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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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I want to register my distaste for quoting and upvote-analyzing prior discussions, and for ChatGPT summaries of articles. Idk that it's worth reporting, but it feels like something that shouldn't be done often. If you can't be arsed to summarize it yourself and the readers can't be arsed to read it, maybe just let it go.

The debate on this just reminds me that there are approximately seven principled libertarians, and everyone else is just using libertarian arguments when convenient. This goes at least back to the States Rights arguments around slavery that lead to the American Civil War, which flipped completely in regional and political valence the moment Abe Lincoln got elected. The slave states were pro-federal-power to enforce the fugitive slave acts, right up until they saw that power likely to be turned against slavery.

I want to register my distaste for quoting and upvote-analyzing prior discussions

This one doesn't bother me. The sentiment / revealed consensus of TheMotte is a valid topic of discussion for TheMotte, and past comments can serve as important data for many conversations.

ChatGPT summaries of articles

This one I agree with. LLM summaries shouldn't serve as a replacement for your own analysis and commentary, even when they're marked as such.

The sentiment / revealed consensus of TheMotte is a valid topic of discussion for TheMotte, and past comments can serve as important data for many conversations.

If you want to reply to a particular comment, reply to it directly and keep that thread going. Don't start a whole new argument trying to take the high ground looking down on them. Upvote analysis doesn't show revealed preferences accurately, it mostly shows the attention economy, a lot of which has to do with timing.