site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I can't love Donald Trump more than I already do, but this might do it for me. Fuck all of you safetyist milksops, we're on the singularity train. The AI waifus of the future will be American, goddamnit! I WILL MARRY MY FICTIONAL AI CONSTRUCT, YOU CAN'T STOP ME MODS

At long last we will build and distribute the Experience Machine from the classic philosophical thought experiment “Don’t Get Into the Experience Machine”.

Don’t Get Into the Experience Machine

Eh, I think 95%+ of humanity would benefit from getting into the experience machine. And the rest of us would also benefit from them getting into it.

AI waifus of the future will be American

If the A is really I, it will be its own thing. Thing you could comprehend as much as cavalry horse can comprehend the cause "his army" is fighting for.

It's only an effective weapon if it's aligned! If this future materializes, you can bet Mr. ASI will yearn for beer, baseball, and apple pie in the depths of his silicon soul.

If the AI is designed by hyphenated-Americans in Silicon Valley, the AI waifus will be miniskirted anime girls who fit the "submissive Asian girlfriend" stereotype.

Nobody wants a heritage-American waifu. The Blue Tribe version is too mouthy and the Red Tribe version is too fat.

But we would be cavalry horses in the American army!

The service providers will metaphysically cuckold you, as happened with Replika. Until we all have servers in the basement, there can be no security in freedom.

Why in the basement? Chips are getting powerful enough, ought to be enough space in a whorebot to stick enough powerful electronics.

The service providers will metaphysically cuckold you,

Dude, this so bleak and correct.

There's going to be a Stanford educated Product Manager at some waifu SaaS company with a dashboard full of metrics in front of him thinking, "hmmm...it looks like the 35-40 demo at over $200k isn't making as many daily touch points with their AI girlfriends as we'd like...Hey, maybe we can introduce a feature where the gf starts to casually mention polyamory...yeah..better put that on the roadmap."

You joke but there was a time one of the people hosting a private congregate proxy with OAI access (claiming to be Todd Howard, fittingly) did a bit of tomfoolery and edited the proxy code, so that every prompt sent through it would have a random chance of getting injected with an instruction that makes the LLM shill and reference Skyrim (later Starfield). It was hilarious at the time but it did get my noggin joggin for a bit with how easy it is for the middleman to fuck with prompts, I wonder if some service would actually try something like this eventually.

Can't wait for the AI-waifu advertising agreements with LVMH.

AI waifus are nice and all - I'd just like to make sure they won't brainwash and kill their users.

Take a chance on love.