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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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The best way to understand people on the other side of a culture war issue is to start from the assumption that they really do genuinely believe what they say they believe.

I believe in the virtue of charity, but - come on. Do you really think that a person's private motivations for being in favour of/opposed to X are identical to their publicly stated motivations more often than not? At every point on the political spectrum?

Also, people who have objections to AI painting also tend to have objections to AI music and AI voice acting, even if those areas don't overlap with their personal skill set. Which is evidence that the objections are principled rather than merely opportunistic.

Alternatively, they believe (correctly, in my view) that generative AI is a war with multiple fronts, and if you want to win a war you have to win it on all of these fronts lest you fall victim to a rearguard action down the line. If AI visual art was banned but AI voice acting was seen as fair game, it's only a matter of time before lots of people start noticing that this seems kind of arbitrary and unfair.

Do you really think that a person's private motivations for being in favour of/opposed to X are identical to their publicly stated motivations more often than not? At every point on the political spectrum?

Well, it gets very complicated. People can be unaware of their own motivations, they can believe one thing for multiple different reasons, they can tell half-truths, they can believe something one day and not believe it the next.

I would just say that, as a general methodological principle, one should start by trying to find where the authentic principled disagreements are, rather than immediately jumping to cynical conclusions.

If AI visual art was banned but AI voice acting was seen as fair game, it's only a matter of time before lots of people start noticing that this seems kind of arbitrary and unfair.

Sure. But this isn't a psychologically realistic model of AI detractors. I assure you that the people who feel passionately about AI visual art feel equally passionately about voice acting.