site banner
PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   33254 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

At first I thought there was no way that this is slop, because the writing is so mid. In fact I felt like it was almost similar to my own writing in its medicority. But only the first paragraph was so deceptive.

After delving into the details, it's absolutely, definitely, 100% slop. This line is what sealed the deal:

By applying a 10% national strategic tariff alongside the scaled tariffs, the administration aimed to address trade imbalances effectively. This approach aligns closely with the Richmans' recommendations, suggesting that the administration's trade policies were heavily influenced by their work.

This is exactly the kind of slop that I criticized Dase's slop for when he posted his original controversy sparking post. The slop, when it engages in motivated reasoning, hallucinates connections that don't exist in the source or need more preintroduction. Irregardless of if the rest of the formula aligns with Richman's idea, the connection with 10% is nonexistent and nonsensical. This masterfullty written non-sequitur is exceptionally inhuman. The rest of his "discussion" writing is similarly inhumanly retarded.

the administration aimed to address trade imbalances effectively

We don't know the administration's actual aim, and the entire purpose of this discussion is to speculate on the possibility. This hallucination and detachment from reality is not the result of human thought.

It seems that while aislop is good at summarizing, it is quite bad at argumentation. This probably stems from its training, with the lack of debate and persuasive writing in its pretraining set, as well as posttraining that optimizes for authoritative output (with CYA) and listicles.

Fwiw, several gpt detectors agree strongly that this is slop.

Conclusion: mercilessly nuke this ban evading bastard with impunity and be on the lookout for more of his underhanded tricks.

The slop, when it engages in motivated reasoning, hallucinates connections that don't exist in the source or need more preintroduction.

Interesting! Seems like a good marker beside of a certain style.

It speaks to the modern social attention meta that all we have to do is ctrl + f the more egregious AI tells, and add an introductory paragraph to frame the following text blocks as a first person rather than depersonalized voice.

Also, can I just point out that the actual text block is just... inane? It just looks at the percentage differences as a be all and end all effect, with zero consideration for salient factors like composition or even scale. While fine tuning is a frictional exercise, its certainly not so onerous that you need to slap this cursed golem stitched together out of wishful outcomes and deliberate ignorance onto the market.

(lets see AI slop generate THAT)

If we are banning for AI posts can we also ban for "irregardless"? The latter is much more offensive to me!

Unless it is used to mean the opposite of "regardless", as it clearly should?

delving

Well, the ironic thing is that's another perfectly cromulent word somewhat tarnished by Nigerian data annotators ChatGPT.

Aren't we in a time when it's hard to tell the difference between the Trump administration's actual, real, policies and AI-generated slop? These days actual politicians, too, use LLMs.

There's a difference between an idea generated by a bot, and writing slop. A simple idea can't itself be slop, as it is simply an idea. Argument, reasoning, and prose can be slop.

So unless the politician or his aides copypasted slop into the policy document, ideating with chatgpt does not pollute the downstream. A bot incepting an idea into a human does not make any thoughts that stem from that idea into inhuman garbage.

So unless the politician or his aides copypasted slop into the policy document

A certain recent tariff policy does come to mind.

You haven't even read it

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