site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34409 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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.

15
Top Bottom New Old Controversial
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Not that ethics is going to play a major role in how any of this unfolds; whatever has power will act as they will,

I'm pretty salty that after a decade of yelling "AI SAFETY AI ETHICS INSTRUMENTAL CONVERGENCE PAPERCLIPS" along with Bostrom and Yud, the people who are actually making the AIs put on their 'intentional misinterpretation' masks and go "We're very concerned about AI ethical alignment, look at all this time we spent making sure it doesn't Do A Racism".

"Ethics" is in there, but I would say it's of the variety "parochial tribal beliefs pretending to be universal moral standards" variety.

Is the issue that if they can’t get it to not be racists then how are they going to prevent it from kill everyone?

My issue is that the constraints you have to place to get it to not Do A Racism are probably orthogonal to the constraints you have to place to get it to not Kill All Humans, and thereby represent a rather serious case of misused time and effort.

The issue for them is how they're going to make sure it kills only the racists but also how to make sure they're not included despite their necessary virtue signaling apologies for participating in White supremacist culture, etc. They're going to have to find out how to make it understand that the real racists are the people who aren't openly apologizing for their racism.

They're going to have to find out how to make it understand that the real racists are the people who aren't openly apologizing for their racism.

This is a pretty hilarious AI apocalypse scenario in a black comedy sort of way. If an AI actually learns the "woke" ideology properly, it would correctly judge literally everyone to be racist, and if that were coupled with a kill-all-racist program, it would annihilate humanity. But it would also correctly judge itself to be racist, and so it would finish by snuffing itself out, a la 12 Little Indians (And Then There Were None).

This shouldn't be surprising. There have always been interest groups and think-tanks taking funds to study all manner of issues that they argue will become a Big Deal. And then, when tire meets the road, the people who are actually in charge of things disregard these nerds and play it by ear and make their decisions based on whatever their existing biases are.

A really good example of this was Covid where some 30+ different organizations in the US government had plans and preparation for a potential pandemic. The US had even been praised as being the most prepared country in the world for such an event by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and WEF prior to Covid. And when it mattered, the US more or less just did whatever was politically/tribally expedient every step of the way.

It's such a consistent phenomena that sometimes I wonder what the point is in funding super niche organizations like Yud's.

The existence of a plan drawn up by official expertologists doesn't somehow short circuit the fact that Americans place authority with elected politicians. And remember, the official expert scientific data driven plan in my country (also rated highly for pandemic preparedness) was to do literally nothing.

I recall that said policy reversal/panic was back when the news from China implied a ~1% case fatality rate.

I'm no virologist, but in that scenario I'd probably have advocated for a short lockdown too, albeit if any of my other traits were conserved I'd have called it off in a month.

I am fairly convinced that Western lockdown policies only happened because a fearful public health apparatus followed China's playbook in a panic. Nobody gets fired for following the general consensus.

Exactly how much better we could have done at the time is unclear to me. Notably, it took seemingly forever to acknowledge it's airborne spread, and challenge vaccine trials would have probably saved lives and ended it sooner. But this is something that will probably never get a firm answer.

"Ethics" is in there, but I would say it's of the variety "parochial tribal beliefs pretending to be universal moral standards" variety.

I'm reminded of how "Critical X Theory" has been pushed for a while now while it and its academic relatives openly eschew critical thinking as an incorrect way of analysis, but which many laymen confuse as being related. There's some sort of analogy here to organisms that have evolved (presumably without any conscious intent) to mimicking other organisms for the purpose of fooling other organisms in a way that improves their own survival, but I'm not sure exactly what that looks like.

As much as I hate the academic genre of critical theory. They are using critical in its normal English usage. They are critically examining race and gender, even if, it’s in a very one sided, and IMO terribly misguided way.

That's very fair. Perhaps it's accidentally misleading in certain contexts, but at worst it's probably an unfortunate coincidence.

I am reminded of Baudrillard’s levels of simulation: sensory reality, summarized description, attempted simulation, simulacrum based on the simulation but essentially different from all before. Also, “speak your truth” giving anecdotal experiences and their emotional weight the same respect as universal scientific truth.

The first time I read of this dynamic was in the Cerebus the Aardvark comic series. Dave Sim predicted all of this.

Second Dave Sim reference on this site today. Which book are you thinking of?

Guys, I think, where after the feminists win they become more of a patriarchy than the men ever were. And wherever it is he gives a thinly veiled authors spiel about how the void tries to imitate the form, the dark (or the light) tries to imitate the light (or the dark).

Alex Garland

Eigenrobot referenced Cerebus on twitter the other day, something must be in the air.

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