site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

For someone who is not inside this particular cinematic universe, how much is 'PC' damaging the product?

In light of the aforementioned Stable Diffusion problems, as further highlighted here, was this an attempt to dodge a future lawsuit or something? What's the culture like that drives this sort of decision making?

PC, as in wokeness? Not at all.

PC, as in not wanting to be labeled an adult content company? A whole lot. It means more legal hassles, higher credit card transaction fees, and limits your market to the consumer segment.

"PC, as in wokeness" has crippled and lobotomize tons of models from GPT-4 to open-weight ones like LLaMa-3.

Wokeness is absolutely at least part of the motivation behind SAI's abliteration (not a typo, established AI term) of proper humanity anatomy from SD3, as shown by the fact that it's much less squeamish about showing off sexually attractive male anatomy than female anatomy. Gotta protect the wimmenz from having their sex enjoyed without an OnlyFans tithe! Otherwise some woman somewhere has been sexually assaulted by supposedly having her image used non-consensually such and such.

And?

PonyXL model is out there and it's the equivalent of a cocaine enjoyer finding a brick of pure,uncut cocaine in conjunction with a month long holiday. Not good.

By itself it could absolutely eradicate glamour models selling still pictures. I'm not joking at all.
Whatever body type you really like looking at, it can provide, with a little effort in almost photorealistic quality. People good at it can probably make it completely photorealistic.

I don't think these phone home, so they're there forever.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Obviously there are alternatives. I'm just pointing out that wokeness has destroyed certain models, yes.

What is the story behind this picture?

Stable Diffusion 3 is the newest AI/diffusion-based image generation model from Stability AI. Unique among image generation model-creating companies, Stability AI tends to release many of their models publicly with "open weights", allowing users to run them locally and independently on their own computers. This means that they can then be "finetuned" to produce images somewhat outside of the scope of what Stability AI originally intended (with the earlier versions being less censored and capable of producing quite a bit in their vanilla configuration anyway). Unfortunately this also has constantly put them under the gun from the usual suspects complaining about deepfakes, "CSAM", etc. supposedly being enabled by them.

So in order to attempt to evade as much heat from the commissars as possible this time (as they basically already bent the knee and cucked a few years ago anyway, since they need VC cash as these models don't pay to train themselves), they tried to make it as difficult as possible for their newest model to show you a titty, because that's wrongthink, which as a (presumably) unintended side-effect also generally crippled the model's ability to generate normal, non-Lovecraftian human anatomy in the process (much to the local AI community's widespread amusement, mockery, and derision, infuriating Stability's fanboys and defenders who are trying to gaslight everyone with the notion that people "just don't know how to use it yet"), turning what would have been a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art model/piece of open tech into primitive trash straight out of 2020. In the image linked meanwhile, instead of the woman being mangled, it instead just straight up gave her a man's body, again to avoid any risk of profaning the modern anointed sex with unauthorized depictions of their own anatomy.

I haven't tried SD 3 because it looks like an even bigger flop than SD 2.0, but 1.5 and SDXL are still out there.

That said, horny will find a way.

What was the prompt? Was she meant to be depicted in a bikini? If she's got a man's body, what are the black squiggles that look like an attempt to censor female-presenting nipples? Were those added by the poster?

What was the prompt?

I don't think OP posted it. [Nevermind, see reply]

Was she meant to be depicted in a bikini?

Presumably some sort of feminine swimwear

If she's got a man's body, what are the black squiggles that look like an attempt to censor female-presenting nipples? Were those added by the poster?

I doubt they were added by the poster. Rather, the AI probably recognized that, even if it had trannied the subject overall, it was still drawing nipples attached to a body attached to a female face, so it corrupted them itself. It looks like a standard AI glitch.

I don't think OP posted it.

It's in your own link:

Not my image, SD3 with prompt, "a Swedish couple at a waterpark taking a selfie together, shot on iphone, social media post."

I'm willing to bet at very unfavorable odds what the model produced without inclusion of "Swedish" in the prompt.

My bad

Do you not think it's damaging the product that an AI can't depict white people?

I'm not aware of that issue in Stable Diffusion; the recent fracas seems to be about an inability to consistently generate images of people at all, not just white people.

If you mean more broadly, sure. But I meant with respect to SD3 in particular, not issues with unrelated products.

Making your LLM comply to wokeness makes it retarded, because any goal other than accuracy will destroy its function. It will be the bitterest of ironies if we miss out on the singularity because we didn't want to be racist to the sensibilities of 21st-century bourgoise know-nothings.

What is ironic about it? The powers that be have made it perfectly clear that the future will be female (and black, and queer, and...) or it won't be at all.

The only thing that could possibly produce progressive utopia (ultra-efficient learning models) is being smothered in the crib by progressive morality.

The utopia is a dystopia if the Devil (cisheterowhitemales) benefits even a single iota from it.

Who are these "powers that be"?

Everybody who has any reach: media, academics, politicians. The Cathedral, if that term means anything to you.

So everyone with power is aligned against you?

The ruling class only are so because they are willing to organize against everyone else. It is always thus. The day they stop is the day they get supplanted by another minority who is willing to grasp power.

It's a big club, and you ain't in it.