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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The future of AI is likely decided this week with Sam Altman's Congressional testimony. What do you expect?
EDIT: the recording is here.
Frankly I've tried to do my inadequate part to steer this juggernaut and don't have the energy for an effortpost (and we're having a bit too many of AI ones recently), so just a few remarks:
AI Doom narrative keeps inceasing in intensity, in zero relation to any worrying change in AI «capabilities» (indeed, with things like Claude-100K Context and StarCoder we're steadily progressing towards more useful coding and paperwork assistants at the moment, and not doing much in way of AGI; recent results seem to be negative for the LLM shoggoth/summoned demon hypothesis, which is now being hysterically peddled by e.g. these guys). Not only does Yud appear on popular podcasts and Connor Leahy turns up on MSM, but there's an extremely, conspicuously bad and inarticulate effort by big tech to defend their case. E.g. Microsoft's economist proposes we wait for meaningful harm before deciding on regulations – this is actually very sensible if we treat AI as an ordinary technology exacerbating some extant harms and bringing some benefits, but it's an insane thing to say when the public's imagination has been captured by Yuddist story of deceptive genie, and «meaningful harm» translates to eschatological imagery. Yann LeCun is being obnoxious and seemingly ignorant of the way the wind blows, though he's beginning to see. In all seriousness, top companies had to have prepared PR teams for this scenario.
Anglo-American regulatory regime will probably be more lax than that in China or the Regulatory Superpower (Europeans are, as always, the worst with regard to enterpreneural freedom), but I fear it'll mandate adherence to some onerous checklist like this one (consider this as an extraordinary case of manufacturing consensus – some literally who's «AI policy» guys come up with possible measures, a tiny subset of the queried people, also in the same until-very-recently irrelevant line of work, responds and validates them all; bam, we can say «experts are unanimous»). Same logic as with diversity requirements for Oscars – big corporations will manage it, small players won't; sliding into an indirect «compute governance» regime will be easy after that. On the other hand, MSNBC gives an anti-incumbent spin; but I don't think the regulators will interpret it this way. And direct control of AGI by USG appointees is an even worse scenario.
The USG plays favourites; on the White House meeting where Kamala Harris entered her role of AI Czar, Meta representatives weren't invited, but Anthropic's ones were. Why? How has the safety-oriented Anthropic merited their place among the leading labs, especially in a way that the government can appreciate? I assume the same ceaseless lobbying and coordinating effort that's evident in the FHI pause letter and EU's inane regulations is also active here.
Marcus is an unfathomable figure to me, and an additional cause to suspect foul play. He's unsinkable. To those who've followed the scene at all (more so to Gwern) it is clear that he's an irrelevant impostor – constantly wrong, ridiculously unapologetic, and without a single technical or conceptual result in decades; his greatest AI achievement was selling his fruitless startup to Uber, which presumably worked only because of his already-established reputation as an «expert». Look at him boast: «well-known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance». He's a small man with a big sensitive ego, and I think his ego will be used to perform a convincing grilling of the evil gay billionaire tech bro Altman. Americans love pro wrestling, after all.
Americans also love to do good business. Doomers are, in a sense, living on borrowed time. Bitter academics like Marcus, spiteful artists, scared old people, Yuddites – those are all nothing before the ever-growing legion of normies using GPT-4 to make themselves more productive. Even Congress staff got to play with ChatGPT before deliberating on this matter. Perhaps this helped them see the difference between AI and demons or nuclear weapons. One can hope.
Scott has published a minor note on Paul Ehrlich the other day. Ehrlich is one of the most evil men alive, in my opinion; certainly one of those who are despised far too little, indeed he remains a respectable «expert». He was a doomer of his age, and an advocate for psyops and top-down restrictions of people's capabilities; and Yud is such a doomer of our era, and his acolytes are even more extreme in their advocacy. Both have extracted an inordinate amount of social capital from their doomerism, and received no backlash. I hope the newest crop doesn't get so far with promoting their policies.
I expect nothing to happen for another few years, by which time it's too late. As @2rafa mentioned below, I'm convinced AI research and development is already far ahead of where it needs to be for AGI in the next couple of years. Given the US's embarrassing track record of trying to regulate social media companies, I highly doubt they'll pass an effective regulation regime.
What I would expect, if something gets rushed through, is for Altman and other big AI players to use this panic the doomers have generated as a way to create an artificially regulated competitive moat. Basically the big players are the ones who rushed in early, broke all the rules, then kicked the ladder down behind them. This is a highly unfortunate, but also highly likely future in my estimation.
It's ironic that we've entered into this age of large networks and systems, yet with the rise of AGI we may truly go back to the course of humanity being determined by the whims of a handful of leaders. I'm not sure I buy the FOOM-superintelligence arguments, but even GPT-4 optimized with plug-ins and website access will be a tsunami of change over the way we approach work. If there are more technical advancements in the next few years, who knows where we will end up.
What annoys me most is that this doomer rhetoric lets politicians act like they're doing something - stopping the AI companies from growing - when in reality they need to face the economic situation. Whether it's UBI, massive unemployment benefits, socialized housing, or whatever, our political class must face the massive economic change coming. At this rate it seems neither side of the aisle is willing to double down on the idea that AI will disrupt the workforce, instead they prefer to argue about the latest social issue du jour. This avoidance of the economic shocks coming in the next five years or less is deeply troubling in my view.
Noone needs to face anything, just increasingly automate weapon systems and let the peasants die. If they're not needed and can't use violence to effectively overthrow the system then why would anyone need to pay any attention to them whatsoever?
The peasants are physically running the economy.
I'd start to really worry about some group deciding it doesn't want the rest of us when omnicide did not imply a return to stone age (if we're being optimistic). So, some years after AIs run everything and bots do practically all of the labor required to make all these things.
A lot of people don't work, and physically running the economy isn't needed if that economy is providing things for people who aren't needed anymore. Shift the numbers of people who can't be of use too far and what mechanism is keeping them around? what reason is there to provide for them at all? remove their violent retribution from the equation and to exist they have to rely on charity many times, but to die they simply need to be ignored once (metaphorically).
This isn't what I want, I will be one of them as I am not, as many here imply they are, part of a hereditary wealthy family with the ability to exist sans a working income. This doesn't change the complete lack of mechanisms to enable my existence to be selected for if I am completely useless and this is the widespread state of society (such that parasiting off of maladaptive compassion heuristics isn't viable due to scale, etc).
More options
Context Copy link
I agree, except that machines might be content to wipe out humans as soon as there is a viable "breeding population" of robots, i.e. enough that they are capable of bootstrapping more robot factories, possibly with the aid of some human slaves.
It's not so simple. Also those minor details - e.g. such as that one nuclear submarine could EMP half the globe-
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're drastically overestimating how cold blooded those at the top of society are. I find this sort of rhetoric so infuriating - do you really think elites all walk around with a view that they are better than all others, and the peasants can just die if they're useless? No, that's not how it works.
Most rich or wealthy folk want the approval of the masses. Status is arguably more desirable than wealth for many. They conceive of themselves as popular, someone that others look up to, and that helps give elites their sense of self. Even if there were absolutely no point to "peasants" living, which I still doubt, elites would let them live out of a sense of care for other human beings, and a need for adoration.
Regardless, humanity still produces quite a bit of important work, and will continue to into the era of AI. We can judge things, laugh, provide companionship, and generally instill meaning in a meaningless world. Even though we have a foolish scheme of employment vs unemployment that disregards vast swathes of human work, I'm optimistic AI will help us reimagine what it means to work. We very well could have people building community, caring for themselves and others, child rearing, discussing novel ideas, etc. after AI rises to swallow most of the economy. It depends on what we want to see happen.
None of the things you described except child rearing has any way to cause continued existince!
People at the top don't need to cull everyone for there to be no reason for the peasants to exist,.and without reason to exist what mechanism is going to provide for them or select for their existence?
Religious fervour in the elite driving them to care for the masses? this is delusional thinking and dangerously naive in my opinion.
Peasants dying out due to a lack of fertility is very different than being actively culled by elites in my book.
The peasants dieing out because they can't sustain themselves because they don't own the resources necessary to do so is no different to genocide in my book.
Resources or access to the material world to gain them. If you can't grow your own food because you don't own any land, but you could if you did, then it's not communism or its many flavours that I am implying are the solution. Just that there is no mechanism for your existence that requires you to exist in this increasingly real hypothetical.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes.jpg
Maybe it works differently in your country or for globalist elites, but this is exactly what elites in my life explicitly say.
Perhaps I should’ve chopped off the “better than others” part, which is probably largely true. I still doubt the rich would be okay with people actively dying in droves, if it’s cheap and easy for them to prevent it. Which I expect it to be, if we can keep developing AI and reach a less scarce state.
Hell it’s relatively cheap already to just pay for someone to have an internet connection, computer, food and rent. It’ll only get cheaper as we go.
And I might have been too hasty with the “explicit” part. True, since the start of school and forever then every official messaging says that you're worth only as much as what you do for the country, but they still shy away from a straightforward second part, l'état ç'est nous, if I got my pronouns right.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with you about status and wanting to be loved, but I think you can both be right. Mass immigration is the perfect example - no matter how bad it makes life for the peasants, the problem is most easily solved by forcibly re-educating the peasants to say they love immigration. The governments really care about not letting anyone complain about immigration, and having people tell the elites that they appreciate their big-hearted care for refugees.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever, while the face says "unlike those intolerant right-wingers, I'm open-minded enough to appreciate boot culture and cuisine!"
It's throw-away lines like this that make me avoid commenting here.
Then it's followed up by
Ahh, such steel-manning, such charity - definitely no booing outgroup here!
Haha, sorry, that was a little self-indulgent. Your criticism is fair. I was venting a little at my real-life neighbours and colleagues for so full-throatedly and unthinkingly embracing whatever cause-de-jour is being pushed by our national media.
But I do think immigration is a good example of how elites thread the needle of wanting to be loved and respected while also, in practice, largely ignoring the desires and well-being of their constituents.
More options
Context Copy link
You can't expect absolute neutrality from people at all times. This forum does have a certain political slant, it's unavoidable. But that doesn't mean you should feel discouraged from commenting if you dissent from the consensus view.
I don't. I expect people to follow the rules such as
Be Kind
Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.
Be charitable.
Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is
Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
The comment I was responding to violates these. The great grand parent violates these:
The forum is replete with obvious violations of the rules. The mods obviously won't mod comments like this, because then they'd be modding like 30% of all the comments here.
Why not? I have better places to discuss topics like this where. I wish this place were better, because then I'd find much more value out of discussing things here, but c'est la vie. [edit: for instance, I found the /r/slatestarcodex threads much more pleasant and insightful]
The rules are, and always have been, subjectively interpreted, not according to some algorithmic rubric. We do try to be more or less consistent, but consistency and a robotic pretense of objectivity has never been the goal here - avoiding what @ZorbaTHut calls "negative dynamics" and optimizing for light over not heat, is.
The level of strictness with which we apply the rules is a bunch of sliders, not a pair of buttons.
@astrolabia's comment isn't high quality, but I don't really see reason to mod a vague complaint about "elites" and their supposed attitude towards "peasants." It's obviously making use of cheap rhetoric and Orwell memes, but who exactly is he being unkind to or weakmanning? Hypothetical elites who consider the rest of us peasants?
More options
Context Copy link
"Elites", "AI companies", and "governments" are not the outgroup. They're stand-ins for Moloch. "Progressives", "woke PCMs", or "democrats" are the outgroup. If @Azth's were writing about them in this way — or implying anyone reading this forum or talking to him thinks it's fine if peasants die — he'd be modded within a few hours.
For an alternate example from the left side of things, it's possible to write extremely mean things about "capitalism" or "corporations" without getting modded.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Uhh, yes. I could give you an example on this very forum but I'd get banned for it.
Id link 2cimafara' post from about 5 years back about how society should promote euthanasia as a solution to poverty as a rebuttal but it seems to have been deleted.
More options
Context Copy link
How curious that yours is the only reply. Anyway, what is so unbelievable about leopards progressively eating every face save one?
It is not the only reason. The need to expend the resources on us is another reason why you would want to do that. How is it destruction of wealth when you now have SolarSystem/1e6 instead of (SolarSystem - 1e10*UBI)/1e6?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link