site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the far left here. The far left theories I'm aware of are very much not able to describe a fully automated world - the center of the ideology is the worker and the exploitation of the worker. This does not translate easily into a response to AI automation nearly as well as UBI which just uses the already in place mechanisms to tax and redistribute. It's the social left stuff that seems to be eating the world and not the economic left stuff which, if I'm frank, has just proven itself to be unworkable.

What do you even envision a far left AI automated world to look like besides a UBI? I can't even picture it, there will be no workers to own the means of production, no need for labor unions, just production and consumption and neoliberalism can handle that just fine.

As I understand it, automation falls under capital. The question of whether Jeff bezos accrues rights to anything produced by his computer clusters is analogous to how much he earns from the production of his warehouses or his shipping fleet.

I agree that the role of the workers is lost under full automation. Marx’s industrial context still needed labor to operate the owner’s capital. But if the machines really do handle it all themselves, how do workers have a claim?

If I were trying to invent a leftism capable of handling a workerless future I think I'd go along the lines of some of the recent questions as to how copyright interacts with the output of LLMs. Namely that these things are sampling out entire culture and to some degree we all have some claim to the output, even if it's only through the influence we exert on someone who exerts influence on someone who exerts influence on someone who directly produces lots of the training data. Thus it is just to tax the use of the LLM and widely distribute it among the populace who would then spend it on the combined output of these automated systems. I think there is still a place for capital in this ecosystem, it can even be done with the same currency, because there does still need to be some kind of skin in the game for where raw resources should be allocated and I think capital interest is better at this than a state but maybe some kind of AI state would find a better solution. This all really does just look, to me, like taxing and UBI in practice.

If I were trying to invent a leftism capable of handling a workerless future I think I'd go along the lines of some of the recent questions as to how copyright interacts with the output of LLMs. Namely that these things are sampling out entire culture and to some degree we all have some claim to the output, even if it's only through the influence we exert on someone who exerts influence on someone who exerts influence on someone who directly produces lots of the training data.

Longposters shall inherit the earth, yay!

I'd actually say if artists end up successfully extorting special payments out of the art AIs then those of us who have contributed text to the text AIs should also be compensated.

https://xkcd.com/512/ but for arguing on the internet.