Lobachevsky's recent activity
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentI didn't say "legal or ethical". I said "not deserving of an execution decided by 1 person". It's an incredibly low standard which is why it's weird to me that 90% of the thread cannot seem to...To boil it down to "saying things" is like saying the person who shouts "Fire!" in a movie theater to incite panic is just "saying things" when clearly that scenario isn't protected in the same way as saying other things. While I'm not arguing that Kirk was saying anything illegal, we also know that what is defined as legal or illegal isn't necessarily equating to the ethics behind the actions or words.
I didn't say "legal or ethical". I said "not deserving of an execution decided by 1 person". It's an incredibly low standard which is why it's weird to me that 90% of the thread cannot seem to apply it.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentI really think repeating ad nauseam that what's he's saying is a literal war on X and that he's practically in the same category as Putin and Hitler (i.e. what happened all over this thread) did....You really think Kirk's over decade long project normalising political violence on the right had nothing to do with someone being radicalised and then killing him?
I really think repeating ad nauseam that what's he's saying is a literal war on X and that he's practically in the same category as Putin and Hitler (i.e. what happened all over this thread) did. It's just a logical conclusion of those words that he should therefore be killed (in war you kill the enemy), and finally someone unhinged enough took it upon themselves to do it. Same exact thing with the whole Luigi rhetoric which as I initially brought up is considered a hero (a war hero!!) by people here. So please forgive me but I do believe that every single person doing that and accepting that without protest is doing exactly that - defending murders.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentSince I am rate limited I cannot reply to everyone, but I'm positively shocked by the amount of misunderstanding in the replies to my comments so I'll address this one. This has no relevance to...Since I am rate limited I cannot reply to everyone, but I'm positively shocked by the amount of misunderstanding in the replies to my comments so I'll address this one.
Do people who commit crimes or take drugs (black or otherwise) try to incite the people they interact with to reach for violence and murder their enemies? Idk, I think the causation - such as it is - in each case is wildly different and not comparable.
This has no relevance to what I was saying. The point of "cause and effect" discussion is saying that what the person did caused them to get murdered. During the whole George Floyd discussion plenty of people pointed out that the guy was a criminal and a drug user, which directly put him in risky situations such as the one where he got killed. The counter argument is that nothing that he did deserved him to be killed the way he was and that this rhetoric about a murdered man is at best in really poor taste. Something tells me that tildes community is/was on the latter side. So why do the people supposedly against such rhetoric use exactly the same rhetoric against Charlie Kirk? Is speaking about politics that you disagree with really that much worse than being a criminal and a drug user that you can speak like this about one killing but not the other? Yeah, once again, completely indefensible to me to think like this. If you think that all killings are like this and people should just be more risk averse (don't do drugs, don't walk the streets at night, don't support gun rights, don't dress provocatively) that's fine, I just disagree with that.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentI, too, can understand that cause and effect, as well as that that cause and effect is blatant preferential bias for their perceived side and I can call it out when I see it, that is, all over...I, too, can understand that cause and effect, as well as that that cause and effect is blatant preferential bias for their perceived side and I can call it out when I see it, that is, all over this thread and beyond it on tildes.
CK unfortunately had a consistent history of not engaging in good faith, and encouraging others to follow his example, so I'm not surprised at what I see now.
I'm not surprised a criminal with a drug problem got killed either, and yet I believe that had I posted this on a George Floyd tildes post comments section, I would have been shouted down by the same people that are apparently unsurprised that Charlie Kirk got killed. That's really all I have to say about this.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentI personally find this explanation entirely unsatisfactory for one simple reason. I do not image anyone who is commenting in this manner to say something along the lines of "I don't celebrate the...I don't celebrate Kirk's killing, and I don't think anyone here does either. I don't celebrate the apathy towards the loss of human life either - I actually agree with your spiritual perspective. However, I understand cause and effect. I understand the reaction that I'm seeing because I understand the action that came before... and that initial action was not merely having a bad opinion, it was advancing and enacting a harmful agenda based on a bad opinion, with little to no reasonable component of good faith.
I personally find this explanation entirely unsatisfactory for one simple reason. I do not image anyone who is commenting in this manner to say something along the lines of "I don't celebrate the loss of life but I understand cause and effect, George Floyd should have stayed away from drugs and shouldn't have stolen from a store." Well no, because you're not supposed to get killed for that, that's why we condemn the people who killed him. Well, you're not supposed to get killed for saying things either, so what cause and effect are you talking about? As far as I see it, you're either engaging in blaming the victims or you don't, otherwise it just feels like you're just siding with whatever circumstances fit your preferred narrative, which in my opinion is exactly what is happening in this online discussions every single time, no matter which side the author of that opinion chooses.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentLast I checked both the CEO nor Charlie Kirk were defenseless and neither were executing people (saying that an insurance company denying claims is akin to that is laughable). In that their...Last I checked both the CEO nor Charlie Kirk were defenseless and neither were executing people (saying that an insurance company denying claims is akin to that is laughable). In that their killers are apparently closer to Putin and Hitler than the victims ever were.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentI'm not sure where in my post did you find a defense of Adolf Hitler. I condemn all extremists that use political violence as means of achieving the goals that they of course view as righteous....I'm not sure where in my post did you find a defense of Adolf Hitler. I condemn all extremists that use political violence as means of achieving the goals that they of course view as righteous. That includes Hitler, Putin, Luigi and the person who killed Charlie Kirk. I also condemn everyone that views their actions as good, though obviously not in the same way.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky Link ParentYeah I'm not really convinced by the logic of "forcing someone into doing something that is good for you by method of political assassination is a good thing". Since the comments here love...Yeah I'm not really convinced by the logic of "forcing someone into doing something that is good for you by method of political assassination is a good thing". Since the comments here love incredibly thoughtful discussions of Putin and Hitler as examples of "well wouldn't you murder them???", both Putin and Hitler helped a lot of people in major ways, including life saving, just at the cost of someone else's lives and livelihoods. And both Putin and Hitler were absolutely convinced that were/are they doing was right through what I would consider some twisted logic, kind of like every single extremist thinks that way. I personally cannot stand this kind of extremism and it makes me feel quite upset that this community, supposedly gated with intent for thoughtful and measured discussions, is seemingly so into that type of extremism.
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Comment on Conservative activist Charlie Kirk shot and killed at Utah college event in ~society
Lobachevsky (edited )Link ParentConsidering I've seen legitimate "Luigi is a hero" stuff being upvoted on Tildes, I'm completely not surprised. It really is not different from Reddit at this point, which I guess makes sense...Considering I've seen legitimate "Luigi is a hero" stuff being upvoted on Tildes, I'm completely not surprised. It really is not different from Reddit at this point, which I guess makes sense considering where the users came from.
Just FYI I'm rate limited for whatever reason (another phenomenal aspect of this website...) and cannot respond.
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Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThe question is not whether it's "a lot", the question is whether it's so bad compared to other online services that it deserves to be called an environmental nightmare that should be rallied...The question is not whether it's "a lot", the question is whether it's so bad compared to other online services that it deserves to be called an environmental nightmare that should be rallied against.
that wouldn't otherwise be needed
Well what do you mean by that? We don't need tiktok, I think we need it way less actually, and yet no one is speaking out about the horrors of how much compute is required to deliver videos to millions of people. To me it feels like outcry against dirty polluting container ships when they're actually insanely efficient compared to other transportation methods and a pretty small factor when it comes to emissions as a whole.
I don't think there's any way that doing a task with AI assistance (from a large cutting edge model) is cheaper in terms of power than doing the same task unaided.
This is CO2 emissions, not power, but
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x -
Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentMind elaborating on this? From all the studies and calculations that I've seen I've always come away with the impression that its energy usage is within the ballpark of a large forum (like reddit)...Mind elaborating on this? From all the studies and calculations that I've seen I've always come away with the impression that its energy usage is within the ballpark of a large forum (like reddit) and way way lower than something like a video hosting service, such as tiktok or youtube. And that in terms of output it is more energy efficient than a human creator sitting at his/her computer. So if that's true, seems like the only way AI could be considered an environmental disaster is if one presupposes AI is inherently bad.
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Comment on ‘Being short is a curse’: the men paying thousands to get their legs broken – and lengthened in ~life.men
Lobachevsky LinkI have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've...I have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've recently experienced what it's like to switch sides and oh my god being pursued is incredible in the way how in control you feel, like you cannot possibly do ANYTHING wrong that is going to turn off the one pursuing. It was liberating and awesome, but on the other hand it can also be annoying or scary, and I also realized I have absolutely no idea how to say no and especially how to say no without feeling bad about it.
On the other hand, it also gave me extremely valuable perspective of what it feels like on the other side. I genuinely think that if we all experienced both sides of this (that is, if both genders pursued each other evenly) we would all be better at understanding how the other person feels. Most of my female friends have experienced the whole "oh I didn't realize he was into me this whole time, we were just friends" which I think is because they don't know how does it look to pursue someone when you don't know if they're into it. And guys can be oblivious as to when they definitely should pursue or indeed when they absolutely should stop - because they don't know what it's like to be pursued and what signals come from it.
That being said, I don't believe this dynamic will ever significantly change. It feels so damn good to be on the passive/receiving end that I don't think anyone who's in that position would change that dynamic very much. Which is a shame, because I do think it's ultimately a mistake, but what can you do.
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Comment on Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentSee but when I read takes like this, I always ask myself - can I trust the human though? Of course ideally you have a compassionate, competent, trained individual that dedicates plenty of their...See but when I read takes like this, I always ask myself - can I trust the human though? Of course ideally you have a compassionate, competent, trained individual that dedicates plenty of their time to help you deal with your problems in the best way possible. Unless you're filthy rich and can afford personal staff like that though you're just dealing with whoever is available - in the case of therapists that's expensive people who see you very briefly and then a large number of other people and who then need therapy themselves working a job like that. I'm not saying it's impossible to find good therapy, it's just not that easy and I'd personally rather have something available. Ideally it's a close friend or a relative of course, but I can see how it would be useful to have, especially in the past, when I was a teen and growing up. Some things that we all go through and don't require specialized therapy to treat, more like good life advice. Of course for serious conditions therapy should be the way, but I'm sure you are aware that people with serious conditions like depression often avoid therapy, so again perhaps it's better than nothing.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentNo we aren't. Almost everything I mentioned doesn't have anything to do with being a digital artist, it's entirely specific to the domain of AI generation. That being said, I don't see anything...I would add that we’re no longer comparing skill ceilings fairly - we are now looking at the skill ceiling of a digital artist using AI in a separate medium, not just prompt engineering.
No we aren't. Almost everything I mentioned doesn't have anything to do with being a digital artist, it's entirely specific to the domain of AI generation. That being said, I don't see anything unfair about this. A photographer with background in art will benefit from knowing the principles of light and shadow, color theory, composition among others. An artist with a background in 3D modeling will benefit from knowledge of construction and perspective. Why is that arbitrarily not part of the skill ceiling? At the end all of these share image creation as a commonality. Though I will reiterate - even with that constraint, even if you limit it to purely generation specific things, the skill ceiling is still high - look at my previous comment for examples of that.
It feels like you’re getting wrapped up on the ease of use of taking a picture, vs. the skill ceiling involved in actual professional-level photography.
I'm just applying it to both, well, fairly. You mentioned both skill floor and skill ceiling, I addressed both. Skill floor of photography is much lower than skill floor of AI generation. Skill ceiling of both is high as well, not extremely low like you were suggesting.
But that last 20%? That’s where careers are made and that’s where you see truly professional work.
If your metric now is "it must be professional work with a possible career", I'll point out that people have been making good money from AI generation for a while now. There are openly AI generative patreons up with thousands in estimated monthly income (I won't be able to find an example right now, but feel free to search). I don't think this is a good metric personally, but even that AI generation passes.
In conclusion I'll just reiterate that the question that I am seeking an answer to is "what makes AI generation fundamentally different from any other technological advancement in the past that were accepted as a new medium" and so far I haven't found a satisfactory answer unfortunately. It was interesting insight nonetheless, good day to you as well.
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Comment on Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentCloud based models typically are very censored. However the reality is that a lot of people want this functionality for obvious reasons. It's also very difficult to completely prevent this, people...Cloud based models typically are very censored. However the reality is that a lot of people want this functionality for obvious reasons. It's also very difficult to completely prevent this, people have been forcing chatgpt into smut mode since its inception. At that point I don't think the company should be held responsible if the user goes out of their way to engage in this kind of thing.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky (edited )Link ParentSorry, it's not clear to me how do you go from the first sentence to the second one, let alone the third one. Mind elaborating as to how exactly do you arrive at that conclusion? I disagree of...That said, yes, they indeed find patterns, and then they go on to generate visuals / text / audio based on the patterns with which they are familiar without any possibility to build on them. It is entirely reductive and cannot be anything but. <..> it is always going to feel like a rehash
Sorry, it's not clear to me how do you go from the first sentence to the second one, let alone the third one. Mind elaborating as to how exactly do you arrive at that conclusion? I disagree of course, so it's not so obvious to me.
It’s lacking the humanity that creates novelty. I’ve never once seen a piece of generative AI art that inspires me.
I have and I don't think it's because I'm a weirdo that gets inspired by soulless crap as you would perhaps put it. It's because I look past the surface level examples of "generative AI art". Practically any statement along the lines of "all of the AI art that I've seen is bad" will be an example of toupee fallacy. You're right, there's plenty of low effort garbage slop out there, but there's plenty of low effort garbage slop digital art period. It's not as easy to pump out in large numbers, but that's not really the point of contention here. This leads me to my biggest disagreement:
There is still some barrier of entry to proper photography, analog or digital. <..> the skill floor and the skill ceiling are so incredibly close to each other. Do you know how to type words into a prompt? You can generate AI art.
I cannot see how you can possibly say this when everyone has a smartphone and everyone uses their smartphone camera. Even my grandma uses her smartphone camera. It is quite literally push a button get good results thanks to the built-in algorithms that do the processing for you. I don't agree that generating AI art has a lower skill floor. And I don't agree that gen AI has a low skill ceiling. I guess it makes sense that you would think that considering you think it's impossible to create anything good with gen AI, but the whole point with gen AI, LLMs included, is that you pretty much have to integrate it with other tools, use the right model for the task, or even do some training of your own. That's how you get good results and there's a lot of very advanced techniques there. It's also unexplored, you've got people hiding their metadata because they've figured out some combination of things that work well. When it comes to visual art, being a trained artist is hugely helpful, because your knowledge of what is a good art piece, what's good composition, what makes things look appealing, is very useful. Not only that, but hybrid workflows are very powerful. You can use area specific prompts or use your sketches or paint over things to have fine grained control over what the model does. That's why I used the comparison to using premade textures earlier - because it is in essence the same thing: streamlining some part of your work to achieve better results faster.
I'm curious what do you think about this since if I understand correctly that's where your opinion on gen AI is rooted from. By the way, I do think your conclusions with those assumptions aren't incorrect, it's just I don't believe those assumptions to be true frankly.
I encourage you to especially check out 0x29A’s responses because he definitely speaks better to this than I can
I've seen you mention it before and I have read those responses. I don't really think they're of interest to me since they seem to come from the point of inherent dislike for the thing itself (EDIT: judging by the latest reply I was right to avoid it), whereas as I mentioned I'm looking for an answer as to why this thing would be inherently different from all the other things that were brought by technological advancements before (and didn't cause the arts to die in the process, not even once). Hence I replied to you since you seemed to be more interested in the discussion. Thanks for that, by the way, I really appreciate your detailed and thoughtful comments so far!
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentSorry, I wasn't clear. I am not trying to say that commissioning a work is like directing a film. I'm trying to say that you cannot gatekeep creating art behind execution, because clearly, such as...I don’t believe that commissioning a work is a fair comparison to directing a film.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I am not trying to say that commissioning a work is like directing a film. I'm trying to say that you cannot gatekeep creating art behind execution, because clearly, such as in the case of a movie director or a composer or Sol LeWitt providing directions for other people to execute can absolutely in an of itself be considered creating art.
The nature of generative AI (in the whole-cloth way we’re discussing it at the moment, acknowledging there are other minutiae that we are ignoring to your point) is that it’s only going to chop and screw what already exists.
Where is this coming from exactly? I highly disagree with this take, but I'm not sure how to go about it since you didn't really provide any supporting evidence or anything particularly specific. Anyway, machine learning algorithms don't "chop and screw", they find patterns in the data. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach, it is in fact very effective apparently at understanding both language and visual arts.
it simply isn’t going to be as enjoyable of an experience
With respect, that's just personal preference and isn't really relevant to the discussion in my opinion. I don't find composing music enjoyable or indeed traditional drawing methods. I'm not wired to enjoy these and it's part of the reason I didn't get that far. I enjoy playing around with various diffusion models or LLMs way more and if that's your criteria, then apparently that's way more "art" to me.
why not just focus that energy into actually writing for writing’s sake?
Because I don't/won't/can't/don't want to. Just like some people play music and some people draw and some people dance and some people dress up, we all are different and we like different forms of self expression. I think saying "huh, playing piano, well have you tried DRAWING instead", or "watercolors, my my, have you tried Photoshop, that's a real artist's medium" would at best be very rude. I'm not saying you are doing it in the same way, but so far I don't see a fundamental distinction other than it's a new medium that is acceptable to be elitist towards.
To me, it rings pretty hollow, and feels like you’re adding in a middleman that doesn’t need to be there.
That middleman is called medium. Until we are able to project our minds, we are stuck with that middleman, its limitations and boundaries. I think I mentioned already the way modern cameras are sophisticated automated machines that pass what you "see" through multitude of algorithms. Why are you not against that middleman? But even the most simple medium, like a pencil, is a middleman that you have to adapt to. You won't be able to add any color if all you have to work with is graphite, even if the vision in your mind is colorful. AI models are the same, they have their quirks which you have to work around, you have to learn how to prompt them, which models are good for what, which tools you can use to make the vision more accurate. But again, any medium is like that, until we can project our minds you are necessarily compromising some of your inner vision when translating it into reality.
To avoid dragging on, I'm simply looking for a brief answer to a simple question: what is fundamentally different about AI generation that I cannot find in any other medium before this that is considered to be a valid form of self expression and thus art? So far I have never been able to find it, and that's why to me negative views of AI gen are yet another wave of "newest technological development is bad".
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThe point I'm trying to make is that there is no need to do anything other than express yourself. Commissioning a work can absolutely be of far more "importance" than executing it. Think more...The point I'm trying to make is that there is no need to do anything other than express yourself. Commissioning a work can absolutely be of far more "importance" than executing it. Think more broadly. A movie director doesn't need to do anything other than telling others what to ("commissioning") in order for all of us to consider them the most "important" person at the top of the credits. Making decisions isn't necessary either - you could be throwing paint at the canvas and see how it lands and we could call that art and you an artist. You could set a video camera in one place, record thousands of hours of footage and then simply select some frames of it or clips of it. Sol LeWitt gets credited after his death because others simply followed his written instructions on how to execute his Wall Drawings - this one is practically maps 1 to 1 to "prompting" someone to do what you intend.
What exactly makes AI so fundamentally different that we throw these examples out of the window? It seems to me that the only prerequisite is expression and why shouldn't someone be able to express themselves by using a written prompt and selecting the appropriate results?
Mind you I'm not saying that it's as impressive as painting something from scratch, it's just I don't believe that effort is ever required for self-expression (and therefore creating art).
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThe fact that you think that the only way to use generative AI is creating whole pieces with no control over it is the issue. We are talking about the same entity here. In fact from reading this...The fact that you think that the only way to use generative AI is creating whole pieces with no control over it is the issue. We are talking about the same entity here. In fact from reading this thread my impression is that the criticism comes from belief that that's the only way to use it, when that couldn't be further from reality. That being said, even generating whole pieces still retains the authorship and creativity since, as I mentioned, execution isn't a necessary prerequisite for being credited as an author of an art piece.
This is an incredible statement considering the most empathetic, kind and charitable people I've ever met always seem to come from a place of hardship, from countries torn by war or other destructive political and social events. Meanwhile citizens of the richest country on Earth are apparently incapable of not only showing the most basic of empathy, they're so consumed by their emotions that they're also not capable of not going on their expensive smartphones and posting their emotions all over the internet, that's just how horrible the conditions in modern day USA are. For the love of god have some perspective.
Makes sense that you don't see anything wrong with what is being said in this thread if that is how low of a standard you have for the commenters here. Just like how proclaiming Luigi as a hero being highly upvoted with very little pushback and me bringing it up in this thread again resulting in very little pushback also doesn't mean anything at all and I'm just chasing ghosts.