site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   34546 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I believe that the only way to survive the technological advancements for me, even if only for a vanishingly small part of me, is by being subsumed into a giant blob consisting of the humanity melted whole, so I welcome this development.

I believe that the only way to survive is to not do that and avoid it by any means necessary. Humanity shall endure as humanity, or shall not endure. Subsuming oneself into a larger whole that dissolves one's individuality isn't transcendence, it is death.

I guess we'll meet on the battlefield.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150925003558id_/http://www.tgsa-comic.com/comics/002.jpg

Add a looming colossus that dims the sun in the background (to represent ASI), and there you have it.

(Or maybe the sun is dimming as its covered by a Dyson Swarm. Who knows, it's the Singularity baby).

I can respect the "shall not endure" position, but I'm a coward myself.

Why is destroying yourself in the way you described any better than suicide?

Because it's only 99.9% of death.

That's an awful lot of the way to death! Then why not just live your life? Do you think that all normal humans are about to be exterminated within your lifetime?

It's likely. I think that the probability of that is exactly the same, and not by a coincidence, of an AGI arriving within my lifetime. There are only two reasons for the people with power to keep the people without around: utility and threat, and both will be negated by it.

Not by coincidence? Why should those match?

I think many people with power care for those without.

Sorry, it's still kind of crazy to me that you describe your preferred path as 99.9% as bad as simple destruction. If that's still your preference, that's a remarkably strong confidence that you'd be destroyed otherwise.

It was a rhetorical statement, not a mathematical one. Meaning that if there is an AGI, the people in control of it don't stand to gain anything from the rest of us existing, and don't risk anything from eliminating the rest of us. Since this course and a global merge are both results of technology, I say that if the science marches on, the latter option is far more preferable to me. If it doesn't, then that opinion is irrelevant anyway.

More comments

I wish I could convince you that cowardice is an inferior option to total resistance, but I believe Heidt when he says that people are all wired to value different things for evolutionary purposes.

If this turns out to be good and not actually corrupt humanity in any way, I get to be an irrelevant pariah and you get to have progressed humanity further.

If this turns out to be a terrible idea, you get to zombify yourself and I get to try to make sure the species survives.

I just hope that nature's apparent allocation of 20% of inflexible contrarians is always enough to let us avoid dire consequences.

If anyone here is still perplexed as to why Marxism has historically been such a popular ideology, and remains such a popular ideology: this is why. This same fundamental desire will always continue to reemerge in various forms, as a natural biological response to suffering: the yearning to be freed of the burden of differentiated subjectivity, the transcendence of the individual/collective distinction, a suicide without death. The only difference between singulatarianism and Marxism is that today's transhumanists think the Soviets were too early; they jumped the gun, the necessary scientific advancements hadn't materialized yet. But the underlying impulse is the same.

Marxism originated because brutal working conditions of the proletariat in Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution combined with dense cities and mass media that enabled easy organizing of labor movements. It had little or nothing to do with "the burden of differentiated subjectivity, the transcendence of the individual/collective distinction, a suicide without death". Labor movements did attempt to abolish the individual/collective distinction but this was a tactic, it was not the emotional motivation of the movements. There are of course communists whose motivations are mainly psychological, and there always have been, but they are more common now than they used to be, for the simple reason that working conditions have improved to the point, and states' surveillance capacities have increased to the point, that workers are both much less motivated to revolt than before, and have less chance of success. One should not believe that Marxism as a historical phenomenon has been mainly motivated by some sort of singularitarian-esque drive. Certainly Marxists have always had their own utopian eschatology, but it has never been the core emotional driving force of the movement. If it was, then improved working conditions would not have taken the wind out of labor's sails nearly as much as they did. The core driving force behind Marxism, whenever and whereever it is a vital force and not just an intellectual plaything for bright outcasts, is material poverty.

The appeal to the plebs is really irrelevant. You can convince the urban proletariat of anything. The draw to the disaffected bourgeois and occasionally even upper classes is more interesting.

The appeal to the plebs is the decisive factor, since without massive emotional momentum for economic change among the plebs, the intellectuals would have just sat around cafes arguing like they do now, instead of leading actually vital, powerful leftist movements.

Because I don't expect the technology to freeze at its current position is the reason why I want a suicide without death. It's the best I can hope for. The only other option is whiling away in my pod munching on the bugs, waiting for the MAID bots to come for me. But if we are all connected, even if my share is 10^-12, they might not euthanize me. I'm not cutting off my left hand, despite it being the left one.

Let me guess: you just finished watching Evangelion for the first time?

You're twenty years late. The irony is that in Eva it was SEELE, the most powerful people, who wanted to merge everyone, when in the real life it is the fact that with the course of the progress I will have no use and pose no threat to the powers that be is what guarantees my unnatural demise.

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