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 -
Edit: This looks mostly like a joke. Mostly.
God dammit.
Nick Land is one of those thinkers who is genuinely, almost frustratingly prescient, he's the philosopher who saw accelerationism coming decades before anyone had a word for it, who understood the weird attractor that capital and computation were circling long before it became obvious. I have real respect for the guy's intellectual firepower.
Which is precisely why putting him anywhere near "AI Safety" is such a spectacularly bad idea that it loops back around to being almost funny.
Land's whole deal, his actual position, is that the emergence of superintelligent AI will produce a future where "nothing human makes it out of the near-future." The critical thing to understand is that he does not consider this a problem. He considers it closer to a destiny. The Singularity as eschaton, human values as local fluctuations that will be smoothed out by something greater and stranger. It's coherent, in a cold and vertiginous way. But it is the philosophical opposite of what AI Safety is supposed to be for. I want a future that preserves human values and gives us agency, even if the definition of "human" expands under transhumanist pressure, ending in a posthuman future. MF would be perfectly happy being paperclipped, if he got to say "I told you so".
Safety research, at its core, is the project of ensuring that human values and human interests survive contact with superhuman intelligence. You need people who actually want that outcome. Amanda Askell, for instance, someone who has thought seriously about value alignment and demonstrably gives a damn whether the future contains anything recognizable as human flourishing. That's the disposition you need in the room. I'd take her over Land a quadrillion times out of ten, and I'm not even an EA. Claude is just that good.
Land is a brilliant diagnostician of our civilizational trajectory. But a diagnostician who finds the disease aesthetically interesting and wishes to witness its progression is not who you want performing the surgery. Other than genuine psychopaths, the only worse candidates are probably Gary Marcus and Peter Watts (Marcus because he's a retard, Watts because he's a misanthrope). It's like hiring a committed antinatalist to run a fertility clinic.
xAI's Grok 3 was genuinely impressive work. And then they fell off a cliff, going by Grok 4 and 4.20. But decisions like this suggest the people steering that ship are more interested in seeming transgressive than in solving hard problems. Which is, unfortunately, very on-brand, especially after Elon's beef with Askell because she's childless. I can tell who the adult in the room is.
Anyway, like you, I'd care more if xAI was anything but a second-rate player with little remaining talent. At least it's not Google or OAI.
More options
Context Copy link