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 -
I'm trying to think a little more deeply about this. Geminis generation of nonsense because of the guardrails is essentially the tension of the Enlightenment ideals which the AI is springing up from and Postmodern ideas in critical theory, which I have hard time seeing how it can be reconciled. It is one of the ideas that I hold on to which I've trying describe but have a hard time crossing the "inferential distance". AI does not have a "lived experience" since it isn't living and what these people are trying to encode "lived experience" with these guardrails. They are trying to encode empathy into something that we are not like and failing in that they in demand encoding sympathy into a machine without emotions. There are no mirror neurons and there is no accurate theory of mind even if they try to claim it with emergent behavior of ingesting large amounts of text. So how is the machine supposed to know that someone would get hurt feelings by what it generates?
We are already here with human writers but the results aren't that good. They are supposed to create entertaining and compelling stories with these biases and failing miserably with a leg up on the machines of the human experience. Because it doesn't connect with the audiences human experience. I have a hard time seeing machines being able to connect with a large audience.
My great worry with AI is though that it is able to create behavior modification on an individual level and create the compulsion loops of addiction, since it doesn't require a theory of mind to trapping us in the loop. We have Youtube, Instagram and TikTok (and in some extent Reddit and Twitter/X) where it has happened. But it can't supplant our experience of reality and other people.
More options
Context Copy link