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 -
Elon Musk just launched Grokipedia, a kanged version of wikipedia run through a hideous AI sloppification filter. Of course the usual suspects are complaining about political bias and bias about Elon and whatnot, but they totally miss whole point. The entire thing is absolute worthless slop. Now I know that Wikipedia is pozzed by Soros and whatever, but fighting it with worthless gibberish isn't it.
As a way to test it, I wanted to check something that could be easily verifiable with primary sources, without needing actual wikipedia or specialized knowledge, so I figured I could check out the article of a short story. I picked the story "2BR02B" (no endorsement of the story or its themes) because it's extremely short and available online. And just a quick glance at the grokipedia article shows that it hallucinated a massive, enormous dump into the plot summary. Literally every other sentence in there is entirely fabricated, or even totally the opposite of what was written in the story. Now I don't know the exact internal workings of the AI, but it claims to read the references for "fact checking" and it links to the full text of the entire story. Which means that the AI had access to the entire text of the story yet still went full schizo mode anyways.
I chose that article because it was easily verifiable, and I encourage everyone to take a look at the story text and compare it to the AI "summary" to see how bad it is. And I'm no expert but my guess is that most of the articles are similarly schizo crap. And undoubtedly Elon fanboys are going to post screenshots of this shit all over the internet to the detriment of everyone with a brain. No idea what Elon is hoping to accomplish with this but I'm going to call him a huge dum dum for releasing this nonsense.
On the other hand, the admin of the Kiwi Farms says: "This article on the Kiwi Farms is perhaps the best and most neutral article I've seen on the Kiwi Farms." So perhaps more effort was expended on controversial topics.
He's probably mostly happy that the article isn't negative, which the Wikipedia article certainly is.
Notice that he didn't say that it's the most factual article about the farms, and in fact points out several hallucinations off hand. I would go as far to say that while the Wikipedia article is much more biased and negative, it almost certainly has fewer provable falsehoods in it.
Going over the initial blurb, Wikipedia is quite contentious but also hard to debunk:
The only thing to argue about is whether or not it facilitates harassment. Farmers would point out that calling for harassment is banned on site, but on the other hand it's likely a don't ask don't tell sort of situation where many farmers are actually harassing lolcows they just don't say so.
True, whether or not the farms are involved in the harassment. It might be arguable to call lolcows targets but it's not really wrong.
It is true that three lolcows have an heroed but it's impossible to prove whether or not any farmers were involved. It's extremely likely that farmers were involved, they just didn't admit to anything on the site.
"The media very rarely lies."
Incidentally, journalists love this sort of proxy for accuracy, as it is easy apply, but leaves totally aside attempting to determine the intended and actual affect the text has on the reader. One can use lies to tell the truth (a definition of art), or tell the truth to lie (propaganda).
cf.: Lying* like a lawyer, lying like a used car salesman.
Biased propaganda is more truthful than complete fairytale nonsense passed off as truth. I'll take the propaganda every day.
Of course AI is an algorithm and it can't intend anything but does it really matter when it's just plain wrong all the time?
I absolutely, unequivocally would not. I'd take stories of shamble-men when there are bandits or bears over targeted story selection (and novel definitions) about an unbiased algorithm.
One will lead to you avoiding a dangerous forest. The other will lead to you degrading the justice system.
More options
Context Copy link
This is completely wrong. Fairytale nonsense is easier to correct. Lies of """truthful""" but biased propaganda have a stronger effect and correcting them requires attention spans longer than 5 seconds. Claiming AI hallucinations are worse is insane.
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