@Sinity comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 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.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Sinity 1yr ago

Suppose we naively equalize this power, or just adapt current political institutions to it, such that in a few generations a plebeian can secure resources to start his own copyclan and bite off some share of the light cone. What would they make of it? Would they not devolve into puddles of high-maintenance hedonium? Or, worse, would they not spill into ugly rat races over artificially scarce artifacts to secure positional goods, invent increasingly absurd sports, flaunt their cognitive limitations, vote for some even more buffoonish Trumps, and generally mode-collapse into God-monkeys replaying behavioral loops from Savannah? Worst of all, would they not succumb to Moloch in His basest form, the Blight from Sandberg's own worldbuilding exercise, like Scott warned in his meditation?

Yeah, but that doesn't preclude giving them, say, equivalent of Earth's worth of resources. It doesn't necessitate murdering them by restricting anti-aging or mind uploading tech.

If a half-ape like me can think about eventual cool and useful things to do on an astronomical scale, to scale my agency up, they ought to be able to feel it already.

I don't expect there to be that much interesting stuff to do in Reality. Space ~undifferentiated at scale. Agency = compute.

I'm less of an elitist than you, and you're far from the worst offender, but frankly it's very hard for me to imagine that, if I were to make the decision that people upstream of of Altman or Hassabis will soon be positioned to make, I'd have the heart to play Prometheus. I would, however, try to spread the prerequisites of high agency. I'd be enticing baseline humans to partake of Ambrosia, the Fruit of Knowledge and the water of Mnemosyne before giving them Fire.

What would that involve?

Conveniently, utilitarians tell us that human lives, happiness points and QALYs are fungible, so it makes little difference on the cosmic scale if you uplift the current 8 billion half-apes, or let them expire (but ethically, e.g. doubling down on addictive entertainment production, SusTainaBility propaganda, birth control and child substitutes and industrializing this novel Canadian practice of recommending euthanasia to unhappy poor people), and generate a more aligned population from the small chosen seed.

I think most would agree that killing someone, to swap them for someone new, is not good.

Maybe it's copium, but I really don't believe that it's likely. It's a coherent view, and it does make sense from purely selfish perspective, sorta - but moral intuitions would scream. I mean, really? (not literal) post-scarcity achieved, now let's go kill everyone except close family and such? Kill actual living 10B humans, replace with new instances, personally designed?

All of that motivated by just wanting to grab, say, 10% more resources (otherwise allocated equally between existing humans)?

Anyway. From Perfect Imperfection:

- Yes. - She took a breath. - Take advantage of it. These are the privileges of your position. The ease of escaping into bliss, into places of absolute peace. Reverse the way you think: it's not you who moves in the world, it's the world that moves in front of you, like a perforated tape, and you choose on which part to latch the reader of your soul.

- Stahs [standard homo sapiens]. - He patted the horse on the neck. - I am a stahs. An aristocrat. Is that how I should think?

- Exactly. What, you don't like the word? Aristocracy is necessary.

- You are attempting to freeze culture in an artificial state.

- To freeze man. Humanity.

- It all amounts to the same thing.

- Does this outrage you? Why does it?

- I don't know. It seems to me some kind of... calculating, ruthless. Social engineering. It has a bad connotation.

- Didn't they tell you, every Progress inevitably gravitates towards UI.

- They said. Actually... you told me.

- Ah. - She raised her eyes to the starless sky. - Me. Well, yes. So you know - if it wasn't for Civilization, you would have found here after the resurrection only phoebes [posthumans] and inclusions; there would be no more stahs. Well, maybe a few zoological specimens.

- But did you have to go straight into all these pseudo-feudal rituals?

- There wasn't much choice. In an inf economy, in an economy of arbitrary distribution of infinitesimals, feudalism remains a stable system. Democracy - not. Is it democracy that you feel sorry for?

(...)

It appeared that she had gone all the way: the sun setting over the ocean, the golden beach, the white stones of the boardwalk, the warm wind above shaking the plumes of palm trees.

The beach was not yet empty, dozens of tanned nude people were walking along the wave boundary or playing volleyball. A girl with a dog stopped at the steps leading to the boardwalk and gawked at Adam and Angelica - she probably noticed their condensation. Zamoyski winked at her. She whistled at the dog and they ran on, child and animal. (...)

They ordered milkshakes. From the waitress's demeanor, her naked nervousness, her quick, stealthy glances, her artificial precision of speech, Adam inferred that she recognized the stahs in them.

When she left, he looked around the boardwalk and the beach. He looked for signs of tension and agitation in the behavior of the beachgoers - the recent war with the Deformants, the current one - with the Suzeren, these massacres of people from the ripped apart Ports... But nothing. A postcard resort.

How much of the information about these meta-physical clashes ever leaks into the cultural soil of HS Civilization, to the very bottom? Gnosis doesn't censor it, after all; it's all floating around in Plateau. But apparently the enstahs don't care much.

But you have to admit: they live luxuriously - in the luxuries of the 21st century.

- How many of them do you think have citizenship of Civilization?

- Probably none. - Angelika shrugged her shoulders.

- Do you remember what you told me then, in the clearing, under the moon? About the rules of Civilization and feudalism?

- Aha.

- "Because to me it looks", he waved his hand, "like the twenty-first century, right down to the marrow of its democratic bones."

- Well. Ninety-nine percent most of the time live as you lived in the twenty-first, after all, this is what our Civilization is based on, we must have a strong cultural foundation, a certainty of normality. But above these ninety-nine percent are the stahs, there is the whole hierarchy of Civilization, the Lodges and the Emperor and the Gnosis and the prohibition laws. Well, then, this political structure that makes the twenty-first century possible - now it was Angelika who embraced the landscape with a broad gesture - this structure is feudal in its essence.

- You can't live in democracy and feudalism at the same time. It is an absurdity of sorts. They quarrel with each other in every detail, in language even.

- Really? After all, in your time feudalism has already begun to overtake democracy. Don't make such a face. You knew. The greater the power of the intellect - and therefore of money - the lesser the power of the majority.

- You were well indoctrinated by the Jesuits. And the facts - what are they? He looked at the beachgoers.

- Stupid sheep herded by enlightened shepherds from the heights of the Curve. How nicely they play! How happy they are! How wonderfully tanned! How nicely fattened! We'll step in before bedtime, stroke their heads, they'll lick our legs, make us feel better - and let them continue to play carelessly.

- Isn't this what the paradise of democracy looked like in your day?

- Democracy. Repeat the word. And those here? They don't have the right to vote, they're not citizens, they don't -.

- But they don't want to be citizens! As stahs they would be restricted by Tradition. And yes - they are absolutely free. Civilization does not constrain them. They can be whatever they wish. Do whatever they desire. Do nothing if they desire it. Inf fulfills their dreams, inf gives them security.

- And what do they do? They lie on the beaches.

- And what did they do in your day? They drank through their allowances in neighborhood parks. - She laughed. - Fren is the same, only the laziness is more luxurious.

- But why is citizenship something that is bought? Even if they wanted to, they couldn't afford it.

- And how do you distinguish such a decision from hundreds of other temporary whims, fulfilled on a word? How do you make them feel that citizenship and politics are more than just another inf game?

- In such a culture they grew up, what do you expect from them?

- But nothing! This is just a man's natural state!

- After all, you can see it, she resumed more quietly. - Just look at them. Progress itself is undemocratic. Take a look at the Curve: up over here, down there. The universe is undemocratic. There is no such livable universe at all that doesn't enforce a Perfect Form, doesn't impose a hierarchy. Democracy goes against the laws of physics. And subconsciously they know it, they all know it.

Context

What is this place?

Why are you called The Motte?

New post guidelines

Rules

Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats