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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Honestly, these histrionics about Altman being some gay supervillain make me like him more, not less. Being crazy and ambitious is a prerequisite to doing great things. And the notion that because he's gay, he doesn't care about anything is ridiculous. If only he could be as pro human as Joseph Stalin (two children), Robert Mugabe (four children) or Genghis Khan (innumerable children)?
And the lack thereof for Peter Thiel should tell you all you need to know, particularly given the fact that he's specifically working on and enabling AI in the contexts of surveillance and defense.
Oh, I like Peter Thiel as well. I don't really know what you mean by "all I need to know".
I mean, look, clearly there are gay men who give themselves over to a life of mindless hedonism. There are straight men who do that too! Most of them do not end up running billion dollar companies at the cutting edge of technology. To an extent, Sam Altman might see AI as his "baby". In that sense he is probably not that different to many other CEOs or founder-owners who see their company as their baby, or artists seeing their art as their baby, or anything. But that's something quite different from being a hedonist or a short termist or a misanthrope. Many parents would set the world on fire to keep their babies warm. That doesn't make them misanthropes or short termists.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Speak plainly and without the sarcastic faux-irony.
I honestly don't see what's not plain about my post. There are plenty of examples of straight men with children who have done abominable things, and I have given some of them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is a pretty uncharitable take, combined with a warping of the previously offered arguments, garnished with hyperbole.
Altman's being gay isn't in an of itself the issues. It's part of the larger concept that he has no direct attachment to the future outside of his own abstracted philosophy. Children ground you to the future for a bunch of obvious reasons. If you don't have them, and show no signs of wanting them, then it's reasonable to ask "well, how do you see your duty, if any, to the future?" Without a ready and familiar moral framework, that's pretty big open question. Combine this with the other available data we have on Altman's maneuverings and power plays and you start to develop a good sense that he's amoral to leaning nihilist / misanthropic.
Your use of Stalin, Mugabe, and Khan is just silly debate club tactics. Okay, bro, should I just create a counter list of obviously amazing people who also had kids? Do we want to try and tally all of that up?
Engage with the argument in its steel man form and in good faith. It's better for everyone.
More options
Context Copy link
The better argument IMO is that psychedelic use (which he's admitted to, perhaps multiple times?) can absolutely fry certain important parts of your brain, including things like risk aversion. Especially if he started with a less-than-healthy amount of risk aversion.
More options
Context Copy link
Stalin had four children (he adopted the son of his best friend).
Artyom Sergeyev (the adopted) made a military career and staid a life long admirer of Stalin. His last words in 2008 were according to the obituary of the Guardian a proud "I serve the Soviet Union".
Yakov Dzhugashvili (eldest and half brother to the other two) was the abandoned son, who Stalin refused to pow exchange and who surprised his German captors by dying through running into an electric fence.
Vasily Stalin was the cocky drunk womanizer we see in the satirical movie Death of Stalin. He was imprisoned by the communists after his father’s death.
Svetlana was the dearly loved daughter who got political asylum in the United States in the 60s and then got a bit unhinged trying out all the religions.
Ah, my mistake. I should have remembered Yakov, but I didn't know about Artyom.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’m not saying that no parents are short-termist psychopaths, I’m saying that no childfree people aren’t short-termist psychopaths.
Outsourcing the necessary work of (both literal and figurative) species reproduction to god-knows-who (and in all likelihood it’s to 7-kids-per-woman educationless Third Worlders) is a rather spectacular indicator that you Just Don’t Give A Shit, no matter what prosocial rhetoric might come out of your mouth.
Too inflammatory and general to just be asserted as a hot take. Literally 100% of childfree people are short-termist psychopaths? The rest of your post is pretty bad too.
Phew you're working overtime on this thread.
He always is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
George Washington did not have kids. I kind of agree with you in general, that the recent trend of choosing fur babies instead of human children is alarming. But I think there is a huge difference between people who make a deliberate choice to go without kids and those who are infertile or homosexual.
People who cannot have a biological legacy seek other ways to leave a legacy. Many of the greatest people in history had no children. It's the people who seem to have no desire to leave a legacy of any kind behind that bother me the most.
I was reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, in which the Earth loses its biosphere, and reflected on the absurdity of a universe without intelligent life. Imagine a universe that existed, with particles bouncing around, planets forming, and no one to witness it the whole time before it crunched down to nothing again. It just strikes me as absurd! Intelligent life is an obvious good, and yet there are people who don't think so. People who think that humans have messed up nature, instead of being the salt that gave it value in the first place. People who want humans gone (even without us creating an intelligence after us.)
(Edit: I don't mean that most fur-baby people think this way explicitly. Most don't ever reflect on it. And that kind of makes it worse in my view. It's in the air they breathe.)
Sam Altman at least isn't like that. He does want to leave behind an intelligent legacy, just not a human legacy. And that is disturbing, but I don't think it's the same kind of disturbing that is afflicting the middle class.
George married Martha after she had been widowed with kids. They absolutely tried to conceive more but could not. Meanwhile, George raised Martha's kids as if they were his own. Between his stepchildren, his plantation, and his slaves, Washington had a very busy homelife, and probably would not have imagined himself as having to compensate with his legacy.
Like I said, there is a huge difference between people who choose to be childless and those who are infertile.
I am making a distinction between biological legacy, which George Washington doesn't have, with his "effort" legacy which includes the country and his step children.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Plenty of work is outsourced by all of us to god-knows-who, including work that is much more necessary in both short- and long-term than 2.1 white TFR. Perhaps not you, if you grow your own food, spin and weave your own clothes, mine and smelt your own ore, source your own electricity and defend your own border, all at once.
Besides, by all accounts it is not normal for a human being to care about species reproduction on the global level for you to call one who doesn't a "psychopath". It is not "necessary work", but a purely selfish genetic drive that doesn't work particularly well.
Disagree here. Someone who doesn't mind the extinction of the human race (and especially the worthiest parts of it) is deeply broken and shouldn't be trusted. I probably wouldn't use the word 'psychopath' but the sentiment remains the same. (And by 'the best parts of it' I mean human potentials. If aliens said "We're going to keep humans alive in a zoo but dial everyone down to 60 IQ and give them toys to keep them occupied", well, that wouldn't fly for me either.)
As to 'purely selfish genetic drive' I assume you mean selfish on the part of the genes? Feel free to correct me if not. But if so, I'm confused as to what alternatives you can imagine. Can someone not value aspects of human experience without immediate concern for specific genes?
I think there is a vast gulf between 'I don't want to have kids for whatever reason, and if a sufficient number of people feel the same way, I am fine with humanity slowly fading' and 'fuck all humans, launch the nukes'.
At the worst, it is more like driving an ICE car in a world where climate change is a thing than personally melting the ice caps.
Yes, but crazy as it sounds I really think it's a matter of quantity, not quality. To be sure, one of those is a much more immediate threat. But both are threats.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link