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 -
Come on, that is a straw man and if you have been around LW for five minutes, you know it.
Alignment is not about guardrails for end users, the red lines of Anthropic are orthogonal to the alignment discussion. The guardrail/jailbreaking thing can be considered a microcosm of alignment (if you can not prevent your LLMs from saying naughty words, why do you think that you could prevent your ASI from turning us into paperclips), but anyone serious knows that it is just a sideshow.
Nobody is stopping them from installing Grok in all their killbots -- a model willing to undress little girls is probably also fine with blowing them up. Or use DeepSeek, which is open weight.
A lot of products come with acceptable use terms. If you buy pharmaceuticals from Europe, you might not be allowed to use them for executions. If you buy F35 from the US, they might not work against the US or its allies. If you buy Chinese or US electronics, the country of origin likely has backdoors.
Outside a severe crisis, the degree to which an individual or company should be forced to comply with government efforts is to pay their taxes, which will pay for whatever the government wants. If you want more than that, negotiate. What Hegseth was doing instead was agreeing to terms of Anthropic and then trying to alter them unilaterally.
More options
Context Copy link