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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   18171 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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My stance: It shouldn’t have been a QC

No comment on the rest of your post, but I will comment on this.

First, complaining that a post you didn't like or think was deserving received a QC is one of the most tedious of complaints. QCs are necessarily subjective. Not everything that gets nominated is selected for a QC, I assure you. There are people who automatically AAQC any post that expresses a view they agree with. Even the shittiest boo outgroup hot take will get some AAQCs from certain people, just because it validates their feelings and they love seeing their outgroup get shat on. @naraburns is the one responsible for choosing which nominated posts actually get listed. Obviously that means the list leans towards what he deems to be worthy, but I know he does not just choose posts he likes or agrees with.

You thought a particular QC wasn't interesting enough or didn't really support its argument? Okay. Whatever. That's just, like, your opinion, man.

But more importantly, it inspired you to write this long post in response, which is very much the raison d'etre of the Motte. To get people to test their ideas and receive effortful responses. Now, we've seen the argument before "If a terrible, low effort post provokes a lot of discussion, doesn't that make it a good post?" Well, no, but on the other hand, you complaining that a QC didn't measure up and then writing a long rebuttal to explain why... sort of does make that argument.

I also want to add that your mention of using AI made me raise my eyebrow, because a lot of this text looks kind of like AI generation. I don't think you wrote it entirely with AI, but if you are using AI to "fill out" the volume of your post, then you don't really have any standing to be complaining about the quality of someone else's post.

Thanks for the feedback and also letting me expand more on my points.

  1. In retrospect, maybe yes, the "the comment has flaws in its logic" is the core, and "the comment is not QC worthy" is more of a secondary point. I think I wanted to highlight it though because when it comes to motivation for even writing and participating then the order is flipped. I have had times where I read a comment in this forum and thought "the comment has flaws in its logic" but didn't participate, it's only because the OG comment was marked QC that I thought I should make an effort and make a response. For the future though I would keep in mind that people find such complaint as tedious and not as effective for long-time members of the forum. Maybe it would be my version of "Carthago delenda est".
  2. Funnily enough, the AI even warned me and recommended me to take out mentioning it. It says that mentioning the use of AI would lead to mottizens of mistrusting and more easily dismiss the piece. I elected to still include that point because I wanted to be upfront, sincere, and candid as I believe communication (and in this case, "culture warring") is best when we all try to be truthful to ourselves and to each other. Also, I believe many would have sensed something not quite right about the tone shift from time to time (AI gets flowery and likes to list thing more than I do). So it's better to be honest than leading to some kind of "reveal" later.
  3. I would like to assert a difference between "quality of logic" and "quality of writing". My complaint about the OG comment is about the "quality of logic" (and tbh, the "conclusion") and I definitely had to resort to AI to better my "quality of writing" (grammar, spelling, style, tone, flow, structure, etc.). That's not to say that I didn't ask AI to help me with my "quality of logic", I did, and in more of a "I wrote this, try to find flaws in it" way. I do believe that's a good use of AI and doesn't detract from the value of what I want to say. Bad writing though for sure, but like I mentioned, I didn't want to drag out responding.
  4. It would be unfortunate that others might flag me as "that guy who uses AI" but I do believe my use of AI has been beneficial to me so it's worth it.
  5. I thought of the same point, the fact that the comment dragged a response like this from me meant that I improved my own reasoning and communication. But I do think AAQC are maybe 60-80% popularity based (in a kind of "wisdom of the crowd" way) so the best thing I can do is to add my voice to the choir and let others see and wrestle with the same question I had of whether the OG comment should have been QC.

Well, FWIW, I unfortunately have now flagged you as "that guy who uses AI" and I will skip over your posts without reading them from now on, unless I am required to skim them because you've been reported.

It's one thing to use AI to do grammar checking or even bounce ideas off of. But it's pretty clear you used AI to do large chunks of your writing for you.

Right now our rules about AI usage are sort of fuzzy; someone obviously posting an AI-generated post is going to have that post removed, but it's hard to prove something is AI-generated, and we don't really have a rule about how much AI is too much. You deserve credit for owning it, but you need to know most people don't want to read what an AI thinks, or what an AI writes after you typed what you think into a prompt.

someone obviously posting an AI-generated post is going to have that post removed

Is this not a prime example of such a post?

Debatable. It looks like he wrote or edited some of it himself, and like I told him, we don't really have a rule about how much of your post can be written with AI assistance. Also, since I've already talked to him about it, it seems kind of unfair to go back and delete the post now.

If he keeps doing this, the mods will discuss it and we will likely remove such posts in the future.

Just because smh rationalizes his AI usage with "well I wrote some of it myself" doesn't mean we need to take that excuse from just anyone -- this post is the very definition of AI slop; if you're going to let that slide there might as well be no rule at all. Enjoy your 10k word back-and-forth posts as people point their AIs at each other, I guess.

Monsieur's dissatisfied snapping of fingers is duly noted.

Tres drole -- what actually is the exact rule about AI posting? I forget, but I thought it was theoretically not allowed on grounds of low effort. (other than the "but I was just using it to help me edit" excuse/loophole, which is clearly not true with this guy -- have you been reading his replies?)

As I understand it, a totally AI-generated post is disallowed, but a post portions of which are AI-generated is allowed, and there is not yet an official position on how much of a post has to be AI-generated before it trips the alarm bells (but it's definitely >0% and plausibly >40%).

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