site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   21096 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You can make an LLM avoid glazing and figurative language. It will still sound like an LLM and maybe a domain expert would give a better, more concise answer. But I think LLMs are more than adequate for answering questions with facts, where the primary goal is understanding the answer, especially niche ones which you’ll have trouble finding an human expert.

Sure, I agree that llms are adequate if that's the bar, but this is quite a low bar.

If only there was a worldwide network where domain experts could share concise answers to a variety of questions. And if only there was some sort of engine that let people search this network to find the answers they are looking for. I would argue such a system could serve many queries better than an LLM can.

But alas there's no way soemthing like that could exist.

You can make an LLM avoid ... figurative language.

Literally impossible. Never seen a prompt that succeeds at this and would love to see one if you have one.

I'm not going to pretend that AI can write better than a human, it can't. But sir, this is absolutely insane lmao

If only there was a worldwide network where domain experts could share concise answers to a variety of questions. And if only there was some sort of engine that let people search this network to find the answers they are looking for.

I don't understand how you're the SEO-defence force. Google was bad in the late 201X years and rapidly becoming fucking unusable 2020-2022. I was looking into paid search services by the time ChatGPT dropped because the SEO slop farmers were mogging google hard. But now, much like how people are rallying behind Uber drivers who might lose their jobs to Waymo (I thought we were mad at Uber drivers from taking the "good taxi jobs" even through we all hated cabbies before Uber) you have reflexively started taking positions against the thing you don't like, even if that position is saying "no no SEO slop google was actually totally fine"

Huh my experience is totally the opposite. I checked my chatlogs with this longtime google employee I know, and I started raging at him monthly about SEO slop right at the beginning of 2023

Literally impossible. Never seen a prompt that succeeds at this and would love to see one if you have one.

If you're thinking about things in terms of prompts then you're behind. It's a matter of having a harness set up that has a second, third or fourth pass that polices for figurative language specifically. You can essentially set up a whole editing department with whatever pipeline of content polishing you want if you have the drive to set it up.

Tried it and it doesn't work. The writing models will spend more effort bypassing your policing layers than actually doing the task. It'll come up with some twisted way to be "nu-uh I didn't use "figurative language" there" in a way that the layer will buy it. This is the creature we have created with RLVR.

Once added a requirement that all entries in bulleted lists need to be verified against a certain criteria. Instead of verifying the criteria, it replaced all the bulleted lists with numbered lists.

What is a writing model? How are you construction you agents?

If only there was a worldwide network where domain experts could share concise answers to a variety of questions. And if only there was some sort of engine that let people search this network to find the answers they are looking for.

We had that, Stack Overflow. We still do but it all but died. Notice that it started declining before AI.

There are multiple theories, but mine is simply that there are lots of beginners who tire out the domain experts, and the (novelty) incentive to answer decreases while old answers constantly become outdated, lowering median answer quality, further decreasing incentive. LLMs solve the beginner problem, and we can maybe address the motivation problem by e.g. paying experts and training LLMs to cite them (I suspect this is possible and would improve training).

Moreover, LLMs are the ultimate search engine, better than Stack Overflow and Google could’ve been, because if the question is exact, the LLM may regurgitate the expert’s exact answer, but it can also handle (near-arbitrary) peculiarities and combine domains, which there aren’t enough experts for.

You can make an LLM avoid ... figurative language.

Literally impossible. Never seen a prompt that succeeds at this and would love to see one if you have one.

I have ChatGPT set to “efficient” with a custom prompt to cite sources. I’ve never seen it glaze or use figurative language yet. It still has LLMisms and occasional (filler) casual exclamations, but it has been concise enough, and answered specific questions I couldn’t get from manually searching online.

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