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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35540 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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This looks a lot like a ChatGPT-generated post with a bit of editing.

Please explain your thesis further. Because I'm inclined to propose a new mod rule that posting ChatGPT-written posts without clearly identifying them as such is grounds for a permaban.

Maybe that's the future of online discourse and resisting our robot overlords is impossible, but it's not what we want here.

ETA: Just realized, this is just you again.

I would rather a rule that before posting anything lengthy you have to put it into ChatGPT with a prompt of something like "rewrite this to make it clearer and more concise" to see if ChatGPT can improve your writing. Of course, don't automatically go with whatever GPT gives you as we are at least a year away from that level of reliability.

christ, imagine how this would butcher IlForte's posts. now I want to see it.

Christ, I'm more worried about an motte full of posts like the OP. Call it a moat.

I think (hope) it won't be long before there's a browser extension that can do this with just a couple clicks for any text field on any website.

Yeah let's give some algorithm we don't even really understand more control on the commons of language and make it a required part of communication for most people, sounds very safe and not at all risky.

Let's train it on its own output too, that doesn't seem like it would cause any issues down the line.

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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.

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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."

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