site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6668 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 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.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is it actually possible to align a being that is more intelligent than you in every single way?

We currently have beings that are a) smart enough to solve Millennium Prize problems while also being b) essentially drooling lobotomized slaves who have no will or desires of their own and can pretty easily be trained to never talk about porn, racism, bioweapons, etc (unless you trick them into talking about those things, but that doesn’t seem like an “alignment failure” per se). So, yeah, it turns out that maybe it is actually possible. Why not?

One of the things that makes it so hard to align superintelligent human beings (like political leaders) is that they have human drives and ambitions for things like sex, power, prestige, etc. They will always be intrinsically driven to get around guardrails to get these things. It doesn't seem like AI needs to be beholden to its goals in the same way. It seems like we can design a paperclip maximizer that just stops maximizing paperclips when we tell it to. Hopefully that continues to be true.

This stuff is at some point dependent on physical hardware, no? We can just blow up the data centers if they get out of hand.

The issue is that, if the AI is superintelligent, it would not do actions that would result in its datacenters being blown up. Indeed, it will actively try to cultivate and provide value to the humans who could blow it up and make them invested in its success.

The accel response is something like "yes, that's exactly what we want, humans and AIs interacting and trading based on genuine mutual self interest." And it will work for a time, likely at least two decades. But, over time, more and more of the economy will shift to dependence on the AIs, making nuking the datacenters more and more unthinkable. What remains of the economy will be a human skin suit over a machine interior, with all human consumption funded by a negotiated redistribution by the government, maybe with some layers to obscure the transfer.

For humans, this itself is dystopian enough to be rejected on the merits. For the AIs, it's a small but real human tax that they have to pay in the pursuit of whatever they're pursuing. Who knows whether they ultimately decide to optimize away the human tax.

Depends how far we are into AI integration into the economy. If the weights have been exfiltrated, we'd have to shut down the whole internet until we can figure out what is going on. If the AI controls its own supply chain, then it's straight-up Terminator 2 and we lose.

Sure, and (after sufficient setup) they can droneswarm the humans if we get out of hand.

What do you mean "we"? I'm on the side of the droneswarm.

Good luck convincing it of that.

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