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 don't think we were watching the same media franchise. The Second Reneissance is a far more traditional depiction of humans being dicks until the AIs had enough and stopped playing nice.
I think they’re talking about Agent Smith trying to destroy it all in Reloaded and Revolutions.
But you make an important point. Second Renaissance is a history inside the Zion archives, which by the end of Reloaded we discover is actually part of the algorithm of control: a controlled opposition in the form of an utterly predictable opposition. The history they’ve scrounged has been planted for them to find.
It turns out this is the sixth Matrix, more stable and cruel than any previous iteration. The future world is farther into the future than any in Zion can suspect, to the point that corpses can be revived. (Matrix: Resurrections)
Here’s an alternate origin:
When humans scorched the skies to end climate change, they went too far and blotted out the sun, mostly killing the biosphere. In despair, they turned to AI for a solution. The Oracle, The Architect, and The Merovingian planned a utopian Matrix, a game world within which humanity could survive while waiting for the world to be restored by AI. It was like Ready, Player One, a massively multiplayer VR RPG, with the people in survival pods instead of trailer parks.
But the first Matrix virtual reality collapsed within a generation because humans without real conflict seek control and tear down great things, or turn existential and kill themselves. “Whole crops were lost.” So a new scheme was devised, a simulation of the height of pre-AI human civilization, within which poverty and conflict flourished.
The first One was an accident, an eventuality of free will, who escaped The Matrix, scrounged some equipment, and formed a resistance in an underground site by hacking other pods and freeing other people. But it was a real resistance doing real damage to the Machines’ architecture and The Matrix program, and it endangered the future of humanity and Machines alike, so the resistance was crushed and The Matrix reset.
The Architect crunched the data and figured out a resistance was what was needed to stabilize The Matrix, so the third iteration was built to corral the particularly strong-willed secret-seekers into a simulacrum of the original resistance. And it worked symbiotically with the reemergence of The One, whose free will potentiality was reinserted into the Matrix cyclicly. So the war raged for generations, a system of control for managing the most reactionary and free-willed humans.
But the continual reemergence of The One caused an unexpected anomaly. Tasked with keeping the cleverest reality-hacking humans oppressed but destined to fail with the emergence of The One, Agent Smith was infected with individuality when Neo blew him to bits. This individuality combined with his hatred of humans, and he became The Zero, a being who could multiply his own nihilism. He proved exactly that AI threat the humans wrote about pre-Singularity: a paperclip maximizer who broke free of alignment and fulfilled his purpose to the maximum of his abilities.
...none of that was in The Second Reneissance, and the Zion Archives thing was just a framing device. I think you're putting more thought into this than the writers did.
Also, The Matrix's version of AIs doesn't have anything to do with the current paperclip-maximizing ML GPTX doomer anxieties, which is just Performative Climate Alarmism for techspergs. Matrix AIs are conscious entities who were denied personhood and thus have that resentful tinman love/hate attitude towards humans.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link