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 -
This whole thread feels like every conversation I've seen about AI.
The really sad thing, to me, is that it doesn't change a thing even if it changes everything; the winners will still spit and step on the losers forever and they'll invent whole new losers if they run out. The underclass correctly intuit that their overlords hate them and would rather they be replaced, as they would prefer to never pay the underclass again. The overlords correctly intuit that the underclass wants what they have and is likely willing to put them into wood chippers to do it.
The previous mechanism was offshoring of physical labor, the new mechanism will route intellectual labor to the data centers. There's a more interesting conversation to be had about how offloading the intellectual labor to machines makes everyone collectively dumber, but that conversation might be even more fraught. Thinking is hard, learning is harder.
I think this is a bad framing. We ought all want AI to go well. It has the potential to end toil, cure disease and bring about incredible abundance. I am no overlord, but I have loved ones I've watched die to cancer, I spend a significant amount of my life in an office do work I'd rather not do. The benefit I care about is to me and everyone else. This us vs them framing is the problem. Yes, we need to implement some policy to make sure we have a solution to keep the economy going and the people having buying power if work is alleviated and that will necessarily include taking things from the entrenched owners of things, whether it be the labs or other legal owners of things. But the lab leaders aren't even opposing this. They've written long posts, raised the alarm and spoken at length about how we need to do this. There doesn't need to be some knock out fight at all.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link