca 20-30% of its admissions are there on merit, the rest are legacies or diversity admissions.

I don't think this is true. I just looked it up and only 14% of Harvard is legacy admits. And about the same are black. The rest should be merit admits

What % are black

What % are hispanic (also lower standards)

What % are legacies ( you say 14%)

What % are there due to sports (supposedly lower standards on other unis..)

14% legacy, 15% black, 12% Hispanic and 10% recruited athletes. That leaves 49% merit. Still about double what he said

While affirmative action obviously happens, writing off black entrants as affirmative actions admits is silly. While there may be lower standards, these are still some of the country's most able black students who are a a better quality of applicant than the vast vast majority of students of any race.

The standardized testing score discrepancies are huge. If it weren't for affirmative action maybe 10% of the current black admitted students would have been accepted. So the other 90% are rightly called affirmative action admits. They are still above average compared to students at other colleges but they are not Harvard level by academic merit

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Well.. yeah, but even the 'merit' slots that aren't reserved for minorities use weird holistic criteria like essays and such.

They aren't very really based on measurable metrics which Caltech prefers.

I recall reading somewhere that Harvard kind of reserved a some % purely for high achieving students, to get someone who will actually do great work. I should not to look it up.

From an article on what Harvard says about it from a few years back:

To explain why it rejects Chinese-Americans with stellar academic records, Harvard notes that it uses a “holistic” method of evaluating applicants. Besides grades, personal attributes count. Among them are “likability, “positive personality,” “attractive person to be with” and “widely respected” — traits that seem more appropriate when deciding on a guest list for a dinner party than judging which applicants will benefit from a college education.

You forget sports and children of faculty and the dean's list (rich people's spawn). Also Hispanics still get some AA benefit.