5 ms·

Writing for the love of art, besides being a mental and reflective exercise that holds real value when it is of high quality, makes it hard for me to believe th

by okzgn 2mo ago

Writing for the love of art, besides being a mental and reflective exercise that holds real value when it is of high quality, makes it hard for me to believe that this is the end of literature. It is difficult to think that someone who writes for pleasure would abandon it simply because of the exponential volume of AI-generated text.

fidotron 2mo ago
> holds real value when it is of high quality Does it? This assumption is the core of the entire problem. It might do as some, bluntly, self indulgent exercise but beyond that in society scarcity of things other people need and want is what drives value. We are in for an absolutely huge rebalancing of what it is that is considered valuable.
- okzgn 2mo ago
  Interesting standpoint. Do not forget what makes you human, and that's why there are a lot of different opinions and valuable, subjective literary articles.
  - fidotron 2mo ago
    > and valuable, subjective literary articles There you go again. I suspect if everyone on earth produced subjective literary articles at the rate of ten a day you would cease to consider them valuable, let alone a machine that can create them on demand.
    - okzgn 2mo ago
      Thank you for your opinion. To be more specific, there are many subjective views on what value is. I didn't mean a literary piece always has market value if nobody is buying it, but it can still be valuable educationally as a masterful or sublime example of literature.
      - fidotron 2mo ago
        You are deliberately skirting the core problem which is your perception of value is completely warped by supply and demand. If you have a surplus of something then it will cease to be of value to you. For example you do not actually "value" air, since it is everywhere and so we ignore it, but stuck somewhere where it is not you will come to appreciate it fairly quickly. You seem to believe there is something magic and wonderful about literature, but this is because you have only ever lived in an environment where it is scarce and not dangerously abundant. The next stage is to claim "but it's not literature" even when it's the exact same strings of words merely constructed by machines and not humans, which is curious because up until now it had always been assumed that had the monkey succeeded in typing out Shakespeare it would still have been as valuable as had Shakespeare written it himself.
        okzgn 2mo ago
        If somebody makes something excellent, it deserves congrats (monkey or not). I'm from Donetsk (with a lot of mental culture, and literary/tech habits), and I later lived in Ecuador (where there is little literary/tech habit and reading culture).
- yuye 2mo ago
  >what it is that is considered valuable. I fear we humans are on the losing end of that reconsideration.
palmotea 2mo ago
> It is difficult to think that someone who writes for pleasure would abandon it simply because of the exponential volume of AI-generated text. But the "exponential volume of AI-generated text" turns "writing for pleasure" into a solitary act. There's no chance you'll be able to quit your day job, because people like what you do any will pay for it. So many people faking it with AI means that it'll be struggle to get any attention at all for what you've put so much effort into.
- pier25 2mo ago
  Writing has always been a solitary act.
  - mrbluecoat 2mo ago
    'act' as in a play, but now with no audience. So all that hard work of memorizing lines, rehearsing, and vocal lessons becomes an experience only the actors can enjoy by themselves.
    - pier25 2mo ago
      I've never heard about writers writing with an audience. A real one at least. Of course there's always an imaginary reader. Performing and writing couldn't be any more different or attract different types of people.
- fidotron 2mo ago
  The truth is much "pursuit of art" is a status exercise by those with the leisure capacity to do so, and this only maintains status because most people do not have the spare time and energy to put into it. In the event everyone is sitting around with time on their hands wondering what to do and we have machines that spit out endless reams of anything it is a very curious question what exactly it is most people would end up doing, which would probably be some new status seeking exercise.
  - jodacola 2mo ago
api 2mo ago
Photography was not the end of painting. It was, however, a blow to painting as a vocation where a lot of your work was in the form of portrait painting.
- eudamoniac 2mo ago
  It, plus video, also made painting culturally irrelevant. Approximately no one cares about paintings whatsoever. Books of modernity soon to follow I'm sure.
cael450 2mo ago
I agree, but I do think it makes the book industry more difficult. A flood of books makes it makes it harder for new authors to make it. Just like a new youtuber has a very difficult time. Eventually publishers will turn to AI just to deal with the volume on submissions, and then it will become just like YouTube, where an algorithm decides who wins and loses. At the same time, readers will have to sift through an insane amount of books to find what they like. It is already kind of like this, even before AI. This causes people to rely more on reviews and word of mouth, which becomes a volume game and is also influenced by the algorithms. I don't think it is the end times for literature, and for those who put the work in, they can find their places. But it is a whole new set of challenges.

by okzgn 2mo ago

fidotron 2mo ago

> holds real value when it is of high quality Does it? This assumption is the core of the entire problem. It might do as some, bluntly, self indulgent exercise but beyond that in society scarcity of things other people need and want is what drives value. We are in for an absolutely huge rebalancing of what it is that is considered valuable.

okzgn 2mo ago
Interesting standpoint. Do not forget what makes you human, and that's why there are a lot of different opinions and valuable, subjective literary articles.
- fidotron 2mo ago
  > and valuable, subjective literary articles There you go again. I suspect if everyone on earth produced subjective literary articles at the rate of ten a day you would cease to consider them valuable, let alone a machine that can create them on demand.
  - okzgn 2mo ago
    Thank you for your opinion. To be more specific, there are many subjective views on what value is. I didn't mean a literary piece always has market value if nobody is buying it, but it can still be valuable educationally as a masterful or sublime example of literature.
    - fidotron 2mo ago
      You are deliberately skirting the core problem which is your perception of value is completely warped by supply and demand. If you have a surplus of something then it will cease to be of value to you. For example you do not actually "value" air, since it is everywhere and so we ignore it, but stuck somewhere where it is not you will come to appreciate it fairly quickly. You seem to believe there is something magic and wonderful about literature, but this is because you have only ever lived in an environment where it is scarce and not dangerously abundant. The next stage is to claim "but it's not literature" even when it's the exact same strings of words merely constructed by machines and not humans, which is curious because up until now it had always been assumed that had the monkey succeeded in typing out Shakespeare it would still have been as valuable as had Shakespeare written it himself.
      - okzgn 2mo ago
        If somebody makes something excellent, it deserves congrats (monkey or not). I'm from Donetsk (with a lot of mental culture, and literary/tech habits), and I later lived in Ecuador (where there is little literary/tech habit and reading culture).
yuye 2mo ago
>what it is that is considered valuable. I fear we humans are on the losing end of that reconsideration.

palmotea 2mo ago

> It is difficult to think that someone who writes for pleasure would abandon it simply because of the exponential volume of AI-generated text. But the "exponential volume of AI-generated text" turns "writing for pleasure" into a solitary act. There's no chance you'll be able to quit your day job, because people like what you do any will pay for it. So many people faking it with AI means that it'll be struggle to get any attention at all for what you've put so much effort into.

pier25 2mo ago
Writing has always been a solitary act.
- mrbluecoat 2mo ago
  'act' as in a play, but now with no audience. So all that hard work of memorizing lines, rehearsing, and vocal lessons becomes an experience only the actors can enjoy by themselves.
  - pier25 2mo ago
    I've never heard about writers writing with an audience. A real one at least. Of course there's always an imaginary reader. Performing and writing couldn't be any more different or attract different types of people.
fidotron 2mo ago
The truth is much "pursuit of art" is a status exercise by those with the leisure capacity to do so, and this only maintains status because most people do not have the spare time and energy to put into it. In the event everyone is sitting around with time on their hands wondering what to do and we have machines that spit out endless reams of anything it is a very curious question what exactly it is most people would end up doing, which would probably be some new status seeking exercise.
- jodacola 2mo ago

api 2mo ago

Photography was not the end of painting. It was, however, a blow to painting as a vocation where a lot of your work was in the form of portrait painting.

eudamoniac 2mo ago
It, plus video, also made painting culturally irrelevant. Approximately no one cares about paintings whatsoever. Books of modernity soon to follow I'm sure.

cael450 2mo ago

I agree, but I do think it makes the book industry more difficult. A flood of books makes it makes it harder for new authors to make it. Just like a new youtuber has a very difficult time. Eventually publishers will turn to AI just to deal with the volume on submissions, and then it will become just like YouTube, where an algorithm decides who wins and loses. At the same time, readers will have to sift through an insane amount of books to find what they like. It is already kind of like this, even before AI. This causes people to rely more on reviews and word of mouth, which becomes a volume game and is also influenced by the algorithms. I don't think it is the end times for literature, and for those who put the work in, they can find their places. But it is a whole new set of challenges.