site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This seems a little low effort. If you want to feed an AI some random questions with vaguely CW topics and post the results, provide context, an argument, some relevance. We would rather not see lots of posts about "Look at what ChatGPT says if you ask it about Muslims and trans."

I don't understand the basis of that determination. We have lots of good comments or posts which don't provide context or an argument, but just themselves. Like this jolly little story for example: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/e5odim/the_barbarian_and_the_711_clerk/

Would it be a problem if I painted a picture (Think like Where's Waldo not Ben Garrison) of my view of some present issue, or a song, if I didn't provide context and explanation for why I think it's interesting to have a picture instead of a comment thread? Where is the dividing line that I can intuit?

  • -11

We have lots of good comments or posts which don't provide context or an argument, but just themselves. Like this jolly little story for example: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/e5odim/the_barbarian_and_the_711_clerk/

You're kidding. That story was a very high effort post making a philosophical argument, and it was also entertaining and thoughtful. Nothing at all like "Ask ChatGPT what to do if a sex worker approaches a Muslim and post its answer."

Would it be a problem if I painted a picture (Think like Where's Waldo not Ben Garrison) of my view of some present issue, or a song, if I didn't provide context and explanation for why I think it's interesting to have a picture instead of a comment thread?

Yes, just posting a picture or a song, without context or stating your point, would probably get dinged for low effort.

I think the OP in particular has a distinct smell of the sort of "darkly hinting" that is the hallmark of the most partisan and unpleasant CW forums; it's clearly selected as a scenario that is likely to elicit inconsistencies or difficult corner cases in OP's outgroup's ideology, and thrown at a bullshit generator trained on outgroup ideology in the hope of generating a particularly juicy weakman display of an imagined outgroup member squirming in cognitive dissonance. A tribally flipped counterpart would be something like an interview putting random rednecks on the spot with questions about scenarios involving Russians, Ukraine and trad values - letting their stammering stand without comment - except GPT is not even a real progressive subject. Just because you don't say the "boo" out loud, this sort of thing does not become any less boo-outgroup.

Say what you will about the 7/11 post (which I remember well, and personally didn't like at all because it was so obtuse), but at least it took some effort to make. There is zero effort, or value, in a post which consists purely of "I asked these questions from ChatGPT, here's what it said". I can go ask ChatGPT those questions myself if I want to know the answer. Like @slothlikesamwise said, you really need to bring something beyond copy/pasting output from some chat bot.

That's why I bring up the art analogy. Obviously by and large we all recognize that lots of AI content is meaningless slop, but for all we know this guy put in a few hours of work crafting response and questions for the chatbot for this specific output. Is the post only worthwhile if it's an explanation of that process(which I recognize is very unlikely to even have occured)?

If this is art, what is the message? I don't think nasty caricatures of the outgroup are good content for this forum, even if they meet the definition of art.

An explanation of how one got there is one possible angle. Another is some explanation of why the output is relevant or interesting. I don't care about what ChatGPT has to say about Muslims encountering sex workers, whether or not they are transgender. Frankly, I don't care what a human has to say about that because it's just such a bizarre topic. So one has to lay the groundwork of "why is this interesting", whatever form that reason may take.

I presume he just wants more than one sentence of opinion and analysis that amounts to more than "This was more boring than I hoped it would be."

Comparison between various models, swapping islam for christianity, attempting to break the AI, or just more social commentary.