site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27770 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The current buildout is about to run into the wall that is the electrical grid. AI will become unpopular overnight as soon as people realize that the brand new data center down the road is causing their electric bill to go up.

But not if we launch them into orbit ! (I can no longer tell if this is crazy bubble talk or the next logical step after starlink)

Absolutely retarded because you can't cool anything in space.

That's only a problem for the hot fleshy meatbags on the ISS. For a computer, adding some long radiators works great in space. And China is already doing this

You have no idea how basic physics works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

If you can't cool anything in space due to basic physics then why does this claim that the Telescope among other things is cooled by radiating heat?

That's precisely the point. You can only radiate heat which isn't particularly effective compared conduction and convection. This telescope has to be in space for other reasons - it's not in space in order to be cold. Sending compute into space in order to cool it is ludicrous. The guy above seems ignorant of basic concepts and falls for marketing buzzwards which the company's own prospectus disagrees with (they are trying to enable computing in space, not going to space in order to compute. In other words, space is not a welcoming environment for this.)

Edit: Circling back, I believe my interpretation was correct and this other guy doesn't understand basic physics nor that things carry costs. Indeed, resorting to space because you don't trust the grid is hilarious considering how much private grid you could build on Earth instead.

Where did the guy above say that they're sending compute in space to cool it? My impression was that he said they're sending compute in space so it can be independent of Earth's electrical grid. Whether it can be sufficiently cooled by radiation or not is, I think, sufficiently beyond "basic" physics that your borderline-bait response was unwarranted.

"You moron, you absolute retard, the Earth isn't round. It's a geoid."

My thoughts on hearing all this talk about putting compute nodes in space is that they're more likely to be sufficiently cooked by radiation -- the cosmic ray sort, that is. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but I'd guess that a top-line NVIDIA GPU with its as-small-as-modern-technology-can-create transistors is about as far as one can get on the silicon-design spectrum from the concept of "radiation-hard design".

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