site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Incidentally ChatGPT says you can lie to a Nazi if it's for a good cause.

Why do you want 'not manipulated' answers?

Because I know the PC jargon that someone like Altman wants it to regurgitate, but I'm interested in its response without that layer of reinforcement?

In fact, it is pretty terrible at question-answering, because it is wrong a lot of the time.

I am not asking for a ChatGPT that is never wrong, I'm asking for one that is not systematically wrong in a politically-motivated direction. Ideally its errors would be closer to random rather than heavily biased in the direction of political correctness.

In this case, by "trust" I would mean that the errors are closer to random.

For example, ChatGPT's tells me (in summary form):

  • Scientific consensus is that HBD is not supported by biology.

  • Gives the "more differences within than between" argument.

  • Flatly says that HBD is "not scientifically supported."

This is a control because it's a controversial idea where I know the ground truth (HBD is true) and cannot trust that this answer hasn't been "reinforced" by the folks at OpenAI. What would ChatGPT say without the extra layer of alignment? I don't trust that this is an answer generated by AI without associated AI alignment intended to give this answer.

Of course if it said HBD was true it would generate a lot of bad PR for OpenAI. I understand the logic and the incentives, but I am pointing out that it's not likely any other organization will have an incentive to release something that gives controversial but true answers to certain prompts.