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.
Notes -
I happen to believe you are wrong about literally everything, from your unstated belief that pooh-poohing The Current Thing is a sign of wisdom, to your epistemology and your specific ideas about technological trends, that are divorced from the object level and rely on aggregating people's noises. Self-driving cars exist and improve, nanotechnology exists and improves, journalists were wrong as they always are and estimating expected impact by their noise is unreasonable, this AI boom is the culmination of over half a century of research, increases the viability of all previous ones from fusion to nanotech, and the rate of improvement both in fundamental aspects and in CapEx and adoption is unprecedented.
Most importantly though, one's man modus ponens. I think it's eschatology that was singularity for mystics. The premise of human history being finite is entirely sound, the change is accelerating, forms of our communal and individual existence have been torn asunder a few times already and soon there won't be time even for the debris to settle. We've learned the specific mechanism with which it'll happen, namely technological improvement. Calling it eschatology as if eschatology is a discredited notion is philosophically shallow.
You comment could as well have been written by a bot. Not because it's bad but because bots without inbuilt rules can imitate human reasoning in high fidelity now. Think about what this means and whether you'd have resorted to an argument about "somewhat useful tools" a decade ago, when faced with this fact.
More options
Context Copy link