site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   9224 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 25, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Except that AlexNet was published at NeurIPS

Damn Google's AI overview led me astray. Good old NIPs was the publication. (Yes I know they changed their name to not be a slur). The other two I knew because I read them in undergrad. I could not remember AlexNet's OG home.

you are actively trying to help people come into the clique who want to

We might have different definitions of "actively". Yes they are open, but strictly classifying ML as a very specific thing is not. It still looks to me like gatekeeping a very specific boundary that is not reflective of the wider reality

If you seriously feel that the ML community is gatekeeping, then I invite you to come join the community and propose ways to remove these gates. There are regular workshops hosted to address these issues and improve them. In just 4 days, there will be a workshop on "The Future of Machine Learning Publishing" https://inverseprobability.com/sorrento2026/future-ml-publishing.html.

There are also more-or-less annually workshops at NeurIPS/ICML on improving the publishing process in ML. Here is an (incomplete) ChatGPT generated list:

(2010) : https://mloss-static.ml.tu-berlin.de/workshop/icml10/

(2018) : https://ml-critique-correct.github.io/

(2019) : https://ml-retrospectives.github.io/

(2020) : https://ml-retrospectives.github.io/neurips2020/

(2021) : https://neurips.cc/virtual/2021/workshop/21885

(2022) : https://ml-eval.github.io/

(2023) : https://sites.google.com/view/reconsidering-peer-review

I don't know of any academic communities that are remotely as open and accessible as the NeurIPS/ICML community. The NLP and CV communities have made some progress in these directions (due to the overlap of their members and the ML community), but even other branches of CS are way behind.

Thank you for the invitation, let me see which ones I could attend. Do you know if the Neurips/ICML host a professional society like IEEE or AAAI?

They don't; it's all informal. AAAI is the closest thing and has a lot of overlap. Basically no one is a member if IEEE or ACM.

Can I just insert this is one of the most respectful back-and-forths between ppl disagreeing that I've read in a while here between you and @PokerPirate. And about a field I know nothing about (Statistics I know, but not Machine Learning). A lesson to us all.

I'd like to think its because this is a very niche argument about where the boundary on one field is vs another. It's not really culture war material, its not an existential moral argument. Its pretty much two nerds disagreeing about what constitutes ML research, and and on a meta level, the telos of the modal ML research paper.

This forum has devolved a bit on the civil discourse front when it comes to culture wars, sign of the times I guess.

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