FtttG
User ID: 1175
If done about a specific individual, I think "emotional blackmail by proxy" would be a more accurate designation. "Distributed emotional blackmail" sounds more like "you need to do X for $Community, because think of how it'll hurt the feelings of the members of $Community if you don't".
I don't know if this has been mentioned in any of these discussions about AI-generated art, but on the off-chance it hasn't, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Roald Dahl (author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG and just about every other non-Harry Potter book you loved as a child), predicted the use of generative AI to compose fiction. In 1953 (probably a few years earlier, in fact).
I highly encourage you to read the linked short story, "The Great Automatic Grammatizator": like most of Dahl's numerous stories for adults it's wickedly funny and creepily unsettling. A short synopsis: a talented mechanical inventor named Knipe harbours frustrated literary ambitions, and after yet another rejection from a publisher, he has an epiphany in which he realises that the rules of grammar governing the English language are almost mathematical in their strictness — hence, it should be trivial to design a machine which, once assigned some input parameters, can "compute" a passage of text in much the same way that a calculator computes a mathematical formula or equation. As a tremendous act of revenge against the publishing industry, Knipe sets to work building the machine and presents it to his boss, Mr. Bohlen, who is initially sceptical but eventually converted when literary magazines buy the short stories (attributed to pen names) produced by the machine. Knipe later sets about modifying the machine so that it can compose novels in addition to stories.
The most ingenious touch, I thought, was the end of the story, when the narrator explains that Knipe and Bohlen eventually expanded their operation to buy the rights to use real authors' names and likenesses, attaching them to books composed by machine.
But on the whole, it was a satisfactory beginning. This last year—the first full year of the machine’s operation—it was estimated that at least one half of all the novels and stories published in the English language were produced by Adolph Knipe upon the Great Automatic Grammatizator.
People often talk about how AI-generated art is soulless and lacking the creative spark necessary for authentic human emotion. I won't pass comment on whether this is the case. If someone hasn't yet been moved to tears by an AI-generated passage of text or piece of music, I have little doubt that such a thing will happen before the end of the decade. "So what? People have been moved to tears by Twilight."
Fair enough. But my question is this. Right now, you can get an AI to generate a sample of Taylor Swift's voice which, to anyone who isn't a professional musician or trained sound engineer, sounds indistinguishable from the real thing. As the technology improves and with access to more and better training data (say, exclusive access to Swift's own master recordings, archive of unreleased songs, and isolated vocal takes), even sound engineers are likely to be taken in. The technology to generate musical instrumentals is likewise getting better every day.
In a world where Taylor Swift goes into business with OpenAI and grants them the right to use her name and likeness on musical releases generated by ChatGPT (or whatever dedicated music-generation software they use), do you really think you could tell the difference? Or what about AI-generated novels attributed to James Patterson, with his permission? I mean, it's only one step removed from using ghostwriters, something Patterson is open about doing. Of the novels published under the Tom Clancy banner, a majority were written by other writers, and a significant chunk of those published postmortem, meaning Clancy could not have been involved in their composition even in principle (not even giving them a cursory once-over before typesetting).
Better yet — how do we know this hasn't already happened? Taylor Swift's latest album is her most poorly-received release since 2017's Reputation, with neither the album nor any of the songs from it receiving Grammy nominations (the 68th edition of the Grammys will be the first time Swift hasn't been nominated for anything since 2017), and many reviews commenting on it sounding creatively exhausted, predictable and lacking novelty or dynamism. Isn't a solid, pleasant but unremarkable and creatively sterile album exactly what we'd expect from an album generated using Taylor Swift's previous albums as training data? When Swift is rehearsing for the next album tour, isn't it possible she'll be learning to sing the songs on the album for the first time?
I'm not yet concerned about artists being supplanted entirely by AI-generated artwork: I think an author or musician's name recognition is still a vital part of what makes their releases commercially successful (which is why the names of James Patterson, Stephen King, Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel are always in much larger text on the covers of their novels than the title). But the ending of "Great Automatic Grammatizator" sounds eerily plausible to me: a world in which an author writes and publishes one or two hit novels the traditional way, a major publisher takes notice, and gets the author to sign a contract granting the publisher exclusive rights to publish AI-generated books under the author's name, in perpetuity. There will inevitably be gaffes in which the author is being interviewed about what their latest book is about, and it will become glaringly obvious that the author doesn't know what it's about, because they haven't read it, never mind written it. Or the author will be approached by a fan at a convention who'll ask them to sign a copy of a book published under their name, and the author won't have even heard of this book.
Contrary to your claim that Cambridge recognises no distinction between the two terms, the page for "jealous" acknowledges a secondary meaning: "upset and angry because someone that you love seems interested in another person". This secondary meaning is absent from the definition of "envious". This obviously implies that the page for "jealousy" is incomplete, as for consistency's sake it ought to include a secondary definition along the lines of "the state of feeling upset and angry because someone that you love seems interested in another person".
FtttG
11d ago
The Merriam-Webster article you linked cites no sources for its claim that the two words have always been used interchangeably, but quotes multiple scholars who argued that the two terms are not synonymous.
FtttG
11d ago
Wikipedia claims that "jealousy" has always been distinct from "envy", and notes that the original root of the word is the biblical "zeal" which at the time meant "tolerating no unfaithfulness". Another claimed root is the word "gelus" which likewise meant "possessive and suspicious".
FtttG
11d ago
"Arguing in bad faith" means arguing dishonestly and using arguments you don't really believe, in which the goal is to frustrate or antagonise your interlocutor rather than engage in earnest truth-seeking.
Based on the way the phrase is used on social media, you could be forgiven for thinking it means "you believe something that I don't" or "you expressed a non-woke opinion".
FtttG
11d ago
An extremely niche one I've complained about before is members of the rationalist community using rationalist lingo in contexts in which it is obviously inappropriate, as part of some kind of weird cargo-cult approach to in-group membership. I once saw a guy saying that he had an "irrational prior" on believing X over Y.
If it's irrational, it's not a prior. Stop it.
FtttG
11d ago
When I was in college, I noticed a lot of people using "excessive" to mean "a great deal". It means "too much". That one seems to have fallen out of favour, thankfully.
FtttG
12d ago
If the average person uses a word to mean X, then the word means X, surely?
DESCRIPTIVISTS, BEGONE
Many common expressions only make sense if "jealous" has a distinct meaning from "envious". "To guard sth jealously" — how can you "guard" something if someone else has it? Likewise "a jealous husband".
FtttG
12d ago
Not that I recall, no. I went on two dates with a doctor a few years ago, but I don't remember her mentioning anything about a car accident.
FtttG
12d ago
In this case it's a colleague of mine in her fifties. We have a rota in which each department is responsible for buying milk for the office each week, and my colleague (who we'll call T) was offering to do it on behalf of our team next week. I don't think any passive-aggression was intended or implied, which makes the choice of punctuation all the more baffling.
FtttG
12d ago
Less than a hundred pages from the end of The Story of a New Name. All Napoli men are bastards.
FtttG
13d ago
The female version of my real name is significantly more common in Ireland than the male, and is so common in the broader Anglosphere that I'm sure many Brits and Americans would actually be surprised to learn that it's an Irish name, whereas my name is practically unheard of outside of Ireland. As a consequence, I routinely get emails addressed "Hi [female version of my name]", even if they're direct replies to emails I sent them in which my name is clearly indicated in the From field, the email signature, and the profile photo is of a tall, bearded man wearing a shirt and tie.
This is bad enough when it's Brits or Americans misgendering me: it's inexcusable when my fellow Irish do it.
For some reason, overuse of ellipses is as big a giveaway of someone's age as overuse of em-dashes is for ChatGPT.
Many people I know over the age of fifty seem constitutionally incapable of writing "I'll buy some milk on Monday" or "I'll buy some milk on Monday.", instead feeling this weird compulsion to jazz it up with "I'll buy some milk on Monday..."
I'm far from the first person to notice this peculiar generational touchstone. I have no idea what this is intended to convey but it creeps me out.
Even worse is those people who haven't realised that an ellipsis contains three full stops, no more, no less, so you end up with even weirder constructions like "I'll buy some milk on Monday.." or "I'll buy some milk on Monday............."
There's another, more recent misuse of "literally" that really annoys me: when people use it to "clarify" a statement that no one could possibly interpret in a figurative sense, essentially using it as synonymous with "simply".
Yeah so you literally just export it as a CSV and open it in Excel.
Oh, I do that literally, do I? Thanks for clarifying, for a moment I thought this was all a big extended metaphor.
In the case of nerds specifically, I think the simplest explanation is that they are high-systemisers who are fascinated by abstract systems with complex (yet consistent and legible) rules. The world of interpersonal relationships with its frustratingly arbitrary and definitely inconsistent ("lookin' good, Susan") ruleset is confusing and scary for them.
If you're an intelligent high-systemiser, this means pursuing a career in physics or computer science; if you're not particularly intelligent, you instead get into D&D, MtG or trainspotting.
FtttG
14d ago
In the mind of just about every self-identified feminist woman I've interacted with in the past decade and a half.
In the mind of the contributors to the Shitty Media Men list.
FtttG
16d ago
While I agree with you that no reasonable person would characterise Robert as a rapist, I'm curious if his actions would qualify as such under that absurd "affirmative consent" framework of a few years ago.
FtttG
16d ago
That scandal inspired one of the most memorably titled articles in Wikipedia history.
I liked "Cat Person", and though I could understand why it was interpreted in that light, upon first reading I didn't read it as a #MeToo story at all, but rather an incisive examination of the dynamics and awkwardness of modern dating. God knows I've been on my fair share of awkward dates like those described in the story. Neither character struck me as the "villain" (until Robert arguably pulls a face-heel turn at the end): rather, they're both clumsy and inexperienced, and no-strings-attached courtship makes it all too easy for one partner to just ghost the other at the first sign of trouble or inconvenience. The murky circumstances of its inspiration should not detract from how skilfully it's composed and the precision of its observations.
I dunno. If I was in Nowicki's shoes, I'd be furious at Roupenian for recasting (blackwashing?) my ex-boyfriend to whom I harboured no ill will as some kind of fumbling misogynistic creep whose dick doesn't work. In fact, technically speaking I have been in Nowicki's shoes: when I was eighteen, an ex of mine asked me to read a short story she'd written. This "short story" was simply her account of the years preceding and following our relationship: changing the names of the "characters" was the extent of the creative invention and poetic license she'd put into it. On the one hand I was grateful that she didn't invent shitty things I'd done to make me out to be a worse guy than I am; on the other hand I was like, when your current boyfriend urged you to draw inspiration from your personal experiences, I presume he meant to use them as a jumping-off point for a fictional story, not to simply transcribe them as-is. Unlike "Cat Person" it couldn't even claim to have been written well, and I'm enormously grateful it was never (to the best of my knowledge) published anywhere.
Roupenian's collection You Know You Want This is worth checking out:
Controversy around the inspiration for its most well-known story aside, I received Kristen Roupenian's collection You Know You Want This a few Christmases ago and enjoyed it quite a lot. Every story is short enough to be read in one sitting, her spare, terse style means that the stories never drag, and there were several stories I enjoyed quite a lot and none that I actively disliked. The stories are "dark" in the sense that they deal frankly with BDSM and weird sexual fetishes, but they're more like campfire stories or high-class /r/nosleep posts (made explicit in one story which veers into outright supernatural horror) — there's nothing here that's grounded or realistic enough to be truly disturbing or unsettling. As an understated slice-of-life examination of modern dating culture which is never really trying to shock or scare the reader, "Cat Person" is actually the outlier here.
You know, I haven't even seen that movie, and yet that clip popped into my head when I was writing the comment.
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