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 -
Yeah, actually predicting live humans is a whole another ballgame. It's a very important question if you're looking for something like digital uploads of live humans, but matters much less for the job replacement question with AIs. What matters for the human replacement question is being able to do economically valuable actions skillfully and purposefully. Many different people can learn to do these. If you need to run a waste disposal plant effectively, you don't specifically need John Smith from Glendale, Arizona to do it. If it's a managerial position, you don't need a person physically present even. The manager needs to have the ability, intent, and awareness to perform their job, but from there on they can then pretty much do it by closely monitoring how things are going and sending emails, and it's a job any reasonably intelligent adult human can learn to do in time.
The economic human replacement question isn't about humans being exchanged with drop-in androids who look indistinguishable from live humans. It's about possibly quite non-human AIs being nevertheless able to learn and do economically valued work cheaper and better than humans, and what humans will do now. Used to be that humans would learn some new job and do that when specific machines automated the old one, but if it's general-purpose AIs replacing jobs instead of special-purpose machines, with any new job you have the question of why not have AIs learn that job as well and start doing it cheaper and better than humans.
More options
Context Copy link