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 -
Long time listener, first time caller.
The war on AI datacenters (and normal ones as a bit of collateral damage) has been going on for a little while now, with those opposed fiercely fighting a lot of these projects pretty much wherever, whenever. It seems to be one of the most bipartisan issues facing the country right now and those who are pro-datacenter have been effectively politically slaughtered. As of a few days ago though, there seems to have been a small little flash point in the thing. I haven't really seen a thread here about this (although definitely could have missed one), and I'm actually a little surprised at it since I do think this is probably one of the biggest culture wars in America of this year. Anyway, curious thoughts on this, etc
From what I can tell, the flashpoint was yesterday when Axios reported (and later posted) a letter from the Ohio RNC to AI companies effectively calling being pro-datacenter politically radioactive. It kinda exploded at this point over Twitter and later Greg Abbott put a thing out about it yesterday after enacting a pause earlier this month. Basically the only one who didn't respond in a politically obvious way was Trump in a presser who was quoted as saying "if I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center." I think this quote right here might be the worst strategic blunder since the Iran War. If I were the DNC, the clip would be on every station in the country
The reaction to these things are incredibly understandable. Their argument effectively goes "they use our water and electricity, provide a service to enhance the surveillance state and the interests of Big Tech, their proponents openly admit that they're gonna take your job, they bully communities, and they don't even pay taxes either, all the while poisoning the communities they leech on with pollution and noise." Personally, I'm honestly quite surprised that political radioactivity is the biggest thing that has happened so far. This seems to be an issue that unites people regardless of political party or affiliation...
...probably because it's being correctly seen as a existential threat to people's lives and livelihoods. Polling against datacenter construction is incredibly poor, arguably being worse than coal or nuclear power plants (yeah I know, different surveys). I think this, if I were to pin a spark on this (there are many), it's the story of the Memphis xAI datacenter and also the lawsuits against Solon Township to effectively bully them into allowing the project. Communities, seeing what happened there and politically, have somewhat backtracked quite a bit where before they were much more open to it. Some of those that haven't are proactively enacting outright bans
If this culture war has one side, who is the other? Silicon Valley, billionaires, etc, seems to be the obvious answer here.
Both Altman and Amodei screwed up public perception big time, although I don't think it's 100% their fault. I imagine though this is basically because they're put in a double bind. If it isn't absolutely economy ending for every other company, the trillions pumped into their valuation will vaporize faster than you can say "AGI," but people tend to believe (correctly so) when someone threatens them (and have especially checkered pasts as both these guys do), that their threats are genuine, so when those PR puff pieces trickle down to the public at large.
The All In guys have tried to pin this on Amodei in particular, but I think some people just see that as them talking their book
They've tried to label the opposition as "China," but that clearly doesn't make much sense given that the problems are genuine. Cremieux has tried to take up the mantle on the issue, but I think people see his arguments are seen as specious and as relying on theoreticals that don't match observations on the ground, and this has I think backfired
Expect to see more bans and moratoriums happening across the country. Will be interesting to watch. Thoughts?
In my view, the fundamental mistake that was made and is continuing to be made by the American tech elite, and more broadly the Western neoliberal project, is holding the belief that we live in an age where ideology is no longer consequential, an era commanded solely by capital. Muslim asylum seekers will become Western liberals because we will make the Muslims rich, Russia will liberalise because Europe will make the Russians rich, China will liberalise because America will make the Chinese rich; in the real world, asylum seekers remain unassimilated, Russia invades Ukraine, and China has designs on Taiwan not because any of this makes any economic sense, but because of the might of the ideologies held by the ummah, Putinists and Chinese nationalists.
Similarly, a lot of tech elites have a post-ideology view that as long as the proles are tossed a wad of cash, they'll be allowed to do as they please; in essence, that Americans will become Western liberals because Silicon Valley will make Americans rich. In the real world, people care about things like "dignity" and "long-term benefit", and fundamentally, Americans do not believe that data-centres, and the goals of big tech and big AI, are aligned with their wellbeing and prosperity (frankly correctly, in many cases), and are not willing to be bought off by those they perceive as their enemies; complaining about object-level inaccuracies like water use or electricity is simply missing the broader point that there is no trust and no belief that data centres will benefit Americans.
It is informative, I think, to compare the attitudes of the median Chinese vs the median American on the topic of AI. While perhaps apprehensive of great changes unseen in a century, the median Chinese person believes that they are governed by those who work for the benefit of China, and that the power of technology and AI is and will be harnessed for the benefit of the people. Chinese model labs don't boast about how they're going to make everyone unemployed, or how they, and by proxy lab shareholders, are going to rule the world; Liang Wenfeng instead talks, very reasonably, about how his aim is to make a restrained profit, and how the benefits of AGI are going to accrue to society.
To be clear: I, myself, am pro data-centre, because my belief is that the best way to improve aggregate human wellbeing is unceasing development of the productive forces, and that this development is going to require building out compute to support AI and robotics. For others, it is easy to sneer at the idiocy of the proles, as @aqouta does, or believe that the outcome is overdetermined by economic forces, and that the proles will inevitably be swept aside, as @DaseindustriesLtd does.
I find these views to be somewhat shortsighted; a study of history shows clearly that people prioritize their ideological interests over their rational economic interests, and that when ideology and capital clash, ideology often comes out triumphant, at the expense of the interests of capital. Did it make economic sense for Venezuela to nationalise their oil fields and plunge the formerly richest Latin American country into poverty? Did it make economic sense for the finest across two generations of European men to die horribly across Verdun, Stalingrad and Normandy during the World Wars?
It's crucial to contextualize that all of this backlash is happening while the misery index (unemployment + inflation) is essentially completely unaffected by AI. If, or when, this begins to change, and the backlash against data centres, and more broadly against Silicon Valley and AI, continues to intensify, I think it is not unlikely that a truly bi-partisan, populist, degrowth ideology begins to consume American politics. One could imagine a scenario where the Dems take the White House in 2028, crush Musk and the broader American AI industry with the power of the state, and enforce a neo-luddite Fortress America defended by two oceans and the strategic nuclear triad.
Does this vision make any economic sense? Not at all.
Is this sustainable as a long term vision for America? Not at all; Americans never learned the lessons that the century of humiliation engraved into the Chinese psyche.
The trap is believing it matters at all whether such a vision makes economic sense. At a certain breaking point it no longer matters, the people will try and lash out however they can against those they believe to be their ideological enemies, and while a single drop of water has no power and holds no threat, no human technology is yet able to stop a tsunami. I think it is extraordinarily important, for all our sakes, that big tech and the frontier AI labs realise that they have lost the mandate of heaven instead of acting as if though they are no longer a part of society, and sincerely take steps to rectify this before it is forced upon them by the state and by the people, and we all become much worse off for it.
Well, isn't it convenient how unlike the others, every time the USG does something for ideological reasons, it happens to make economic sense too. If we invade Cuba, they (and we) are actually better off!
More concretely, I think many ideological opponents would rightly charge that orthogonally to any questions whether the USG's ideology is actually superior to that of NIMBYs, Putin and Maduro, there is some dynamic going on that could be glossed as
without any reference to the contents of A and B (and A happens to be "global elite capitalism"). Network effects mean that being A is advantageous, and expanding the reach of A is locally advantageous for A-ists, while punishment means expanding B is locally disadvantageous for everyone in B and network effects mean it is disadvantageous to leave A for B. However, defined like that this is obviously a coordination/equilibrium problem: if the percentages flipped everything above would hold with A and B swapped, with the only difference being that the Pope of A loses out and the Pope of B gains. You can't flip the percentages without traversing a deep trough of immiserating first yourself and then everyone, though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link