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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32920 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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Facebook's LLaMa{-7B,-13B,-30B,-65B} has apparently been leaked on 4chan via torrent. Amusingly, the leaker included sufficient info to identify himself in the leak: basic opsec, people!

It's still not quite runnable for most hobbyists, but give it time. For better or worse, the democratization of AI continues.

Don't do this as a top level post. Low effort posts like this crowd out effort posts.

  • -10

I think this is what is discouraging good conversation here. This is news and it's worth talking about even if the top-level poster didn't want to write 1000 extra words of fluff.

Absent the ability to post things like this, a high percentage of top-level posts will continue to be long rambling takes on HBD or racism. Must every post include a novel written by the user of their own personal hot take?

More of this type of top-level post please.

Edit: After reading the replies, I think the top level post is adequate but not ideal. It probably should include at least a short explanation of the relevant terminology and relevance.

We are not a news aggregator. We are a discussion site. If you don't really want to discuss something and just want to share news, then you are in the wrong place.

If someone else does want to discuss it and is willing to write an effort post, then the low effort post exhausts people's interest in the topic and lowers the reward for making an effort.

Edit also the first response to this post was:

Oh well, another opportunity for an effortpost lost.

Which I think implies that /u/daseindustriesltd would have done a longer post if the topic had been left untouched for longer.

This is not a theoretical crowding out, it happened.

Id be pro-creating a new aggregator thread. For less culture war stuff. I guess in todays world everything has some culture angle.

It could also drive recruitment if there’s a solid news aggregation and discussion and provide a space for less red tribe adjacent to enjoy who would sometimes enter culture war stuff.

Either a new one a week or month. A standard of one link with enough of an explanation for someone to make a decision on whether to click thru to the article.

https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/02/23/the-west-lives-on-in-the-talibans-afghanistan/

Something like this could fit in there. Sure you can find a few culture nuggets in it but it’s not primarily culture war. And a place someone can go to where people are posting good journalism would drive the user base if it became known as well chosen with added commentary.

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-new-obesity-breakthrough-drugs

This could fit too. Slatestar Reddit you can probably discuss these things. Maybe in the comment section on a few blogs. But I’m not of the opinion there are a ton of places for that.

Would also say my alcohol post wasn’t exactly culture war but Andreeson seems like someone who fit into this tribe so someone people would relate to. And this AI tech post has no culture war.

I was a bit busy today (while my history may lead some to think otherwise, I actually have things to do other than post here).

My impression is that the requirement for «some effort» is reasonable and must be enforced with the usual stick; but the toxicity inherent in arguing about it, chastising people who make use of an easy opportunity, and comparing them to others also imposes some costs. The leak, potentially massive news, has been available for nearly a whole day, and I only learned of it something like 6 hours ago – 2 hours prior to OP making his move. This was almost an inevitability.

I’ll pay you for the effortpost (Substack rates)

I still want the effort post, sir.

In all honesty, I went to bed last night curious about what you would say about it, woke up to no mention of it here, and decided to just do the low effort post to start the conversation. Guess my impatience cost me the pleasure of reading your effort post about it.

I mean, you could just. Ask him to write it anyway.

He’s right there, you know. Right there in the comment above yours so you can ask him. He probably doesn’t bite.

Think he needs to do a little more explaining what’s going on. I sort of understand what his notation means something language model by fb with different number of parameters. I don’t think it needs an hour write up but 5-10 min explaining what the program does and any key points.

The issue is that the community is so centralized around the culture war thread that people feel like EVERYTHING has to be posted in the culture war thread, perhaps because they feel like posts outside of the culture war thread won’t attract enough attention.

The site allows you to make your own threads. There’s nothing wrong with tightly policing the culture war thread and making it be for long essays only, IF appropriate incentives are given to encourage posting outside of the main thread as well.

(Edit to add an addendum) To clarify, I think the moderation policies that encourage users to write a novel for every top level post are a good thing. It’s why I enjoy this community. In the absence of such moderation, it’s easy for standards to degenerate, and short posts become the norm and long posts come to be seen as an aberration. I want there to be at least one online community that encourages and rewards long-form posting.

Absent the ability to post things like this, a high percentage of top-level posts will continue to be long rambling takes on HBD or racism.

Are they though? This week, I see:

  1. Drinking culture war.

  2. BLM/J6 compensation and treatment.

  3. Role of monetary incentives in fertility rate.

  4. Student loan forgiveness.

  5. Qu'ran hate speech controversy.

  6. Culturally bounded illnesses and gender dysphoria.

  7. South Africa (this pretty well invites HBD, of course).

  8. El Salvador gangs and prisons.

  9. Trans stuff.

  10. Single young men issues.

  11. Culturally bounded illness.

The main thing that's overrepresented is sex and gender stuff rather than racial stuff. I'm in favor of a bare link repository in a new form, but I don't really see the general trend being a spam of race war stuff.

Ah, hell. You spoke too soon.

In all seriousness, I agree with your assessment--the cause du jour varies, and isn't always limited to one of those two subjects. Plus there's the whole baader-meinhof thing where once I've noticed one, I'm on alert for more.

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