site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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.

20
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yeah, but worth considering the inconvenience involved in having to track which rights you have purchased to which media, especially if you're a small business using a bunch of them. AI art lacks this issue, since you know nobody has the rights to the image because it's unique.

And people using stock images are people who are, for the most part, running small businesses, not consumers who we might expect to be lazy.

AI art lacks this issue, since you know nobody has the rights to the image because it's unique.

Not necessarily. AI art often involves seed images which may be copyright. Also, the person who produced the AI art my still try to claim copyright.

Ah, an unstated but crucial assumption in the post was that you personally the one who created the image. it's true, AI images grabbed off of a stock website are basically similar to regular stock images in all relevant respects.

There is something of FUD campaign going on with AI art property rights based on the idea of the model and model produced works being derivative from the works they were trained on. You've probably seen some of the comments reason along those lines in earlier threads here. Of course with IP rights, buying a right from someone who may themselves not have that right does not fully protect the purchaser, but that aspect is less well advertised so it may still seem worthwhile to purchase a license from a known entity.

There is something of FUD campaign going on with AI art property rights based on the idea of the model and model produced works being derivative from the works they were trained on.

IANAL, but I don't see that as FUD, I see it as an open legal question.

Ofc judges can decide whatever. But there's no way they're going to side with the artists, destroying AI tech. It'd be just yielding to China.

Ignoring practicalities, it just doesn't make any sense. Why couldn't you train AI on copyrighted works while still able to train your own biological neural network on them?

Have you tried to reproduce a copyrighted photo using only the latent representations stored in your biological network?

While biological networks and computer models have some similarities in abstract, in practice there are crucial differences.

it does seem fair to not want to be the test legal case for AI art

seems fair. I do think there's also a thing where it's not clear yet how suing someone for using ai art works since the way it works for art now is that if you use an image you don't have rights to, the way that shakes out is the person who originally made the image sues you for damages (and they can prove they made the image because they presumably have some timestamped evidence indicating so).

But who would be responsible for noticing and suing somebody who made an image with an AI trained on copyrighted images? How would they know it was AI generated? Sure, subpoena a chain of custody for the image, fine. How are you going to get a judge to agree with you that this piece of art looks like it was generated on copyrighted images if the image itself does not contain those images? Gotta get the judge onboard to get the subpoena.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats