site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   32185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you're really an SWE, I must presume that you're not speaking in good faith here.

I am also a SWE and have the same experience. The smartest models essentially work as good search engines, an interface between me and the api or language I am working with. No matter the prompt engineering or context window, they are utterly incapable of either reliable or good solutions to any moderately complex problem.

Please understand that I (and @Coolguy1337) have every incentive to leverage AI tools as much as possible. I use them daily for help with coding. If they could actually do my job I'd gladly sit back and let them do it--I already let them do as much of my job as they can.

At sufficient context length and trained to appropriately leverage existing tools, there is nothing in the realm of pure cognitive work they cannot do on human level

You must know this isn't true or we'd have already lost our jobs.

If you're not convinced yet, let me outline my general coding process.

  1. Get specifications
  2. Adapt them to something that makes sense--I am usually the owner of my projects, so what people ask me to do is usually not really what they want.
  3. Research appropriate frameworks/solutions to problems on a general level, such as by looking at similar existing products, if any
  4. Design basic architecture of solution
  5. Begin to implement
  6. Research appropriate solutions to specific problems, implement them
  7. Adjust and iterate according to feedback from client

I'll tell you with confidence that AI can't do a single one of these steps. I know this because I use AI at every step along the way, and while it works ok as a search engine (for example it's great at finding similar existing implementations) it simply does not work at all as an actual problem solver. Not even for any individual step, let alone all the steps together, no matter how much prompt engineering is used.

Seriously, I mean, if you were actually right, I could just retire and give an AI agent my job. At least for the year or so it will take for my industry to catch on. That time could be used to relax or find an AI-proof job. But I'm not worried at all about my job (at least not from AI agents) because I have extensive direct firsthand experience with them and they are still extremely limited.

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