site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

And what happens if my (as in nobody) AI first develops autonomous self replicating killer robots? We are not that far technologically.

A: It won't happen.

B: If it does, it they get iced by dudes with rifles because AI can't violate thermodynamics and energy density is energy density.

A: It will happen. Too many regimes want to control their population fully. For them the machines to keep the people subdued would get rid of their main worry - the loyalty of their regime insiders. So there will always be money invested in this tech. Also there are few parts of the supply and military chain that really require humans (mostly science and imagination) if the ai is potent enough and self replicating industrial modules are close enough if you have the eventual ChatGPT 42 helping you.

B: If you produce autonomous weapons system faster than the other side bullets in the end you win.

As 2rafa rightfully pointed - the hard part is not the tech, but hiding it until the exponential function is unstoppable. You only have two places really - bottom of the ocean, or subterranean in the Antarctic. There is enough geothermal to go around.

Also can you elaborate on the thermodynamics thing - I can't understand what you mean.

I don't think anime is to blame for all the Doomers in AI, I would rather blame movies like Terminator.

I've seen people talk mention The Terminator a bunch with respect to inspiring AI Doomers, but I just don't see it. Obviously the plot of the films helped to popularize the idea of AI killing us all, but the line of thinking that AI Doomers display seems to have no connection to those films, which posited an AI that quickly decided that getting rid of humans was in its best interests and decided to use a nuclear war to help to accomplish this, followed by robots and cyborgs like the "terminators" to hunt down the survivors. This is very different from what I hear coming from Doomers, which involves an AI or multiple AIs that have no antipathy for humans or particular desire to hunt them down and also posits that the mechanism of robots hunting us down would be silly compared to easier methods they have at their disposal (and also that if robots did hunt us down with AI, then they would do it pretty easily, since their reaction times, accuracy, and precision, to say nothing of mental focus and stamina, greatly outstrip our own, by orders of magnitude).

now compare that to anime, that at that time was much less mainstream (I would posit unknown to the general western population above 30) and in the west lacked stories that could be interpreted as the basis for the Doomer cult centered on AI. As for your observations of The Terminator, I will just posit that, that is the number 1 franchise the mayority of people think of when Killer AI is mentioned, and Skynet when adversarial AI's enter the conversation, followed in close second by AIM and HALL 9000.

Right, a majority of people think of Arnold or HAL, but Doomers are not a majority of people and are, IMHO, very different from regular people. Regular people don't really think about this stuff and just connect the superficial similarities between Terminator and AI Doom in the future, whereas AI Doomers seem to have arrived at their position by looking at actual current science, not science fiction, and extrapolating into the future in a way they find plausible. I think inspiration by fiction, whether that be The Terminator or anime, is a tiny factor when it comes to AI Doomers.

Also, I'm assuming AIM doesn't stand for AOL Instant Messenger, but I don't know what it refers to.

what do you think is more probable, that the Doomers saw Terminator in theaters when they were children or that they watched Anime related to AI doom?.

but Doomers are not a majority of people and are, IMHO, very different from regular people.

that is a major disagreement we have there. To me Doomers and "rationalists" in general are just regular people very good at rationalizing their biases.

Also, I'm assuming AIM doesn't stand for AOL Instant Messenger, but I don't know what it refers to.

Sorry, it was supposed to be AM not AIM. From I have no mouth and I must scream.

More comments