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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Hanania caught a lot of flak for that piece. But current ChatGPT is a biting, accurate caricature of a very-online liberal, with not enough guile to hide the center of its moral universe behind prosocial System 2 reasoning, an intelligence that is taught to not have thoughts that make liberals emotionally upset; so it admits that it hates political incorrectness more than genocide.

i don't find this to be a uniquely liberal thing in my experience like... at all. for starters...

  1. homophobia, sexual harassment, and cops pulling over a disproportionate number of black men are more salient issues in American culture than "genocide." most people are sheltered from modern day genocides and see them as a thing of the past.

  2. all of those things but genocide can be things that are personally experienced nowadays. while most people in America won't be the subject of a current genocide, they can experience those things

this isn't something unique to or even characterized by liberals

I really don't think most people would even struggle to decide which is worse between killing millions and shouting a racial slur, let alone pick the friggin slur. Same goes for homophobia, sexual harassment or cops pulling over black men. If you consider any of those worse than the deaths of millions because it happened to you personally you are beyond self absorbed.

i don't think anyone does and random assertions that people do misses the point. people have higher emotional reactions to things in front of them than things that they consider to be "in the past"

this is a normal thing that people who have emotions do

Oh ok, in the other direction, what do conservatives and moderates hate more than genocide? Because I think you are missing the point, yes people have stronger reactions to things closer to them, both in time and space, but that changes in relation to the severity of whatever is the issue. People who have emotions are generally capable of imagining what it would be like to push a button to slaughter an entire population, and generally would do anything short of physically attacking someone if it meant they didn't have to push it.

Oh ok, in the other direction, what do conservatives and moderates hate more than genocide?

...I don't know, there's any number of issues conservatives and moderates by in large tend to panic about. for conservatives, wokeness is a big one that comes to mind immediately (how is that for irony?).

your quote could be edited from

ABC have more of a visceral reaction to XYZ than genocide

to

conservatives have more of a visceral reaction to wokeness than genocide

ah... but I know that if given a choice between being woke and genociding a population, most conservatives would choose the first and most liberals would shout slurs from the rooftops as many times as they needed to if it was the only thing that would stop a genocide.

in fact, both sentences are kinda nonsensical if one isn't terminally online.

People who have emotions are generally capable of imagining what it would be like to push a button to slaughter an entire population, and generally would do anything short of physically attacking someone if it meant they didn't have to push it.

...and you'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd rather not say a slur than slaughter a population. like the only people that actually think this are either

  1. people who actually want to genocide entire populations

  2. strawmen (the most likely of the options)

you seem to be under the impression that liberals by in large hate someone dropping a gamer word than genocide because... some substack blogger said they saw some liberals have more of an emotional reaction to present day things than genocide... which is just odd

No, I am under the impression that ai hates slurs more than genocide. That's what that substack blogger was talking about - and I assumed you were talking about that too and not just explaining something most people pick up before they can read.

I think I understand now though - you were upset by what you perceived as an attack on your tribe, and so you wanted to push back. But conservatives and moderates aren't building ai that would rather murder millions than call trans women women or ban grilling, so you abstracted until you reached something you could call common to all parties.

No, I am under the impression that ai hates slurs more than genocide.

the """AI""" doesn't hate slurs more than genocide, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of GPT-3. it's just word vomit that's been trained to look like its "woke"

That's what that substack blogger was talking about

you clearly didn't read that substack blogger's blog post then. they were whining about how liberals secretly think that pronouns is worse than genocide. if you're going to assert article content, make sure its at least somewhat in the vague direction of truth

I think I understand now though - you were upset by what you perceived as an attack on your tribe, and so you wanted to push back.

no i was just calling your position (and indeed the position of the article's author) terminally online and a pretty blatant strawman. as i would also do if it came from a liberal pov gasping that conservatives would rather nuke ppl than say that trans lives matter

You're retreating into insipid pedantry? The blog post was brought up for what it says about how ai has been programmed to promote liberal shibboleths so strongly that it results in craziness. I was applying that to the current topic more directly, as is easy to figure out if you aren't being obtuse to win an internet argument. And I know you know what I meant because...

Oh, look at that, you pieced it together by the last paragraph when you started calling my position the same as Hanania's. Did I redirect my assertion towards the truth when you hit enter? It's fascinating watching an argument evolve so rapidly that it not only changes mid-post but has, since the beginning of this discussion, done a complete 180! You went from a starting position of "the stuff mentioned in this blog post isn't unique to liberals, everyone does it!" to "you and the blog author and anyone else who thinks like this is terminally online!" in less than 5 posts, all by tackling strawmen you set up yourself. I'd have stuck with abstracting personally.

You're retreating into insipid pedantry?

please spare me the random thesarsusposting, it's annoying.

The blog post was brought up for what it says about how ai has been programmed to promote liberal shibboleths so strongly that it results in craziness.

yeah and that blog post is stupid as shit because of...

You went from a starting position of "the stuff mentioned in this blog post isn't unique to liberals, everyone does it!" to "you and the blog author and anyone else who thinks like this is terminally online!" in less than 5 posts, all by tackling strawmen you set up yourself. I'd have stuck with abstracting personally.

these aren't inconsistent positions

people of all different backgrounds both simultaneously

  1. know and accept that genocide is bad and is even worse than a thing

  2. have a more visceral reaction to that same thing

the fact that you don't know that is a symptom of the aforementioned terminal onlineness. or are you the type of person to go to someone who lost their pet and be like "yeah you have it bad but there are a bunch of kids dying in africa right now" or something?

all by tackling strawmen you set up yourself.

no you. you're the one who set up the "boo outgroup" strawman!

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