5 ms·

Being struck by lighting may affect your desire to go outside, but it has zero correlation with the sky’s beauty. Outer space is beautiful, poison dart frogs a

by latexr 1y ago

Being struck by lighting may affect your desire to go outside, but it has zero correlation with the sky’s beauty. Outer space is beautiful, poison dart frogs are beautiful, lava is beautiful. All of them can kill or maim you if you don’t wear protection, but that doesn’t take away from their beauty. Conversely, boring safe things aren’t automatically beautiful. I see no reasonable reason to believe that finding beauty in the night sky is any sort of “training”.

ninetyninenine 1y ago
Do you think a fat pig is beautiful? Like a hairy fat pig that snorts and rolls in the mud… is this animal so beautiful to you that you would want to make love to this animal? Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly and sex with a pig is universally disgusting. But you realize that horny male pigs think this is beautiful right? Horny pigs want to fuck other pigs because horny pigs think fat sweaty female hogs are beautiful. Beauty is arbitrary. It is not intrinsic. Even among life forms and among humans we all have different opinions on what is beautiful. I guarantee you there are people who think the night sky is ugly af. Attributes like beauty are not such profound categories that separate an LLM from humanity. These are arbitrary classifications and even though you can’t fully articulate the “experience” you have of “beauty” the LLM can’t fully articulate its “experience” either. You think it’s impossible for the LLM to experience what you experience… but you really have no evidence for this because you have no idea what the LLM experiences internally. Just like you can’t articulate what the LLM experiences neither can the LLM. These are both black box processes that can’t be described but neither is very profound given the fact that we all have completely different opinions on what is beautiful.
- latexr 1y ago
  > Is this for real? Frankly, I think you should be the one answering that question. You’re comparing appreciating looking at the sky to bestiality. Then you follow it up with another barrage of wrong assumptions about what I think and can or cannot articulate. None of that has anything to do with the argument. I didn’t even touch on LLMs, my point was squarely about the human experience. Please don’t assume things you know nothing about regarding other people. The HN guidelines ask you to not engage in bad faith and to steel man the other person’s argument.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    > You’re comparing appreciating looking at the sky to bestiality. That’s my point. You think beauty is profound but this is arbitrary and not at all different from bestiality. It’s only your intrinsic cultural biases that cause you to look at one with disdain. Don’t be a snob. This is HN. We are supposed to be logical and immune from the biases that plague other forums. Beauty is no more profound than bestiality. It’s all about what you find beautiful. If you find beasts beautiful then you call it beastiality? What is so different about finding a beast beautiful versus the night sky? Snobbery, that’s what. It’s just semantic manipulation and association with crudeness that prevents you from thinking logically. HNers are better than this and so are you. Don’t pretend you don’t get it and that my comparison to beastiality is so left field that it’s incomprehensible. You get it. Follow the rules and take it in good faith like you said yourself. > The HN guidelines ask you to not engage in bad faith Fair I edited the part that asks “is this for real” that’s literally the only part. I also find your dismissiveness of my arguments as “bestiality” is bad faith and manipulative. I clearly wasn’t doing that. Pigs are attracted to pigs that is normal. Humans are not attracted to pigs. That is also normal. I took normal attributes of human nature and compared it to reality. You took it in bad faith and dismissed me which is against the very rules you stated.
    - latexr 1y ago
      Again, please stop telling me what I think. You have zero idea what that is and all your arguments are full of wrong (and frankly unhinged) assumptions. I don’t know what conversation you’re fantasising in your head, but it’s not this one. > Fair I edited the part that asks “is this for real” that’s literally the only part. Even if that were true, which I disagree with, that was the very first sentence and set the tone for the entire comment. > I clearly wasn’t doing that. That’s not clear in the slightest. You keep making wrong assumptions and telling other people what they think. You can’t have an honest and productive conversation like that. You’ll never be able to engage in good faith and truly comprehend what the other person is saying until you understand and fix that.
      - ninetyninenine 1y ago
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  > Do you think a fat pig is beautiful? Like a hairy fat pig that snorts and rolls in the mud… is this animal so beautiful to you that you would want to make love to this animal? I don't want to make love to the night sky, so that last bit is completely irrelevant to the question of beauty. As for whether a pig is beautiful, sure, in its own way. I think they're nice animals and there is something beautiful in seeing them enjoy their little lives. > Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly... It would seem not.
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    Somebody never read Charlotte's Web, or watched the Muppet Show.
    - ninetyninenine 1y ago
      I did read Charlotte’s Web. The whole story is a lesson in how beauty is created by language. Wilbur doesn’t become beautiful because he changes, but because someone clever enough decided to write the right words above him. That’s what beauty usually is something we agree to see, not something that exists on its own. And Miss Piggy understood that better than anyone. She didn’t have beauty, she performed it. She made desire itself her act. So yes, I read both. Maybe that’s exactly why I don’t mistake the show for the substance.
      - cindyllm 1y ago
        [dead]
- ben_w 1y ago
  > Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly and sex with a pig is universally disgusting. Allegations regarding one of the recent British Prime Ministers aside: If this was truly universal, nobody would have bothered writing laws to ban it because nobody would be offending their sensibilities by doing it. Aella's surveys suggest such interests are far more common than I would have guessed. Which actually supports your statement that "beauty" is not intrinsic… or at the very least "sexy", which isn't the same thing at all, c.f. the other reply pointing out that they don't want to get off with the night sky.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    It's similar. Put it this way, you don't necessarily want to fuck everything that's beautiful. But everything you want to fuck will be beautiful and this is nearly an absolute must. It's a single arrow, one way relationship. So my example is apt. The whole point is pigs are ugly, but there is a high intelligence out there who thinks pigs are so freaking beautiful they will fuck a pig. and that high intelligence, is other pigs. People get so pedantic with the example and deriving little unnecessary things off of it. It's JUST an example. You really need to see what the "point" of my example and see if it makes sense. The example is just illustrative. If some minor aspect of the example is "offensive" or doesn't make sense to you it doesn't mean my point is dead. The example is an example to help you understand, it's not a proof.
ipaddr 1y ago
If your experience includes bombs falling out of the sky the beautiful description fades away quickly.

by latexr 1y ago

ninetyninenine 1y ago

Do you think a fat pig is beautiful? Like a hairy fat pig that snorts and rolls in the mud… is this animal so beautiful to you that you would want to make love to this animal? Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly and sex with a pig is universally disgusting. But you realize that horny male pigs think this is beautiful right? Horny pigs want to fuck other pigs because horny pigs think fat sweaty female hogs are beautiful. Beauty is arbitrary. It is not intrinsic. Even among life forms and among humans we all have different opinions on what is beautiful. I guarantee you there are people who think the night sky is ugly af. Attributes like beauty are not such profound categories that separate an LLM from humanity. These are arbitrary classifications and even though you can’t fully articulate the “experience” you have of “beauty” the LLM can’t fully articulate its “experience” either. You think it’s impossible for the LLM to experience what you experience… but you really have no evidence for this because you have no idea what the LLM experiences internally. Just like you can’t articulate what the LLM experiences neither can the LLM. These are both black box processes that can’t be described but neither is very profound given the fact that we all have completely different opinions on what is beautiful.

latexr 1y ago
> Is this for real? Frankly, I think you should be the one answering that question. You’re comparing appreciating looking at the sky to bestiality. Then you follow it up with another barrage of wrong assumptions about what I think and can or cannot articulate. None of that has anything to do with the argument. I didn’t even touch on LLMs, my point was squarely about the human experience. Please don’t assume things you know nothing about regarding other people. The HN guidelines ask you to not engage in bad faith and to steel man the other person’s argument.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  > You’re comparing appreciating looking at the sky to bestiality. That’s my point. You think beauty is profound but this is arbitrary and not at all different from bestiality. It’s only your intrinsic cultural biases that cause you to look at one with disdain. Don’t be a snob. This is HN. We are supposed to be logical and immune from the biases that plague other forums. Beauty is no more profound than bestiality. It’s all about what you find beautiful. If you find beasts beautiful then you call it beastiality? What is so different about finding a beast beautiful versus the night sky? Snobbery, that’s what. It’s just semantic manipulation and association with crudeness that prevents you from thinking logically. HNers are better than this and so are you. Don’t pretend you don’t get it and that my comparison to beastiality is so left field that it’s incomprehensible. You get it. Follow the rules and take it in good faith like you said yourself. > The HN guidelines ask you to not engage in bad faith Fair I edited the part that asks “is this for real” that’s literally the only part. I also find your dismissiveness of my arguments as “bestiality” is bad faith and manipulative. I clearly wasn’t doing that. Pigs are attracted to pigs that is normal. Humans are not attracted to pigs. That is also normal. I took normal attributes of human nature and compared it to reality. You took it in bad faith and dismissed me which is against the very rules you stated.
  - latexr 1y ago
    Again, please stop telling me what I think. You have zero idea what that is and all your arguments are full of wrong (and frankly unhinged) assumptions. I don’t know what conversation you’re fantasising in your head, but it’s not this one. > Fair I edited the part that asks “is this for real” that’s literally the only part. Even if that were true, which I disagree with, that was the very first sentence and set the tone for the entire comment. > I clearly wasn’t doing that. That’s not clear in the slightest. You keep making wrong assumptions and telling other people what they think. You can’t have an honest and productive conversation like that. You’ll never be able to engage in good faith and truly comprehend what the other person is saying until you understand and fix that.
    - ninetyninenine 1y ago
bigstrat2003 1y ago
> Do you think a fat pig is beautiful? Like a hairy fat pig that snorts and rolls in the mud… is this animal so beautiful to you that you would want to make love to this animal? I don't want to make love to the night sky, so that last bit is completely irrelevant to the question of beauty. As for whether a pig is beautiful, sure, in its own way. I think they're nice animals and there is something beautiful in seeing them enjoy their little lives. > Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly... It would seem not.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  Somebody never read Charlotte's Web, or watched the Muppet Show.
  - ninetyninenine 1y ago
    I did read Charlotte’s Web. The whole story is a lesson in how beauty is created by language. Wilbur doesn’t become beautiful because he changes, but because someone clever enough decided to write the right words above him. That’s what beauty usually is something we agree to see, not something that exists on its own. And Miss Piggy understood that better than anyone. She didn’t have beauty, she performed it. She made desire itself her act. So yes, I read both. Maybe that’s exactly why I don’t mistake the show for the substance.
    - cindyllm 1y ago
      [dead]
ben_w 1y ago
> Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly and sex with a pig is universally disgusting. Allegations regarding one of the recent British Prime Ministers aside: If this was truly universal, nobody would have bothered writing laws to ban it because nobody would be offending their sensibilities by doing it. Aella's surveys suggest such interests are far more common than I would have guessed. Which actually supports your statement that "beauty" is not intrinsic… or at the very least "sexy", which isn't the same thing at all, c.f. the other reply pointing out that they don't want to get off with the night sky.
- ninetyninenine 1y ago
  It's similar. Put it this way, you don't necessarily want to fuck everything that's beautiful. But everything you want to fuck will be beautiful and this is nearly an absolute must. It's a single arrow, one way relationship. So my example is apt. The whole point is pigs are ugly, but there is a high intelligence out there who thinks pigs are so freaking beautiful they will fuck a pig. and that high intelligence, is other pigs. People get so pedantic with the example and deriving little unnecessary things off of it. It's JUST an example. You really need to see what the "point" of my example and see if it makes sense. The example is just illustrative. If some minor aspect of the example is "offensive" or doesn't make sense to you it doesn't mean my point is dead. The example is an example to help you understand, it's not a proof.

ipaddr 1y ago

If your experience includes bombs falling out of the sky the beautiful description fades away quickly.