site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 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.

12
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Surely someone can just succinctly present the matter in a few paragraphs.

You and everyone you know and love could possibly die to this thing, it's much more likely than many think and even if it doesn't kill us all it's going to almost certainly profoundly transform nearly every aspect of everyone's lives. NVIDIA thinks the hardware necessary to run AIs is going super Moore's law at 275x per 2 years. They're already better than a lot of low level white color employees. If this thing can go super human there is a real risk the improvement goes recursive which is the generally believed most likely catalyst for a singularity type event. If this isn't enough for you then just jack off in ignorant bliss for the few remaining years before reality asserts itself. If your threat response is so atrophied and your intellectual curiosity is so empty that you can't give a single evening to figuring this out then why should anyone care about evangelizing you?

They're already better than a lot of low level white color employees.

S-tier Freudian slip.

Hah I thought that was intentional, if not agreed!

You and everyone you know and love could possibly die to this thing

Another one? That's what they said about COVID-19.

NVIDIA thinks the hardware necessary to run AIs is going super Moore's law at 275x per 2 years.

When you see exponential, think logistic.