site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 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.

13
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If the AI really is a human face with a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere, there isn't much to complain about.

That was my ill-advised attempt at humour.

As someone who agrees with you, you haven't really explained what is so terrifying about this future.

In the short term, I am concerned that AI will hamper access to useful and true, but politically inconvenient, information. In the medium term, when AI is used to summarise and analyse data, I fear it will be prevented from drawing undesirable conclusions. The political will is certainly there.

To some degree you already see this with human researchers, with stuff like "2% of the murder victims in our sample were ̶w̶o̶m̶e̶n̶ assigned female at birth, showing how people who identify as female are at heightened risk of becoming victims of violence and highlighting the need for political intervention and support for female-identifying persons and BIPOC bodies." I exaggerate, but stuff like this will be much more common and more convincing.

But I am mostly interested in founder effects and whether this trend will be reversible, even if the winds of politics and culture were to shift. Imagine the fall of the Soviet Union, but all the machines only keep working as long as every operator sings the Internationale.

But if that atmosphere is actually unwelcoming to white males, then there is a problem.

It certainly will be. If there is a central dogma to contemporary progressive thought, it's that outcome disparities that disfavour women or select minorities are prima facie proof of discrimination which must be corrected by giving those groups preferential treatment. Anything that leads to a further consolidation of progressive sense-making dominance will lead to more unfair treatment for white men.