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On the last point, why struggle with history: Robert Nozick (in Examined Life) asked how we feel if we found out, say, Beethoven seriously composed music based

• conception 2y ago
  The real value of almost everything is based on effort I think. The best gifts aren’t the ones that are the most expensive but the ones the giver put the most effort and time into. One of the reasons I like pre-cgi is the amount of skill and the effort put into FX is astonishing. Claymation and stop motion don’t look amazing - it’s the effort. And to your point, knowing how much effort really goes into something often requires a bit of experience to really appreciate it.
  • pinoy420 2y ago
    The only claymation that looks good is that of aardman animation. Everything else looks absolute garbage.
    • spencerflem 2y ago
      Aardman is incredible and their polish is wonderful, but this is not true fantasic mr fox, coraline, jack stauber's opal, etc. are also very beautiful
      • jfengel 2y ago
        The first two are stop motion, but not claymation. The third is claymation, but I'm hard pressed to call it "beautiful". Striking, to be sure, but also conspicuously ugly. At this point Aardman is also doing a lot of non clay stop motion, but it's still the core of their work.
        • spencerflem 2y ago
          Oh good point, missed the distinction
    • edm0nd 2y ago
      wrong. Celebrity Deathmatch is the best claymation.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  You’re assuming there is any coherent or consistent epistemological grounding for the average person’s beliefs Its a fools errand - it’s an infinitely small set of people who can accurately describe their reasoning - even fewer have consistent reasoning - fewer still have coherence between beliefs The ones that do we call either monks or crazy I’d argue people aren’t even coherent enough to know how or what to appreciate
  • pinoy420 2y ago
    And, of course, you happen to be one of them no doubt :) The classic internet philosopher’s lament: everyone else is irrational, inconsistent, and incapable of coherent thought—except, of course, the enlightened commentator making the claim. The irony is that this kind of sweeping generalization is itself an incoherent mess, built on vague cynicism rather than any serious engagement with human reasoning. If you actually believe that consistency and coherence are so rare, what exactly do you think you’re demonstrating here? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks less like deep insight and more like self-important nihilism masquerading as wisdom.
    • AndrewKemendo 2y ago
      You’re free to read all my writings and evaluate for yourself
      • pinoy420 2y ago
        > Iraq war veteran No thanks. Not really interested in the views of a murderer.
    • igravious 2y ago
      > The classic internet philosopher’s lament: everyone else is irrational, inconsistent, and incapable of coherent thought—except, of course, the enlightened commentator making the claim. But that wasn't the claim. @AndrewKemendo said "it’s an infinitely small set of people who can accurately describe their reasoning - even fewer have consistent reasoning - fewer still have coherence between beliefs" So he didn't say that everyone else is irrational, he said that very few can accurately describe their reasoning. And I think this is true. Very few take the time to introspect. Fewer still will do so to the point that they are consistent in their thinking. And fewer still will will analyze their values and beliefs and get them to square up with each other. Their is nothing controversial here. It's demonstratively true, all one has to do is listen to people carefully and probe them to motivate their reasoning every now and again. > The irony is that this kind of sweeping generalization is itself an incoherent mess, built on vague cynicism rather than any serious engagement with human reasoning. I reject that it's a "sweeping generalization" – I assert that most if not all people who spend enough time carefully introspecting and observing others necessarily must come to this conclusion. What about the claim is an "incoherent mess"? Clearly this is a personal peeve of yours because your response is emotional and doesn't refute the claim in any decent way. > If you actually believe that consistency and coherence are so rare, what exactly do you think you’re demonstrating here? That's a logical fallacy. > Because from where I’m sitting, it looks less like deep insight and more like self-important nihilism masquerading as wisdom. Twaddle. Emotional twaddle.
• LincolnedList 2y ago
  The value of art is in meaning and context. Purely generative art is as meaningful as a pretty rock. Think of the models as a camera. If you take shots from a car's dash cam in a city at random you might fall upon some really beautiful photos. But this is chance, the camera didn't create the city or its scenes. A photographer can choose or create meaningful scenes because he has a mind, consciousness and life experience.
  • derektank 2y ago
    Pretty rocks (e.g. mountains, gems, etc.) are frequently ascribed substantial meaning, despite the fact that no consciousness had a hand in creating them.
    • Retric 2y ago
      Raw gemstones are generally uninteresting until people shape them. Diamonds worth thousands may not even qualify as interesting enough to pickup in the raw state, assuming you don’t know what it is. Mountains get meaning as aspects of our environment, but try and name the your top 10 most aesthetically pleasing mountains. At least for me, I may appreciate a scenic view but I just don’t think of them in that kind of context.
  • gedy 2y ago
    There are people who define art that way, and there are those who define it as beautiful things. I'd personally own and display something beautiful made by algorithm than much post modern art, which is frequently visually unpleasant in spite of being rich in some message. Our brains are drawn to some things visually for instinctive reasons, and I don't need a big message when I'm decorating or wanting to please the eye.
    • deleted 2y ago
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    • guax 2y ago
      That's a very reductive and limited way to look at art. You're right in stating it as decoration but I would not conflate the two. Different things, both valuable in its own right.
• vunderba 2y ago
  > Beethoven seriously composed music based on a secret formula, which is entire mechanical and required no effort for him at all. If he discovered the formula, then yes I imagine most people would appreciate the music just as much, if not more so. If he copied the formula from somebody else, then he was just turning the crank - a far more sterile and mechanical affair. Using Suno to "create" music is just turning the crank. Related but much of Bach's music is just as incredible for its incredible mathematically relational structures as it is for its pure virtuosity and brilliance. https://mathscholar.org/2021/06/bach-as-mathematician https://mathscholar.org/2021/06/bach-as-mathematician
  • visarga 2y ago
    The artistic value isn't magically generated by the piano itself, nor by the LLM in isolation. It's the result of the skilled interaction, the human artistry expressed through this new and powerful instrument.
  • unraveller 2y ago
    This stolen valor mindset becomes absurd if Bach anonymously open-sources the formula he discovered and dies before releasing any music himself. Whatever music that follows, however hard fought for - even if 1:1 Bach output that he kept in a drawer, isn't beautiful? Just string plucking? That's not music appreciation, that's love of reputation you can easily grasp and associate with.
    • 3willows 2y ago
      I think Nozick's example is meant to make us re-think whether there is a strict separation between music (or other artistic) reputation and love of reputation. In Anarchy, State and Utopia, he tackles some utopian theorists' claim that, if equality prevails, everyone will rise up to the level of the greatest writers and artists. Would people be content then? Or will they still want to vie for "eyeballs"? If the latter, should we just admit that there is just a deep-seated human desire to compete for dominance? For what it is worth, I've written up my reflections on skimming Anarchy, State and Utopia here: https://books-blog.3willows.xyz/posts/2024-10-26-anarchy-state-and-utopia/ https://books-blog.3willows.xyz/posts/2024-10-26-anarchy-sta...
• gcanyon 2y ago
  > Maybe we don't really appreciate something unless we appreciate it is hard in a visceral way. Count me out of that "we" -- I appreciate the artist who put in the work because they put in the work to make the thing I like, but I don't appreciate the thing because of the effort. I can marvel at the effort required to produce art in a certain way, but I'm (largely) indifferent to the effort in my actual appreciation of the thing (or lack of it). I look forward to the time when I can have as much high-quality (to me) fiction to read as I like, because it's all generated by LLM. Some time after that, I'd love to see the main Star Wars sequence done properly. I won't care that it isn't created by a vast team of humans.
  • kranner 2y ago
    To represent the other side, I enjoy reading Urdu and Persian poetry but I will never be interested in reading anything generated by an LLM. No matter how 'high quality' it is represented to be, I'm aware that it was produced by a process that shares nothing with my own experience of the world. It has felt no hope, disappointment, fear, pain, mortality, loss of loved ones, lack of control over itself, a world model that has changed over the years, and doesn't know that it all doesn't amount to much in the end and yet this is all there is for itself. It may turn out to be sentient in some way, but it's almost certainly not sentient in the way that I am sentient. I know it's just mimicking being human as instructed; to take it seriously devalues everything about my own humanity. I'm not ready for that kind of enlightened insight, I think.
    • gcanyon 2y ago
      Sure, that's your choice/preference, so good for you (sincerely).
      • kranner 2y ago
        Thanks, I respect your choice as well.
    • visarga 2y ago
      > I know it's just mimicking being human as instructed; to take it seriously devalues everything about my own humanity. Since it is mirroring human culture, why do you see it in such a negative light? Instead see it like what it is, an interactive reconstruction, or maybe like a microscope to zoom into any idea.
• satvikpendem 2y ago
  Have you seen the documentary Tim's Vermeer? Its thesis is that Vermeer, through advanced lenses at the time, was able to paint essentially mechanically rather than having a fine grasp of artistic brushstrokes in the traditional sense. Some, as well as in the documentary itself, think that it'd ruin the purpose of the art but I see it differently, especially with all of these AI artists now online, where the intent of the human making the art is all that matters, not the instrument or manner in which they do it.
  • Verdex 2y ago
    I've got a similar outlook w.r.t. Tims Vermeer. In my mind, art has always been a technological endeavor. Language, writing, and grammar are all tools. Brushes, stroke technique, and paint composition are all tools. I heard a story about Tony Hawk pioneering some skate board move, being the first in the world to get it right. And then seeing some teenagers doing the same thing years later in a park. Real artists learn what is possible and then develop tools to break those limits.
• manquer 2y ago
  Why is this a dilemma at all? Appreciating a piece of music is purely on its own merits of its content not if it was easy to create or not. The background, ethics, skill or even creative process of the people behind it have no bearing on whether the music itself is good and how we much we like it, even if Hitler wrote the 9th symphony it would be still be a just as good a masterpiece. To consider anything but the merits of the output is a slippery slope of what biases are acceptable and not, that inevitably ends up being racial or at least exclusionary. Even it was not as difficult as you imagined it to be, he still was the first to find it, or even just the first to popularize it and that is all that matters.
  • bormaj 2y ago
    I think it's fair to say that the context in which a work was created adds to the novelty and ingenuity of it's existence. These works don't exist in a vacuum and there's certainly a difference between a symphony created by Beethoven in his time/setting and a symphony produced as some model's output. Sure they may functionally have the same effect or enjoyment, but appreciation of a fine work goes deeper than its function.