As far as I know, it's been a while since our last meta thread, so let's have a space for the administration of praise and the airing of grievances. Hopefully we can keep the conversation distant enough from first order culture war issues to justify this being a separate thread from the main CW thread.
I've been here on and off over the years since about 2016. To my mind, the two most exciting times to be a part of this community were the period around the first Trump election, and then again in 2022 around the time of the site migration. I don't think it's a coincidence that these time periods coincided with major new social and political issues entering the public consciousness (or at least, entering the consciousness of this community): in 2016, the culture war as we know it was still very fresh and nascent, with battle lines still being drawn and positions still being clarified, and in 2022, DALL-E and ChatGPT introduced machine learning to those of us who had not been feverishly following the LessWrong comments section since the 00s.
Unsurprisingly, discussion is good when there's something new and shiny to discuss. But eventually, you start to run out of things to talk about. People have been complaining about this problem with regards to the "classic" culture war issues for at least a good 3 or 4 years now. In the time period from 2014-2018, there was still a sense that it was all brand new: people were being forced to think about questions and perspectives that they had never thought about before, they were still figuring out how to make sense of their own positions and the positions of others. But now it's all well-trodden ground. You can only rehash the same foundational questions about race and free speech so many times before people on both sides start to think "yes, I've seen it all before, I know how this ends".
Even with AI, despite it still being a very rapidly evolving field, I've been feeling less motivated to participate in AI discussions lately, largely because it feels like such a straightforwardly empirical question. The classic culture war questions are the sorts of evergreen philosophical questions that you could, in principle, go back and forth on endlessly. You can walk away and come back in 10 years and the same questions will still be sitting there. But with AI, it ultimately all boils down to "well we'll just have to wait and see" in the end. Either there will be a singularity and/or the extinction of humanity, or there will not be. Sitting here and talking about it won't change much. We kinda just have to wait to see what happens.
Perhaps these forces have played a role in causing the forum to become less theoretical and abstract over time, leading to the rise of what I like to call "nuts and bolts" type posts: local politics at the city/state level, the minutiae of urban and suburban life, court cases and legal briefings. I don't remember these types of posts being so common in the early years of the forum (probably because, again, the culture war was brand new and people wanted to discuss the hottest culture war questions). I'm glad that at least some people are invested in doing the actual necessary work that makes the world function. But these types of posts generally bore me to tears, so I skip over them. I'm sure many people skip over the dumb shit I like to post about too, so, I understand that it goes both ways and there are no hard feelings. At least I'm still trying to be the change I want to see and I try to balance out the discussion with more philosophical posts.
Something I do lament is the evaporative cooling of interesting characters over time, not only due to bans but also due to natural attrition. At this point in the community's lifespan, it's unlikely that we're going to get another Hlynka, or another TracingWoodgrains. One starts to get the impression that the window for new foundational community narratives has passed.
All complaining aside, I still derive an incredible amount of value from this forum, as evidenced by my return to daily participation, and I would hate to ever see it go. It doesn't remind me of the Old Internet, but it does remind me of the Middle Internet: that time period from roughly 2012-2018 when there was a flourishing of strange ideas and it genuinely seemed like many bold new things were possible. (Maybe it reminds some other people of Usenet, I don't know; that was before my time.) I sincerely hope that this forum can remain roughly stable in its current state for as long as possible.
Anyway, what do you think? What do you think about how TheMotte has evolved over the years, what do you like about it now, what do you want to see changed, etc.
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
It's amazing how cursed the Sixers have been as a franchise that this team isn't a bigger story.
-- I honestly think this team, win or lose, will be remembered as more insane than it was ten years from now. Given I'm a homer so I think that VJ and Maxey are going on to great careers; people are going to look back on this team and see Lebron the GOAT, Embiid an MVP level player, stars in Brown, Maxey and Edgecombe. Without thinking that Lebron and Embiid were past their primes while VJ and Tyrese hadn't hit theirs yet. I think in terms of each player at their peak talent, this might end up being the best starting 5 we'll ever see, even if it's not actually the best basketball team.
-- How high does this team have to finish for the NBA to crack down on the Lebron Loophole this offseason? If the Sixers weren't such a joke of a franchise over the last decade plus, we'd already be hearing about how they unfairly got a superstar for free and it undermines parity. Like obviously if they get a ring, but do wear about it if they make the semis? Win the NBA cup lol?
-- My parents' parasocial relationship with Tyrese Maxey went nuclear when Lebron basically said he came to Philly to hang out with him. He's always smiling, always calls the sideline interviewer "ma'am," and now he's so nice that the GOAT basically made his team decision on Tyrese being his new best friend. My mother will not hear any Maxey slander.
I really think LeGOAT makes the team amazing, regardless of what happens. We all know the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior - random embarrassing bullshit or injuries is inevitable. But.
I mean the NFL let Brady and to a less extent Mahomes get away with shenanigans, if the star wants to bring greatness to the league and cost the owners millions less dollars? They'll allow it.
Maxey is great.
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