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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27876 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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that's more pleasant to me than the tacky trans vs trads content, as it returns us to the level of philosophy and positive actionable visions rather than peculiarly American signaling ick-changes

And that's where you get the impact on society wrong. The OpenAI affair shows what happens when rising up to the level of "philosophy and positive actionable visions" conflicts with the grubby, dirty, filthy lucre tackiness. The tackiness wins.

So even if we get AI, we'll still be arguing over "trans versus trads". There will still be the demands that AI be purged of wrongthink, that the Science be acknowledged (but only the science that props up our side) and the rest of the messy fights that happen in the ground around "the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart".

When did normies start caring, one way or the other, about trans issues? When kids got involved. When it started happening to your kids, from Drag Queen Story Hour in libraries and kindergartens, to schools promising to protect trans kids by lying to parents, to the shifting "nobody is giving puberty blockers to kids/okay yes they are but it's based on The Science, and nobody is carrying out surgery on minors/okay yes they are but...." claims of trans activism. When it was Gender and Queer Studies departments in universities, and 'just a few crazy kids on campus', nobody cared: the level of philosophy and visions could spin its wheels as much as it liked. When it came to the real world and impacts on the lives of ordinary people then it bogged down in the mud of ick-changes.

You may rise up to the lofty level of philosophy, but then it has to be applied practically in the real world, or else you are just sitting around blowing smoke rings and the world will move on past you, ick-changes and all.

And that's where you get the impact on society wrong. The OpenAI affair shows what happens when rising up to the level of "philosophy and positive actionable visions" conflicts with the grubby, dirty, filthy lucre tackiness. The tackiness wins.

I am not sure what you are talking about. The OpenAI affair was, in terms of my compass, Altman (closer to d/acc) fighting AI safetyists from EA structures. What tackiness won? Do you mean the promise of compensations to technical staff, or the struggle over the corporate board's power? This is all instrumental to much bigger objectives.

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