site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

All of the output I've ever seen from ChatGPT (for use cases such as this) just strikes me as... textbook.

So, I haven't used GPT for therapy, unless just talking about textbook philosophical ideas while being able to trust it to remain calm and level and not choking me with toxoplasma counts. But wrt:

are there certain types of people who are more predisposed to find ChatGPT's output comforting, enlightening, etc.

It may interest you to know that I don't have the focus to consume textbooks and can't stop chatting with friends on Discord.

Friends on discord that haven't read every textbook in existence and have things to do other than respond immediately to every post I make.

Friends that cannot spend hours per day in calm, toxoplasma-free philosophical debate and exploration then go on to happily coauthor code that I have all the ideas for but don't have the focus or encyclopedic API knowledge to sit down and cleanly write.

And I use chat-GPT constantly for everything now.

There are definitely some people for whom chat-GPT filled a hole in their life that needed to be filled by a submissive co-dependent genius-tier [rubber ducky]/[inquisitive child's ideal parent], that never could have been human, but can work as a low-ego AI system.

Not to mention people who were already near superhuman on some level outside of that missing piece, and suddenly feel the world unlocking for them. Chat-GPT is missing pieces, like discernment wrt questions, but the human-GPT system has at least all the parts a human has. And for some humans the human-GPT system that includes them far exceeds the sum of its parts.

If the human inputs the right things, GPT really does start to say insightful things, even if they are just clarifications or elaborations upon half formed ideas the user had. It is still expanding those ideas into a usable level of coherency.

If you don't mind my asking, how exactly do you use ChatGPT? I mean, do you go to a website? Is it an app? Do you have to pay for it?

I'd like to try it out. Can you walk me through the steps to get it up and running? Or is this something I can easily search for using the typical search engines?