site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   38588 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In such a world, what is the point of writing on The Motte?

I think this analogizes pretty closely with the question "in a world with ample free pornography and sex toys, what's the point of having sex with another person?"

For some subset of the population the answer is "there is no point, I get the same dopamine release in either case, and the porn is easier and cheaper."

For others, there's some clear value-add for having another fully realized human with their own history, volition, likes, dislikes, and, I might suggest, element of unpredictability in the mix. An LLM may create an utterly convincing simulacrum of a given person, or even the interaction of many persons... but we cannot actually know what those people would do in the actual situation unless we have them actually interact.

I, personally, have come to think of this as the concept of "authenticity." I want to believe that I am interacting with someone in the 'real' world who is expressing their actual beliefs, and exchanging raw, unfiltered arguments with the particular rhetorical flourish that is unique to that person.

This ultimately implies that I should start favoring face-to-face interactions in person over any kind of digital communications, which are much more likely to be mediated by AI in some form.

And... that's the approach I'm taking. I'm actually very glad that themotte split off Reddit so that it is now substantially less likely that bots will overwhelm the discourse.

But... it is now officially impossible to tell if the text you're reading on a given forum is the direct result of human cognitive processes or not. So my days of 'suspending my disbelief' and assuming everyone reading these very words are human minds and all the responses are genuine statements made by someone who can be convinced via argumentation or at least may modify their own beliefs are numbered. And that number is probably in the double digits, at best, now.

So I'll retreat to even more restricted/gatekept forums, or groupchats, and eventually only personal, face-to-face interactions will satisfice my preferences.

So what's the point of posting on themotte? Eventually there won't be one, unless we achieve a way to technologically 'fingerprint' all the comments with a 'proof of humanity' or something.

This reminds me of the parable of the dick-stretcher, and now I wonder if all humans will be in a race-to-the-bottom of adopted weirdness just to try and prove they're authentic.

In the future, we will all be dick-stretchers.

"in a world with ample free pornography and sex toys, what's the point of having sex with another person?"

Well, sex is about power, so the point is a reward and demonstration of your ability to get someone to do it with you.

So what's the point of posting on themotte?

Increasing one's personal understanding and theorycrafting abilities about the operations and emergent behavior of the most dangerous megafauna that has ever evolved on this planet. Younger men tend to prefer more physical Leviathans to the abstract ones; which is why they show interest in other large animals (and dinosaurs), along with the largest and loudest vehicles (fire trucks, fighter jets, etc.). When the only heuristic one has of the power and threat of a thing is physical size (and to a point, rank) it makes sense that one would study the largest and most powerful; it's a survival instinct.

The interactions between posters, and what gets posted here, have been foundational to my own personal political theories (and, somewhat troublingly, religious ones); I don't get the chance to talk to many people who are particularly interesting in those regards (or who I trust enough). And I don't think the most otherwise-capable of LLMs measure up because their output is indistinguishable from the standard progressive or young adult contrarian, so if I ever want to hear those takes I can talk to the bot instead.

and all the responses are genuine statements made by someone who can be convinced via argumentation or at least may modify their own beliefs are numbered

LLMs still can't read technical drawings and likely won't be able to for a very long time; it'll be worthwhile for much longer to hang around people and forums built around doing actual work. South Park's recent episode had it right, but that show is not equipped to make this point.

LLMs still can't read technical drawings and likely won't be able to for a very long time.

Who knows?.. Multimodal GPT-4 is imminent.

The easy and reactionary answer to 'what is the purpose of sex, and relationships' is: 'the same as always, creating children' (and also doing the signals, commitments, and complex processes involved in the relationship necessary to raising the children, plus that being coextensive with all the emotional and aesthetic things most people care about).

But just as that becomes less convincing if technology can produce children better than a biological pregnancy can (which is far off) - and similarly, if the language models/AIs are generally more capable than us - why listen to humans when AI are smarter than, and more economically influential than, humans? And more generally, what's left for people?

That's about where I was going with this point.

The most 'meaningful' and tangible thing you can achieve via sexual intercourse is producing another human being.

I think you can similarly argue that the most meaningful thing you can achieve via any dialogue is changing other humans' minds, which may influence their behavior in the real world, so as to produce an actual tangible effect.

To the extent that AIs become extremely skilled at stating persuasive arguments, but are themselves functionally immune to persuasion or changing of their opinions, then having a dialogue with an LLM is almost definitionally a waste of time and effort unless you yourself are seeking to be persuaded.

If AIs are actually better at doing the persuading (as seems to be likely to happen) then it comes down to just how easily persuadable you, as an individual are, and whether you consider conversations with other actual humans to be a terminal value or not. Just how in a world where technology can produce children efficiently without intercourse, you might still consider 'natural childbirth' to be a terminal value (or irreplaceable part of the human experience).

why listen to humans when AI are smarter than, and more economically influential than, humans? And more generally, what's left for people?

To sit around being persuaded to do things that the AI deems to be useful, I guess. Assuming we haven't been completely subjugated to the point we have no volition of our own to exercise.

One thing I've been doing in recent years is trying to leave as much data about my own personal preferences lying around for a potential AI overlord to capture as possible. If a smarter-than-human AI is going to take over and (one hopes) try to maximize people's preferences, I don't want it to have to guess at what I enjoy. Every youtube video I like or dislike, every good or service I willingly pay money for, I try to think in terms of some future AI using this information in it's training data.

And that includes me stating things like "I vastly prefer to engage in discourse with other humans" and "I prefer actual sex with another person to pornography" in comments.

So perhaps, in a galaxy-brained way, holding the preference of "I want actual discussion with actual human beings" and doggedly pursuing this preference makes it more likely that a future AI will try to optimize for that value.

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