culture war roundup
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
Again, why is the onus on the men to settle, here?
Because female bodies have value, and male bodies do not. You belong to the less valuable half of the human species. We just had a whole ass thread on this.
Although it should be pointed out, said thread also included a post from a woman who said that she felt like she's the one who has to settle, so, maybe the grass on the other side isn't as green as you think it is.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
4d ago
The two most interesting motte posts that shaped my views on the dating world were one by a poster who I don't think posts here any more, who made an argument that the sexual revolution can't be inherently responsible for the male-female happiness gap because such a large gap is present only in the United States and not in Europe, where the revolution happened even more strongly; and @Terracotta linking a chart that showed the massive climb in obesity in the US, suggesting that if you're looking for a woman who does not qualify as obese or overweight, you're limited to the top 25% of women -- who, of course, are interested in similarly-top men.
Both of these convinced me something funky is going on in the US in particular, and that the obesity crisis, as well as general physical fitness (young men don't have muscle like they used to), are responsible for the unique unhappiness of American dating.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
Of course, I keep pointing this out to @Primaprimaprima, and they keep ignoring the point to drill down to individual solutions, which as we see are just not viable.
Bit of an odd way of phrasing it, considering I just wrote a post a few days ago where I said "we need to look at structural factors for the downturn in dating and not just individual factors".
So why, in spite of that, do you perhaps perceive that I still put a strong emphasis on individual factors?
One of my biggest pet peeves is whining. I can't stand whining. I'm empathetic to a great many things, I pride myself on my ability to consider things from other people's perspectives in fact, but even then, my sympathy has limits. And one of the fastest ways to make me lose sympathy for your cause is for you to start whining about it. We've all got a sob story, and rare is the stranger who will care about yours.
There's a very fine line between whining, and suffering just the right amount of righteous indignation so that you're actually motivated to go out and do something about what's bothering you. A very fine line indeed. It's a tough line to navigate, it requires judgement. We would never be motivated to change anything at all if we didn't suffer some sort of emotional wound. And "doing something" may, indeed, involve enlisting other people to our cause. But you have to thread the needle where you manage to do all that without being a bitch about it.
I'm not criticizing lonely men from the outside. I'm on the inside with all of you! I have a long history of being spectacularly unsuccessful with women. Like, actually embarrassing shit that I still cringe about when I remember years later. I'm a weirdo autist, I can't hold a normal conversation with a normal human. Women, predictably, find these traits repellent. So I know what it's like to suffer.
But I don't just go bitch and moan in the corner about how the world's unfair and how people should like me more and how we need "communism for pussy" as @HughCaulk so eloquently put it. What I do instead is I look in the mirror and say, "I'm a weirdo autist. That's not going to change. That's what we have to work with. So it's time to figure out how to make the best of that, rather than getting all mopey about it."
You are, apparently, suffering from some financial troubles. I'm genuinely sorry to hear that. But there are lots of poor people who fuck, y'know? There are poor people fucking right now, as we speak. There are even poor people in committed long term relationships. You could be one of them. What's stopping you?
It always comes back to your attitude, y'know? Forget about the structural and the individual and the historical and the metapsychological and whatever the fuck else it is. Think about your attitude first. Are you happy with your attitude, or are you being a bitch? Start there.
When the entire world is experience a massive decline in relationship formation simultaneously, I think complaints and concern are merited, and the people who are claiming disbelief are in fact being... obtuse.
Y'all start sounding like boomers saying "sharpen up your resume and go and give the hiring manager a firm handshake."
Everyone seems to easily admit that the job market is harder on new entrants than it used to be, and is dysfunctional for the average person. Most would admit that the housing market is WAY harsher on new entrants than before, and is extremely distorted.
Most people can even acknowledge this is due to broad factors that distort those markets, NOT individual action.
But try to say the same thing about the dating market, and they immediately go "Well YOU must be doing something wrong."
Nah bro. You're just being a spiritual boomer.
Of course, I keep pointing this out to @Primaprimaprima, and they keep ignoring the point to drill down to individual solutions, which as we see are just not viable.
faceh
4d ago
The idea that the woman would spend 4-6 years in tertiary education and come into the relationship with $15-50k in debt is a pretty new innovation though. Only about 30 years old, even.
Which is why I think attacking that particular factor might bear fruit, although women will flip out about it.
The thing that REALLY gets me is that financial troubles are easier to weather with a partner. It's easier to build wealth with a financially sensible co-tenant, even if you aren't joining all your funds together. It just is, by any sane approach.
So guys who are trying to build wealth in order to become worthy of a woman are, BY SHEER DEFINITION, going to take longer than usual to build that wealth and thus will be dating much later in life, missing out on vital experience and still ending up poorer overall.
I'm pretty much moved on from my Ex, but every time I think about how much more financially better off we'd be if she had stuck around I cringe in mild mental pain.
Previously we could split our approximately $2200/month basic living expenses down the middle. And split chores, and helped out with basic stuff like watching the dogs (instead of paying for boarding) or splitting food deliveries and such.
Upon her leaving, I immediately went from shouldering $1100/month in living expenses to just about the whole $2200. In addition, she is now going to have to shoulder a $1300-1600/month for her own separate living expenses.
Granted I could have downsized, and I didn't, but at least now I'm almost immune to lifestyle inflation, can't afford to upsize!
So I, personally, am now $14,000+/year poorer than I would have been in the counterfactual world where she stayed.
Between the two of us, we're collectively like $24,000+/year poorer than we'd have been than if we'd continued splitting expenses.
There's a lot of stuff that could have been done with that money. I guess in a Keynesian sense that having that extra economic 'activity' is somehow better overall, maybe. But there's no doubt that we'd both be wealthier and have a better financial future.
So this logic that "you have to have your own life together and be completely financially independent before you seriously start dating", which is peddled to women AND men, is ass-backwards from my perspective.
Also, I've seen enough Caleb Hammer episodes to know plenty of people will NEVER. EVER. get to that point.
Its financially sensible to find someone reliable earlier on to help contribute to your mutual growth. That's a big point to getting married at all.
And as per usual, I'm starting to lose my mind when the response to this is to put more and more pressure on men to step up, without examining what the actual incentives are, and why the problem is so widespread.
(add in the fact that women are increasingly likely to have a student debt burden as well, so the man will be paying for THAT too!)
Like you say:
This no longer sounds like a problem that can be fixed merely through self-improvement.
Its not viable, UNLESS there is more incentive/pressure on women to date guys who aren't yet financially independent but have all green flags otherwise.
Which is to say, pressure women to settle, and settle earlier. But good fackin' luck finding any voice saying anything like that, meanwhile the amplified message is "don't ever lower your standards girlie, in fact, raise them. If you can't find what you're looking for its just proof that you're too good for this world. You owe nothing to men, and their concerns don't matter."
The system is broken and pretending that individual actions can fix it is, frankly, delusional.
Yep. But saying it out loud marks you as lower status, "hah, this guy is poor and can't get bitches." Well maybe, but a bunch of us are poor and can't get bitches, and if we can't talk about the problem it'll get worse for everyone.
When do we admit the current advice is insufficient?
rayon
waifutech enthusiast
4d ago
To think all the man vs bear discourse was focus testing all along...
faceh
5d ago
It's priced in for me, and I agree that it likely won't be catastrophic.
I think we're already part of the catastrophe in motion and this is just the thing that pushes our head fully underwater. We had a similar conversation not too long ago in the context of flesh and blood women and companionship.
Overall this actually gels with some previous information I've heard that Musk is kind of going full accelerationist. May as well get this particular bottleneck over with.
Hahaha yes, YES! Finally I can dust off my SICKOS shirt. Your move, Anthropic.
Factually, I concur with posters below that actually this isn't markedly different, and in some ways more basic, than the already possible setups for AI gooning (if the system prompt posted on X is real). Not a big fan of the voice either tbqh, although the model rigging seems good, and manic pixie Amane-Misa-at-home is a more natural fit for an AI waifu at a casual glance than whatever eldritch horrors Replika has. I'll likewise point out that while this incarnation is obviously aimed at men, the potential for female appeal is much bigger, and is in fact only a model/voice swap and a system prompt away. Not sure who is actually going to pay $300/mo for it however, the porn equivalent is literally free, and an equivalent ai gf via OR or something is much cheaper if a hassle to set up. Normies hate trivial inconveniences almost as much as steep price tags, I don't think this is how you get buy-in from them, but I assume this is literally the first step and we'll see further developments.
Regardless of technical chops, the real value here is of course exposure, a first decent shot at normiefying the whole edifice. Elon may be a fake gamer, the gravest insult I can levy against my fellow man, but fringe interests make for strange bedfellows, and I'm glad to see the first public attempts at rather literal waifutech make the twitterati seethe. I know what I'm following for the next few days. Though I agree with the OP that the whole Mecha-Hitler brouhaha was 100% a publicity psyop in hindsight, the timing and subject matter is too conspicuous. Based?
On another note, I think that people invoking the Torment Nexus are kind of missing the point. I don't think "authentic" humans are threatened (NB: screeching xitter denizens not considered human authentic). Even the most literal goonette femcel I know consistently finds much more joy in talking/RPing with an actual human over a chatbot, by a rather wide margin, even if the chatbot wins out on 24/7 availability.
Instead, I think the real horror potential here is - may Allah forgive me for uttering this word - gacha games, or more broadly chatbot integration and monetization. I've recently gotten into Girls Frontline 2, and seeing the manic pixie grok gf clicked something together in my head. I can already see the framework, the jewish tricks are practically manifesting before my eyes: gacha girls have affinity/bond levels (here increased by gifts = in-game loot), a certain level of bond unlocks the chatbot functionality with the given waifu, further levels relax the guardrails or change the system prompt (reflecting increased affection)... you get the gist. My cai/Chub experience tells me gacha girls are some of the most popular interlocutors anyway, so the match is eminently natural.
From there the potential for added deviltry is almost limitless:
- obviously, 3d model visibly reacting to prompts like not-Amane-Misa here
- outfits for said 3d model, those are already a gacha staple but maybe some kind of added animations or different "backgrounds"/environments for the chatbot part? (i.e some hypothetical maid costume, with some abstract cafe setting written into the chatbot's system prompt if the costume is on?)
- limit the amount of prompts per day (vantablack ninth circle hell tier: offer paid refreshes)
- lock explicit NSFW behind a paid item (e.g. GFL2 has a
marriageCovenant mechanic, the ring is single-use and costs $5) - give the waifus some kind of actual stat boosts for "cheering them up" before gameplay, grading incoming user prompts to this end like Grok seemingly does (I eagerly await the inevitable rizz meta guides on how to best word your prompts for the optimal boost)
- some kind of voice command integration built on top as an afterthought? GFL2 is turn-based xcom-lite so I imagine voice commands can work given an autistic enough framework under the hood
Granted I sense the danger of metaphysical cuckoldry Chevrolet-tier oopsies and general bad press here, a man in pursuit of his coom is endlessly inventive, but as long as the chatbot is sufficiently insulated on the backend (also just imposing harsh character limits already neuters most prompt engineering) I think this can work. Though it probably won't be a Chinese gacha given the dangerously free-form nature of chatbots, and I don't think anyone else is deranged bold enough to try.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
5d ago
My apologies. I was thinking of this related thread, and it's not you I was arguing with.
(Some might even call the mistake I made a hallucination, hmm)
Not in the current form.
I'm dedicated to pursuing a quality of "authenticity," which I don't have perfectly defined, but definitely requires that my partner be a real human, with 'natural' skin, brain tissue, and standard human DNA. The thing that I'm ACTUALLY wired to find attractive, not something that mimics those things closely enough to pass a basic inspection. Related to why I don't really like Tattoos on women.
In many ways, we are descending into my version of hell, where finding meaningful connection with other humans is harder than is needs to be, where women are more focused on careers and adventures, at the expense of their own happiness, than even trying to find joy in bearing and raising kids, where men are fundamentally purposeless and nobody bothers to even try to create a purpose for them, and everybody is busy trying to live at the expense of everyone else, b/c coordinating to create that better future is HARD and we aren't able to see past the short term consequences of these actions. But I can, and it seems increasingly obvious where this is trending. And nobody with power is doing much about it.
And its all being patched over with digital (i.e. INAUTHENTIC) simulacrum that sort of satisfy the various urges without really fulfilling the purpose for which each urge exists, and these experiences that are simply insufficient to make you happy if you care to look and notice the cracks in their facade.
All the worse because I can clearly imagine a better set of circumstances that is happier for everyone, including myself, and I have a vague idea of how we could get there, but no real clue on how to implement that plan, and thus I am left to scrape by with whatever my individual efforts can achieve.
gattsuru
6d ago
Otherwise, what is 'wrong' with letting the AI fill in that particular gap?
I gotta finish writing up the "the things we needed to hear, from the people who should have been there to say them" bit and its siblings, but :
Don't be nervous, No, don't be nervous
I'm not like other guys who have a surface,
What you girls really need's a soft, fuzzy man
(An atmospheric man) A shimmering puff of indistinct love
What's better than the vague embrace of a soft, fuzzy man?
Superstimulus is a distraction, here. "Better" is a distraction, here. They don't even have to be that good or that smart to be dangerous! The machines can be everything you want, and more critically nothing you don't.
Imagine what happens when you can snap away every trivial inconvenience you saw in a relationship. I don't think it'll be a critical problem for everyone or even necessarily a majority of people, but the people who don't handle it will be in very bad shape, either when the fugue breaks or because it doesn't.
faceh
6d ago
Strong Agree from me.
But now we can get EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED to the Algorithm. or at least, the algorithm's avatar.
Think that over for a second.
Nah, came across it because I'm doing a bit of research regarding my previous prediction about someone making a feature-length AI film.
Trying to get a sense of what is possible and what people are working on.
The one that's really impressive is this one. Full 15 minutes of coherent narrative and mostly consistent visuals.
And ALSO has some ironic things to say about AI replacement of humans.
And I'm feeling pretty good about that prediction:
It took nearly 600 prompts, 12 days (during my free time), and a $500 budget to bring this project to life.
If one guy can make a 15 minute film in 12 days on $500... yeah, someone can spit out a 90 minute one by the end of the year if they work at it, especially if they have a team.
Some days I get the sense that I'm staring into the Abyss willingly. But the Abyss hasn't stared back... yet.
OliveTapenade
6d ago
Late to the party, but that is indeed the thing that frustrates me most. They hint, but when you ask them plain, explicit questions, their responses are usually some variant on 1) evasive non-answer, 2) accuse you of bad faith for asking the question in the first place, or 3) just vanish entirely.
I'm glad when people do give serious answers on provocative topics and I try to appreciate that, even when the answer itself is one that I find pretty unpleasant. But the ones who just refuse to actually say what they think? I think it's pretty cowardly, and probably indicative of an overall lack of intellectual or political seriousness.
Corvos
6d ago
ulyssessword
6d ago
Building off of yesterday's discussion of AI hallucinations, there's a new story about journalist hallucinations. Of course they don't call it that: the journalists "got them wrong" and gave a "false impression" in their articles/tweets instead. They're talking about Alberta's new book ban (pdf of bill) which restricts sexually explicit materials in school libraries. In short, it:
- fully bans explicit sexual content (essentially porn, must be detailed)
- restricts non-explicit sexual content (like above, but not detailed) to grade 10 and up and only if "developmentally appropriate"
- does not restrict non-sexual content (medical, biological, romantic, or by implication)
The journalists were saying that non-sexual content (e.g. handholding) would be restricted like non-explicit sexual content, and therefore be unavailable until grade 10. One even went so far as to hallucinate get something wrong and give people the false impression that he was right and the government edited its releases to fix their mistake, which is why you can't find it now.
Yes, AIs hallucinate, but buddy, have you seen humans? (see also: the "unmarked graves" story (paywalled), where ground penetrating radar anomalies somehow became child remains with no investigation having taken place.) When I set my standards low, it's not because I believe falsehoods are safe, it's because the alternatives aren't great either.
Hot on the heels of failing out of art school and declaring himself the robofuhrer, Grok now has an update that makes him even smarter but less fascist.
And... xAI releases AI companions native to the Grok App.
And holy...
SHIT. It has a NSFW mode. (NSFW, but nothing obscene either) Jiggle Physics Confirmed.
EDIT: Watch this demo then TELL ME this thing isn't going to absolutely mindkill some lonely nerds. Not only can it fake interest in literally any topic you find cool, they nailed the voice tones too.
I'm actually now suspicious that the "Mecha-Hitler" events were a very intentional marketing gambit to ensure that Grok was all over news (and their competitors were not) when they dropped THIS on the unsuspecting public.
This... feels like it will be an inflection point. AI girlfriends (and boyfriends) have already one-shotted some of the more mentally vulnerable of the population. But now we've got one backed by some of the biggest companies in the world, marketed to a mainstream audience.
And designed like a fucking superstimulus.
I've talked about how I feel there are way too many superstimuli around for your average, immature teens and young adults to navigate safely. This... THIS is like introducing a full grown Bengal tiger into the Quokka island.
Forget finding a stack of playboys in the forest or under your dad's bed. Forget stumbling onto PornHub for the first time, if THIS is a teen boy's first encounter with their own sexuality and how it interacts with the female form, how the hell will he ever form a normal relationship with a flesh-and-blood woman? Why would he WANT to?
And what happens when this becomes yet another avenue for serving up ads and draining money from the poor addicted suckers.
This is NOT something parents can be expected to foresee and guide their kids through.
Like I said earlier:
"Who would win, a literal child whose brain hasn't even developed higher reasoning, with a smartphone and internet access, or a remorseless, massive corporation that has spent millions upon millions of dollars optimizing its products and services for extracting money from every single person it gets its clutches on?"
I've felt the looming, ever growing concern for AI's impact on society, jobs, human relationships, and the risk of killing us for a couple years now... but I can at least wrap those prickly thoughts in the soft gauze of the uncertain future. THIS thing sent an immediate shiver up my spine and set off blaring red alarms immediately. Even if THIS is where AI stops improving, we just created a massive filter, an evolutionary bottleneck that basically only the Amish are likely to pass through. Slight hyperbole, but only slight.
Right now the primary obstacle is that it costs $300 a month to run.
But once again, wait until they start serving ads through it as a means of letting the more destitute types get access.
And yes, Elon is already promising to make them real.
Its like we've transcended the movie HER and went straight to Weird Science.
Can't help but think of this classic tweet.
"At long last, we have created the Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator from the Classic Scifi Novel 'For the Love of All That is Holy Never Create a Digital Superstimulus Relationship Simulator.'"
I think I would be sucked in by this if I hadn't developed an actul aversion to Anime-Style women (especially the current gen with the massive eyes) over the years. And they're probably going to cook up something that works for me, too.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
6d ago
An Attempt at Following Up on the User Viewpoint Focus Series
Thanks to @hydroacetylene for 1) the nomination and 2) reminding me to get on it. I followed his excellent template here.
Self-description in Motte Terms
I'm a classical liberal with a keen awareness that the American dream was made for me. In my personal life, I'm a well-paid Texan engineer with an appreciation for firearms. I love America and the American ideal even though I feel it's currently struggling with (what I see as) a particular failure mode of populism.
We enjoy unparalleled material prosperity thanks to strong societal values combined with good initial conditions. That carried us through two centuries of struggle to the top of the world, and now it gives us opportunities to shape the future of mankind. It also reminds us of an obligation not merely to perpetuate the system which got us here, but to spread the benefits to others who are less fortunate.
Yes, this almost certainly makes me one of the most progressive posters still on the site.
I absolutely despise the fascism of pure aesthetics which is so adaptive on social media. Contrarian countersignaling that you'll make the world a worse place because bad things are good, actually. "Tear it all down," "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out"... That's the lowest form of demagoguery.
My girlfriend, whom I love and trust more than anyone, once asked "why do you hang out with these people?" Why am I spending my time on this Earth arguing with people who hate my guts and sneer at the things I value? It's because I believe in the project. I believe that when classical liberalism gets to compete with the fascists and the communards, it comes out looking great. I believe that our model of debate club is a valiant attempt at implementing the liberal ethos of free exchange of ideas. I believe I can win friends and influence people via the political equivalent of betting them that nothing ever happens.
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
Recommended Reading
I'm not going to give a list of published books. Y'all probably know what goes in the classic Western philosophical canon. Plus, and I might not be supposed to mention this, but the vast majority of my model overlaps with what they teach to reasonably smart high schoolers. Perks of subscribing to what's basically our civic religion.
Allow me instead to share a few standout motte posts.
I still think about this post by, I believe, @AshLael. The idea that certain flavors of argument are advantaged against others helps to explain large swathes of the political landscape. It's also part of the reason I'm so invested in maintaining a Debate-heavy space like this one.
Here's a classic bit of Hlynka for those who missed it. While I deeply, deeply disagree with him on lots of things, he was grasping at something that most other users don't quite get.
But I've always had a special place for the strange and wonderful digressions of the Motte. /u/mcjunker's stories, @Dean's policy analysis, all sorts of stuff. One of the best examples has to be this monstrous essay on the aesthetics of jazz. Amazing stuff.
If you have any affinity whatsoever for text-heavy, mechanics-light video games, you should play Disco Elysium. Its Moralintern is a bizarre but excellent commentary on our rules-based international order. Also, it's generally hilarious and poignant.
While I am tempted to namedrop countless other works of fiction, it'd probably be more of a distraction. Ask me on a Friday thread.
Brief Manifesto
Assume your model is not going to work.
Doesn't matter if you're theorizing about politics or international relations or the state of the youth. The very fact that you've taken the time to present it in a forum post is a comorbidity for any number of critical flaws. Maybe it's wildly overcomplicated; maybe it overlooks some basic fact of human psychology. As soon as you introduce your theory, the fine commentariat of the Motte will show up and explain how it's actually stupid.
This is a good thing, because picking holes in ideas is how you get better ideas. (Okay, yes, it's also quality entertainment.) But it might not be fun, and there will be some psychological pressure to insist that nothing is wrong. No. The critics are right, and your grand psychoanalysis is probably bunk. So why not try to get ahead of the curve and figure out what went wrong? What's the first objection someone is going to make when you hit "post"?
This is the difference between arguing to understand vs. arguing to win.
If you want to have a constructive discussion, the single most useful thing you can do is to think about how you might be wrong. It's not easy, I sure don't live up to it as much as I ought to, but I promise. It's worth it.
Ping Me On...
Voting systems. Electoral reform along the lines of single transferable vote is literally my single issue, because I think it's actually a credible path to a more functional government. Seriously, if you know about a way I can act against FPTP, let me know.
Science fiction. Fantasy. Weird hybrids that defy or define genres. I'd like to say I'm pretty well-read in this sense. I certainly enjoy the subject.
Historical trivia of all sorts. Perhaps it's stereotypical for a board like this, but yes, that includes military history and hardware. And while my own collection is still amateurish, I'm always happy to talk about firearms as a hobby, too.
Posts I'm Proud Of
I don't generate a lot of AAQCs, and when I do, I tend to look back with a little embarassment. Something of a tendency towards melodrama. Still, I'm convinced that I was on to something here.
I also feel strongly about my comments on the state of fiction. Media is the first thing to get the 'ol "back in my day" treatment, and especially with modern storage methods, it's so easy to put on rose-tinted glasses. But all sorts of bizarre fiction is out there. Perks of a bigger, faster, more interconnected world. I encourage everyone who thinks modern media sucks and/or is captured by their ideological enemies to go out and find stuff that's just too weird to capture.
This was easier to write and harder to do than I expected.
I'll nominate @Rov_Scam for the next entry.
I don't get your point about "the establishment" in this particular context. Why does it matter if they have power (real or perceived) in regards to whether it's a specific or general group.
It doesn't, I was just saying what a defining characteristic of a group called "the establishment" is. Who identifies as, and who doesn't, who exactly that group includes, etc., doesn't really matter, the point is that anti-establishmentarians don't get to come here, pick the most ridiculous thing said or done by the powers that be, and demand that posters roughly identifying as centrists or "anti populists" defend it as though they have a personal stake in it.
And I'm not defending his post wholesale -- I agree the last bit is presumptuous
I also have some reservations with how it seems like a final warning from stuff like his previous post which didn't deserve a mod action at all.
If you think that's the main problem with that specific post is presumptuousness, or if you think the final warning is result of his previous post only, you're not approaching this in an objective manner. The issue is his constant antagonism.
Under the other post you claim you don't want moderation to aggregate transgressions by ideology, and adjust for that, but rather that you want the same enforcement no matter who the transgression is coming from. I believe this is mostly (adjusted for the mods being only human) what you're getting. You're not going to find another poster exhibiting the same pattern of constant antagonism, which I think you were aware of when you pushed back against my request for examples.
Also, if you think Turok is no worse than the average posters here, and is only getting modded because of rightwing bias, why do you think he got banned from ACX and DSL?
I think personal attacks are far worse for productive conversations, which happen regularly and don't get punished (or even become AAQCs!)
Specifically, which AAQC had a personal attack? Gattsuru's? Can you quote the part that contains the personal attack?
I want to revisit the comparison of AI slop with human slop, and whether AI is currently capable of writing.
I recently came across the most mind numbing and soulless writing in this series of articles: https://www.greenmatters.com/a/andrew-krosofsky . It has all the hallmarks of slop, hundreds of low effort articles, no clear theme, bored and soulless writing, etc. But guess what, it's written by a human! He was also really doing the grind, writing multiple articles per day. I also have receipts because the wayback machine shows his writing years before chatgpt existed: https://web.archive.org/web/20201015131543/https://www.greenmatters.com/a/andrew-krosofsky .
But I noticed something immediately. The writing was obviously human. It didn't have any of that uncanny valley feeling. There are no obvious falsehoods spoken like truth. No hallucinations. And even his worst articles are 1000x better than the typical AI fake news. This just reinforces my understanding:
Even the lowest dregs of the journalistic world write at a higher level than the best cutting edge AI models today.
Now I'm sure the AI bulls here will disagree. So I have 2 challenges for you all:
-
Find a single hallucination in an article written by this author between 2021 and today. There are quite a few, so this should be easy if human writing is unreliable. For the purposes of this, a hallucination is a statement that is both provably false at the time of writing and not supported by a linked source.
-
Demonstrate a technique for an AI model of your choice to reliably copywrite articles of a similar quality, over any arbitrary topic that has reputable sources available. Those articles must not have obvious AI tells, pass AI detection, and have a hallucination rate of less than 1 in 1000.
To put my money where my mouth is, I'll offer a wager of $50 for the first person to complete either of these challenges. But I think the fact that a human who is at the bottom of the journalistic world can handily do this but an AI can't should demonstrate the big gulf between human and AI that still exists.
No_one
7d ago
Dasein has a an interesting take regarding the UAP theater
And one more thought. There has been more rigorous, well-funded scientific investigation of xenobiology than of secret societies, conspiracies and psyops. This asymmetry is interesting. We have learned an awful lot about life and why it'd be hard for life to emerge outside Earth, and nothing in favor of such life. We have seen quite credible examples of conspiracies, and nothing to suggest that better-ran ones are impossible. However, the former remains viable, while interest in the latter has positively plummeted among the educated classes in the last 100+ years. «What if intelligent life beyond Earth, like silicon-based or something, dude, and flying saucers, imagine how it could work» is a respectable enough train of thought: why not indeed, and what's the harm anyway, it's deserving of patronage of eccentric billionaires, academic grants and place in peer-reviewed journals. «What if a well-organized cabal of malicious people manipulates public opinion without legible authority» is a sinful evil idea a libel this idea killed millions shut up stop it or we will erase you from polite society. (Like many taboos (e.g not threatening to throw another party's candidate into jail), it's being violated nowadays, to an extent; the ayy guys say the government lies. The government is not the Cabal, of course; it is known that the government keeps some things secret. But I suppose this does blur the line). Most importantly, though, we do not have a serious theory of conspiracy.
(snip, see the rest at the link)
That said. If there's a single parsimonious theory of a motive for this psyop that I can seriously propose… It's not my «overcapacity» thesis but rather the opposite. I mean the discrediting of the authority of the USG and army and American intelligence apparatus, through this very Bayesian logic, as @Hoffmeister25 demonstrates. The USG is the supreme secular power of the world, – and it's being reduced to some provincial slapstick comedy, instead of carrying itself with the dignity of the sovereign. It does not command respect, mostly just grudging support, on account of the vileness of its competitors. Give this 10 more years. 10 more years of AI shit torrent, 10 more years of long Covid and demented gerontocrats, 10 more years of Trump and Biden dog-faced-pony-soldier show and lurid, Jerry Springer tier gibberish in Congress. If at some point, say, CIA manages to report something truly ludicrous for Americans, physically plausible but shocking – who knows, maybe Mossad quietly installing backdoors into Deepmind and Anthropic AGI superclusters? – it will just be met with shrugs and condescending scowls. Whoever runs this, wants the legitimate authority of the US to end up in the position of the boy who cried wolf, and then collapse without popular support.
Just an idle thought.
ControlsFreak
7d ago
I find this and the discussion below rather fascinating. It's pretty clear from multiple responses, including some of your own, that you don't simply lack willpower. And it's not at all like some folks would have you believe these conversations go down, where there's a bunch of folks (made of straw or something) telling you that you just lack willpower or are a stupid failure or something. Instead, you're trying to self-proclaim a lack of willpower, which is mostly contradicted by all available evidence.
And further, instead, you've not described almost any challenges that in any way really resemble any sort of lack of willpower. Most of the actual challenges you've described are just problems with a variety of known solutions that actually work... and, well, you've also proclaimed that you have an urge to find those sorts of things.
Frankly, as I put it:
There are a bunch of reasons why they don't do it, and that's okay.
I don't think you've quite hit the nail on the head yet for why you don't do it, but I think it's pretty clear that it's not a matter of willpower, and it's probably not really a matter of a couple minor challenges that have a variety of pretty well known solutions, either.
Well this explains a lot about your stated positions.
Makes me realize that I probably turned out as weird as I did because I kind of had a one-foot-in-one-foot out upbringing, where half my family was churchgoing patriotic traditionalists and the other was more... bohemian? And both sides seemed pretty happy with their lives and had things mostly held together.
'How does everyone fit into society' is a question that needs to be answered and if you've already decided personal characteristics are the way to go about it, well...
We've talked about basic life scripts before, and in general I think that demolishing those scripts has made life harder, scarier, more uncertain, less fulfilling for most people. Becoming an adult is difficult enough when there IS a direct example to follow. Now you have to do it while explicitly being told there is no one 'right way' to go about it.
When every single day, month, year of your life feels like you're having to hack through uncharted wilderness, and determine your location via a hand-drawn map and dead-reckoning, then yeah you're going to keep second-guessing a lot of decisions and live in constant fear of bear attacks, vs. staying on a well-beaten, marked, and lit pathway. (I overstate the analogy just to make a point).
And as you note, people who LARP Conservativism don't really push a RETVRN to such life scripts, or have a plan for bringing those scripts back. Because telling your viewers "go to church, follow the bible, and accept your given place and role in life without much complaint" is so utterly uncool and, for an influencer, self-defeating. If the audience does that they will start listening to their pastor more than you, right?
In fact, now I think about it: the term "Conservative Influencer" is almost a contradiction.
I don't think this mentality can come back from the government, but only from intermediating institutions that democrats would like to punish for doing their job and pushing this. But this is the key difference; most adults have probably worked it out for themselves but nobody ever says it out loud.
Agreed. But both the right and the left seem to have converged on the idea that the government ought to be the single wellspring from which all morality and practical guidance comes. What to eat, what to wear, how to arrange your affairs.
Again, overstating the case. I have spent a good portion of my adult life groping around for SOME institution, group, maybe even (ugh) ideology that would give me a provably reliable path towards a better life. But very explicitly not wanting to fall into a cult.
The only one that hasn't let me down in some egregious way, and has remained a steadying force in life is, no shit, my martial arts gym.
The gym I teach at provides the following:
- A strong routine. The schedule for classes has been the same for years and years.
- A curriculum of new material to learn (I've mastered basically all of it, but that just lets me reach out and find new stuff)
- A great social group of generally good, reliable people. (If they weren't good and reliable, they wouldn't stick it out. This stuff is HARD).
- A certain amount of moral instruction: "We are teaching you to inflict physical harm on your fellow human, here are the conditions under which you can do so or should do so."
- A system for advancement (there are tests on a regular schedule, and you earn higher belts as you go).
- Which also allows for a benevolent soft hierarchy. Higher belts are more experienced (and theoretically more dangerous) and thus command some respect, but they have a reciprocal duty to help lower belts learn faster. And nobody thinks, for example, a blue belt has the authority to ORDER a yellow belt to do something.
- Also fun.
I'd guess this checks a lot of the boxes for people who want to be able to follow instructions and see improvement in their life circumstances and be rewarded for the progress. There was a period of time where I think Corporations tried to sort of provide that to employees to make them more productive, but the underlying loyalty that requires has dissipated.
Church is still there, but good luck picking one that isn't compromised by political activism or that isn't mostly full of LARPers.
That seems to leave most people with joining up with political activism or getting into politics. Which tends to make everything worse.
Of course, this is women sabotaging women.
We will admit it by means of, or coincident with, a concerted effort from women such that women's tears stop winning in the marketplace of ideas. Men can't do that alone; this is a problem women have to solve for women.
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