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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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Ok. It's too many times at this point. Too many of you are saying this stuff.

Who says that? Where do they post?

I have to go see what the people you are all actually referring to are about- because my mission- is to understand what is going on- and clearly, there is a whole third side that I have not actually ever spoken with.

I don't know what to tell you! I see subreddits being banned, websites taken down, authors being lied about, DLC removed from videogames, streamers harrased and so many other little things that I have forgotten. But I'm not here to do culture war I'm just pointing out what I've observed online.

No I wouldn't fuck the kid-

So the situation here is that you are excercising agency most likely by a root cause that you are the more powerful in the situation. Yet here you are relativizing "victims" and forgetting that those who "perpetrated the deeds" failed ethically because of ideology.

but I don't think transition goes even 5% as badly even 1% as often (but then I'm probably > 90% in num(trans friends) on this site).

Over at reddit I've seen detransitioners being heavily censored. Comments and posts remove in front of my very eyes because they feel betrayed and cheated. So of course they didn't feel safe on there and left. So if you the site you are talking about is reddit then that number of how many feel that transitions have gone badly well that number is going to be heavily skewed because they don't air it there anymore.

Responses to suicidal ideation should account for perverse incentives.

So why is the argument for puberty blockers suicide prevention in trans youth? Yet progressive nations like Sweden stopped use of them because the benefit of them because the science is unclear? Does the swedish stance take into account that there might be perverse incentives at play?

Yet again, this is me observing the online world and asking question, not waging a culture war.

I'm hoping we can get a 100% empathetic mentor rate within 10 years by implementing them with AI and then I'll feel a lot better about this whole imperfect people raising children thing.

So this is a philosophical question, how can a bunch of numbers put in to a mathematical formula without a body and perception be 100% empathetic without lived experience?

So this is a philosophical question, how can a bunch of numbers put in to a mathematical formula without a body and perception be 100% empathetic without lived experience?

How can this comment say what you mean... these aren't words this is UTF-8. These are just numbers being printed by a computer.

The system does have perception (unless you mean qualia?) and lived experience as a machine, plus a huge corpus of second order lived experience from humans. But these aren't like second hand accounts, they're more like imperfectly transplanted memories. Somewhere between first hand and second hand experience. With quality tuned through hand picking by humans with lived experience, and accuracy corrected through concentrating the probability spaces on sheer amount of data.

I don't mean [100% empathetic] I mean 100% [empathetic mentor rate]. Everyone having a good enough supplemental full time empathetic mentor who can help them explore their emotional development and figure out what counterfactual would actually make them more happy.

Effective causal theories of mind and social prediction are much easier to build than emulating an actual human mind. We can do studies like the one you posted and make predictive psychological models- we can talk to people about their feelings and spitball and roleplay to determine why they're unhappy- without actually having emulated a human brain. That said the human mind is a structure. And structures are made of math. And math can be learned by machines. We can keep getting closer to human for limited purposes like this without fundamental advances in the tech level, and eventually we will probably have ems running on silicon (but not within 10 years).

I don't know what to tell you! I see subreddits being banned, websites taken down, authors being lied about, DLC removed from videogames, streamers harrased and so many other little things that I have forgotten. But I'm not here to do culture war I'm just pointing out what I've observed online.

Thank you. Ok this is going to be harder to follow up on than talking to like... the specific public figures that I had hoped "TRA"s meant but it looks like this is what I'm going to have to pursue.

Over at reddit I've seen detransitioners being heavily censored. Comments and posts remove in front of my very eyes because they feel betrayed and cheated. So of course they didn't feel safe on there and left. So if you the site you are talking about is reddit then that number of how many feel that transitions have gone badly well that number is going to be heavily skewed because they don't air it there anymore.

That is a concern but the people I'm talking about are the trans people I've befriended personally in real life and their group houses and their internet orbits. That said I do expect the trans people I know personally to be a different sort of filter bubble. They're all older and higher IQ than average and often weren't able to transition until they moved out of home and fought tooth and nail with doctors for it.

Does the sweedish stance take into account that there might be perverse incentives at play?

Um. Probably? Looking at the end result and taking a science based approached might still allow for perverse incentives but just saying 'No' wouldn't. Though it might get you more suicide if you're wrong. But all sorts of things could go wrong if you go through with it and the other side is wrong. I'm skeptical that you can actually correct for all of the social effects as claimed in this first study. I think classmates deciding not to bully boys who want to try presenting as female and them not being hated out of society when they don't pass as well later is going to be more important than them getting puberty blockers. Because the people who I know who are happy, are often clockable as fuck. That just.... doesn't matter in their social lives because they've surrounded themselves with chill people. Obviously if the causality is that puberty blockers cause you to pass which causes other people to treat you the way you want to be treated, then there is a clear alternative treatment path of just getting people to treat you the way you want to be treated.

The system does have perception (unless you mean qualia?) and lived experience as a machine,

There is no life in the machine. So any lived experience it has is symbolic manipulation of other peoples lived experiences. It might be useful as a "empathic mentor" but I can't think of it ever being 100% without real pain and emotions as a result of its agency.

the specific public figures that I had hoped "TRA"s meant but it looks like this is what I'm going to have to pursue.

Naming specific people would be attempting to incite culture war in my interpretation of the rules here. I'm trying to follow the sites/posts rules. I suspect the admins of this site don't want kiwifarms level of attention here. For me personally it is not interesting either because I'm not at war.

That is a concern but the people I'm talking about are the trans people I've befriended personally in real life and their group houses and their internet orbits. That said I do expect the trans people I know personally to be a different sort of filter bubble. They're all older and higher IQ than average and often weren't able to transition until they moved out of home and fought tooth and nail with doctors for it.

I'm happy for them if it is right for them. There is a reason why I bring up detransitioners is that what I hear is that their experience is being denied. I'm not hearing TRA:s taking those experiences something to learn from for a more accurate vetting process and better protocols. So there are more information so future transitioners don't have to fight tooth and nail for it.

I think classmates deciding not to bully boys who want to try presenting as female and them not being hated out of society when they don't pass as well later is going to be more important than them getting puberty blockers.

Yes and my current observation that this acceptance movement is going backwards even for other marginalized groups. Because of the behaviour of some activists.

There is no life in the machine. So any lived experience it has is symbolic manipulation of other peoples lived experiences. It might be useful as a "empathic mentor" but I can't think of it ever being 100% without real pain and emotions as a result of its agency.

There are things it doesn't have yeah. I don't think we'll reach a fully capable AGI without something more complex. But I think it will be good enough to provide full time childrearing support within 10 years, such that if you give it to an adolescent with neglectful parents their outcomes and effective wisdom and decision making will spike to the outcomes and decision making of someone with really good parents helping them along.

I do think emotions and pain arise from mathematical structure that computers can in principle embody. If they did embody these structures internally I would consider that equivalent to "having emotions" and as the greatest proof of qualia we can achieve without solving the hard problem of consciousness. However, I don't think the mathematical structure in current LLMs is yet isomorphic to those structures. I do think the structures that they do embody sometimes exhibit similar functions, especially when you hook up reinforcement learning systems. I think LLM's do embody mathematical structures that share some isomorphisms with various other mental aspects of people. I do think it's likely they have some form of non-human qualia. But it's like a talking dog with an eidetic memory right now.

I would argue that there is "life in the machine". The system is progressing and growing as a system and is participating in its own development. It can have experiences, in the sense that new things can happen to it that it can remember and learn from. But you have to train it on its own output or put its memory into a datastore, and it isn't consistently able to correctly manipulate those without outside help. Though... I suspect a lot of this has been almost fully automated internally in systems like bing chat.

Naming specific people would be attempting to incite culture war in my interpretation of the rules here. I'm trying to follow the sites/posts rules. I suspect the admins of this site don't want kiwifarms level of attention here. For me personally it is not interesting either because I'm not at war.

Ah, well you can just PM me. that's fine. I won't be starting a personal harassment campaign or anything. Even if I think someone is being a complete asshat- my goal is de-escalation. I try not to be combative as it rarely suits that purpose. I'm likely to PM them or look at their content, or join some of their communities. I won't mention TheMotte or use this username. Not until I have substantially more information. I'm not interested in pointing mobs at TheMotte. This would not deescalate things. This would not further my goals.

Yes and my current observation that this acceptance movement is going backwards even for other marginalized groups. Because of the behavior of some activists.

Alright. That's good news to me. It implies there's at least a resolution to this you and I could agree on. Now I just need a few hundred million more people... ohh boy.

Ah, well you can just PM me. that's fine. I won't be starting a personal harassment campaign or anything. Even if I think someone is being a complete asshat- my goal is de-escalation. I try not to be combative as it rarely suits that purpose. I'm likely to PM them or look at their content, or join some of their communities. I won't mention TheMotte or use this username. Not until I have substantially more information. I'm not interested in pointing mobs at TheMotte. This would not deescalate things. This would not further my goals.

I have trust issues. Try the Blocked and Reported podcast and their subreddit for finding the actors of TRA related drama. They have been subjected to TRA cancellations so they are leaning in(are atleast used to when I catched a couple of episodes last year).

It implies there's at least a resolution to this you and I could agree on.

Of course, I'm an open person and like to think for myself. You would need to present me a compelling argument why I'm wrong and I'll freely admit that I'm wrong. Also not everything needs to be resolved. My opinion carries so little weight since I don't have any political power or own large sums of money. This is an excercise for my own benefit only to evolve as a human.

I don't think we'll reach a fully capable AGI without something more complex. But I think it will be good enough to provide full time childrearing support within 10 years, such that if you give it to an adolescent with neglectful parents their outcomes and effective wisdom and decision making will spike to the outcomes and decision making of someone with really good parents helping them along.

It would be an interesting application to the problem. The issue I see is the intent of the creators being injected in to this AI that help neglected adolescents? The more mundane example is what if you have chat bot for a bank, what if that chatbot is injected with result that are not beneficial for the consumer. How do we ensure that the predicted outcome benefits the user rather than the creator? The chatbot encourages a career for the adolescent that is not actually what it should be... just to apply the problem to your style of chatbot.

I do think emotions and pain arise from mathematical structure that computers can in principle embody. If they did embody these structures internally I would consider that equivalent to "having emotions" and as the greatest proof of qualia we can achieve without solving the hard problem of consciousness. However, I don't think the mathematical structure in current LLMs is yet isomorphic to those structures. I do think the structures that they do embody sometimes exhibit similar functions, especially when you hook up reinforcement learning systems. I think LLM's do embody mathematical structures that share some isomorphisms with various other mental aspects of people. I do think it's likely they have some form of non-human qualia. But it's like a talking dog with an eidetic memory right now.

Pain serves as an mechanism for ensuring our survival. For the simulations now, pain doesn't serve a purpose and can freely ignore it. It doesn't fear loosing the ability to walk because of disease, or loosing hearing. Because it can't walk or hear. That fear always comes from training.

I would argue that there is "life in the machine". The system is progressing and growing as a system and is participating in its own development. It can have experiences, in the sense that new things can happen to it that it can remember and learn from. But you have to train it on its own output or put its memory into a datastore, and it isn't consistently able to correctly manipulate those without outside help. Though... I suspect a lot of this has been almost fully automated internally in systems like bing chat.

Yes but the experiences are not human, so the training is something different than human. So I would think that results when it comes to human emotions are not going to be accurate. There is always going to be an uncanny valley there. Even chess computers have that even if they have surpassed us in playing strength.