site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I had seen the phrase show up two times, maybe three, in the thread and it seemed a little too systemic for me not to mention it. It's all about the "context window", and yes it's true that LLMs are very sensitive to that (sometimes in a helpful, human way but not always) (and aside from of course the sometimes clumsy attempts at making the output PC). A fun example is I put your version of the question (which frankly I consider to be slightly more of a leading question due to the word "native" having strong connotations, but to some extent all LLM questions are leading, so what can you do) into chatbot arena. I got one answer that said not usually, but sometimes for individuals in "years and decades" maybe (and gave some context about the "Windrush generation" who came in the 50s and 60s), and a second answer that said it would probably be offensive, briefly mentioned it might be occasionally accurate, but then ended by saying that using the term would be a "microaggression". The first turned out to be a ChatGPT variant like you used, and the second was Gemini (lol). I still think my question phrasing gets more to the meat of the issue, but yeah, you can only get so far with LLMs. Asking "If we're having a conversation about immigration policy, and someone started talking about "recent" immigrants, what do you think would count as "recent"?" produced yet another answer that said usually 1-3 years and sometimes 5-10, and a second answer that basically said "bro that's actually super duper subjective, here's some things that might influence that". *shrugs*

I still think it's misleading. The news articles we're usually slinging around here usually employ the phrase to mean a few years at most. If "recent" introduces a significant misunderstanding, doesn't offer any advantages over the more generic "immigrant", and a better alternative "second-generation immigrant" exists, to me that's three strikes.

This is a little off topic, but along the lines of thought about how good arguments sometimes lose their power over time.... I actually do give good stock to the theory that CBT specifically as a psychiatric tool has lost a lot of its effectiveness because it's seeped into the water of the common understanding and provides almost a type of immunity to it.