I was discussing this with someone the other day-- is free speech, plus high standards of rationality, enough to make a good discussion? Or is it necessary to in some ways control the content as well-- active curation and cooperation, controlling for a culture of thoughtful discussion?
I had been coming from a very negative definition of free speech-- as in an absence of control, censorship-- the ability to share thoughts even if they went against the grain, (so long as they were not actually lying or misleading, etc.)-- placing the value on the discussion ...
Im noticing two types of comments I would consider problematic increasing lately-- poorly thought out or reasoned long posts, and snappy reddit-esque one-line comments. The former are more difficult to filter for, but dealing with the second seems much easier to automate-- for example, have a filter which catches any comment below a certain length too be approved manually (potentially with exceptions for established users)
There's also a general attitude that goes along with that-- in general, not reading full posts, nitpicking things to be snarky about...
Co-opperative writing has been the first use I've found for these models that actually deeply appeals to me-- I'd seen the examples of people talking to LLMs as companions (Replika, Character.ai, etc), which were certainly interesting but didn't really hold much long term appeal. But using ChatGPT and GPT3 to speed up my creative writing has been amazing and I can't imagine I will ever get bored of it. I have an endlessly patient beta reader to nod its head and encourage me when I bounce ideas off it, add a paragraph to finish up the scene I was bored with...
Yea, im with you on it being a false dichotomy: some people are saying that because the board lost when they tried to use their legal power, it means they never had any power to begin with, so it doesnt matter. It seems plausible they had some level of power, but it was fragile and subject to failure if used carelessly in the wrong circumstances. Like, well, most real world political power.