site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23868 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

(Trigger warnings: another AI post; Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

I want to talk about the economy in the face of the AI revolution, but let's go back to the basics first.

What is the purpose of a company? Not the stated one, the original one.

To provide value to its shareholders? Of course not, that's a very narrow view! It's like saying armies exist to kill people.

Do companies and markets provide a decentralized way to coordinate the efforts of large groups of people (choreography vs orchestration)? Yes, but what for?

Do companies and markets exist to maximize the economic output? Many would say yes, but the idea is wrong and will become more obviously wrong the more AI we inject into the economy.

Companies and markets exist to maximize the consumption! They exist so that more people consume more goods and services! The fact that these companies have to pay their workers is not an unwanted side effect, it's a feature! Companies exist to create and distribute goods and services to humans, and markets exist to ensure that each human gets a share that is sufficiently fair.

Both the industrial revolution and the transition to a service-based economy created millions, if not billions of new jobs, but is this an inevitable consequence of free markets? Will AI-fication of the modern economy do the same?

The correct answer is not "yes" or "no". It's "mu". If the economy reinvents itself again and people of the Global North find themselves new jobs, that's fine.

But if we suddenly start running out of jobs, accepting it as the inevitability of the market forces is the wrong way out. The right way out is retiring the market forces, not submitting to them. Creating shareholder value has always been the real side effect.

Well, a banker just got himself into hot water for using terms I've seen thrown around freely here and elsewhere regarding high and low value human capital. Mask off moment where AI adoption en masse is going to rip back the curtain as to how our owners really feel about the mass of us peons?

I think AI is going to make things very interesting, because it'll be the lower echelons (at first) of those who like to think of themselves as 'high value' human capital getting replaced. But I think there's no reason - at least in the medium term - why the CEO or group chief executive (as in this case) could find themselves replaced by AI (it can do all the analysis and forecasting and reporting to the board and as for leadership, there are only a few upper managers remaining since the lower levels were all automated out) but the guy doing electrical maintenance at the headquarters keeps his job because he's not currently replaceable by a computer or robot.

Mask off moment where AI adoption en masse is going to rip back the curtain as to how our owners really feel about the mass of us peons?

The mask has been transparent since the change from "Personnel" to "Human Resources".

Before that it was “Manpower” which really doesn’t seem too different to “Human Resources”.

tbh manpower is at least honest.

I feel like "human resources" is even more honest. You have your coal resources, you have your electricity resources, you have your human resources...

So, are we already seeing the AI effect on the white collar jobs, or is it just companies using this excuse to shed excess headcount?

The tech employment sector in Ireland is starting to feel the hit (and we put a lot of our eggs into the basket of "American multinationals investing here and creating employment", moving from pharma to computers/IT, encouraging people to go get those degrees and get a high-paying job in the industry of the future):

For years, Ireland has had a straightforward arrangement with multinational tech giants.

We provide low corporate taxes, an educated English-speaking gateway to the EU, and offer various state grants and support schemes.

In return, the country gets two big benefits. First, thousands of people working in high-paid jobs. Despite only accounting for 3% of all enterprises, multinationals employ about a quarter of the workforce. These staff tend to earn good salaries and pay lots of income tax and USC, helping out with state spending.

Second, multinationals typically shift much of their international profits through Irish corporate entities.

As these profits are so enormous, Ireland’s 12.5% cut adds up to tens of billions each year, which has massively boosted the public finances.

...Meta is of course the reason we’re talking about this. During the week, the company announced plans to cut 350 roles in Ireland. Once the latest round of layoffs is complete, its Irish workforce will be less than half the size it was just a few years ago.

It’s worth noting that this came just after Meta announced profits of $27 billion (€23.29 billion) for the first three months of 2026, up 61% compared to the same period last year.

So why is an enormously profitable business cutting staff? Two main reasons have been put forward. The first is that Meta, like many tech companies, ‘over-hired’ during Covid and this is a kind of natural pruning back.

The second is that Meta is going big on AI and it expects the technology to be able to replace many of its workers.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that AI has enabled projects “that used to require big teams, now being accomplished by a single very talented person”.

This is one of the first major AI-related rounds of job cuts which has impacted Ireland. The fear is that it’s a sign of things to come.

Several other large tech firms with operations in Ireland, such as Cisco and Oracle, are also trimming their workforce amid a shift to AI.

The dreaded 4 a.m. email seems to be how people found out Meta were letting them go:

The termination emails from Meta management landed at 4am.

It may have been early but most workers were probably already awake, waiting to learn their fate.

Of Meta's 1,800 Irish-based staff, around 350 received emails outlining how they were "potentially impacted" by global redundancies.

It was a high number of Irish layoffs, double the 10% cut that was being applied to the worldwide workforce.

The announcement has sparked concern in both business and political circles amid fears that the great AI job displacement is already under way.

My own feeling is that Zuckerberg has not in fact provided reassurance; the way this is worded, it could be "we don't expect" means "but it could still happen" and "not company wide" means "selected areas not everywhere":

Zuckerberg wrote that meta did “not expect other company-wide layoffs this year” – the closest thing to a stability guarantee anyone at the company has heard in months.

…The no-more-layoffs commitment comes with a footnote written by Meta’s own CFO. On the company’s’ Q1 earnings call on April 29, finance chief Susan Li told analysts she doesn’t know what Meta’s ideal headcount looks like anymore. Zuckerberg made the trade-off explicit on the same call. If a team used to need 50 or 100 people and now needs 10, he said, keeping the bigger team around becomes counterproductive.

That isn’t the language of a company that has finished restructuring. Meta is spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on capital expenditure this year – nearly double its 2025 spend – with most of it pouring into data centres, custom chips and model training for Meta Superintelligence Labs. The 8,000 jobs being cut are explicitly meant to offset that bill.

On the other hand, some sources are saying that this isn't in fact the dawn of AI replacing humans, it's companies laying off excess hiring that happened during the pandemic and putting the blame on AI.

So which is it - AI is coming for the formerly "high value human capital" jobs, with Zuckerberg's "We're starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single very talented person," or only the low-level jobs are going, the expert and experienced are safe and people will be redeployed elsewhere (as here) or find new jobs, or it's just reducing excess and trimming the fat, there is no turndown in tech sector employment?

As 8,000 Meta employees were reading their layoff notices on Wednesday, 7,000 others opened a very different email. They had been selected to join a new AI initiative spun up directly by CEO Mark Zuckerberg — and it would be crucial to accelerating Meta's position in the AI race.

Many employees learned they would move into a group called Applied AI (AAI), which Meta created earlier this year, led by engineering vice president Maher Saba and reporting to chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth.

Others were recruited to groups more specifically focused on AI agents. These include a group named "Agent Transformation Accelerator," headed by Bosworth, and a team named "Agent Data and Optimization," according to internal messages shared with Business Insider.

I think we'll have to wait and see, but it will be darkly ironic if people are indeed currently training their machine replacements in the very industry that went all-in on Moar Tech Moar Better, doubly so as the job cuts are to free up funding for the AI push:

Meta is installing new software on its US employees' computers that will track their keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI, and it's sparking backlash within the company, according to internal communications obtained by Business Insider.

Business Insider obtained the full internal announcement about the launch of the new AI training program. The post says that the software helps AI models improve how humans actually use computers, such as using keyboard shortcuts and choosing from dropdown menus.

..."This makes me super uncomfortable. How do we opt out?" was the top-rated comment in response to the internal announcement, according to a post on Meta's internal workplace communications site seen by Business Insider.

...Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth responded in the thread that "there is no option to opt out of this on your work provided laptop."

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats