RedRegard
12d ago
I'm guessing you have an entirely different view of novels than me, but as aesthetic works I can't see how extreme care in the details isn't essential to the form. Like, if you're just skimming through The Drowned World by Ballard and not subvocalizing the prose or catching all the nuances and fine, structural meanings, then I don't see how you're getting anything like a full appreciation of the story, or even really a partial appreciation. But you think AI can write to that caliber?
And even more confusing is that you think AI can do fine at art but fails at business communique, which, though still demanding, is nevertheless much cruder and more template-driven?
RedRegard
12d ago
I switch back and forth depending on context. If I'm wanting to extract info and nothing else, I'll skim with minimal subvocalization. Generally I'll partly subvocalize but at a fast, syncopated clip. When I encounter good writing, I give myself the time to taste if fully. When I read over my own writing, I'm very attentive to rhythm.
Even if we're discounting rhythm in AI prose, though, there are many other reasons it's bad. There's a lack of structure at any level, other than randomly inserted lists and stuff, and it's fraught with all sorts of repetitions and other inefficiencies. It blurs meanings, inserts arbitrary detail, hallucinates, forgets stuff, etc. Much of this is difficult to be seen at a paragraph level. It's the kind of thing that builds on itself, until you're left with a tottering spire of slop.
I think one of the main things that makes AI output unreadable for some but not others is how attentive to detail they are. If they don't really care about the overall quality of prose, or say an artwork or anything else, and they don't want to examine it minutely for how the form feeds into substance, for its minute intricacies, then they won't see what AI output is missing.
RedRegard
12d ago
You can add that they are literal slavers who fund ethnic cleansing terrorists in Sudan and betray fellow Muslims by allying with imperial outsiders and extract much of the region's natural endowment of wealth through resource and geography rents while spending it on sybaritic pleasures, and yeah, they basically exist to cater to the globalist rich who don't think they're cool or suave enough for any other tax haven with greater personality and style to it and would prefer to construct their personal images around chintzy opulence and unreproductive sex with Russia prostitutes, or at least that's the view of the place I receive.
RedRegard
13d ago
Typically those sorts of praetorian-style elite forces select on the basis of loyalty or ideological commitment or some such rather than ability, and are more intended to reinforce the regime than excel at special military missions. However, since they do get the lion's share of available resources as you say, their training is usually above the standard that their countries are able to offer. So I'd expect them to perform better than the shitty conscripts that make up large parts of these 3rd world armies but poorly compared to special forces that are organized strongly for competence like the Navy SEALS.
That's not saying they are nothing: probably we can expect them to at least maintain cohesion in the face of American-Israeli bombings, and thus resist internal uprisings while also keeping up harassment of shipping along the straight. So I'd say it's fair to consider them a factor in this whole affair.
RedRegard
19d ago
The phrase is often taken out of context by neocon Americans to show that Iran is hellbent on America's destruction, and thus to justify their highly violent efforts to destroy Iran in turn. Given the context of not just the phrase but these politics surrounding it, I think it actually is meaningful to point out the translation issue, since 'death to America' isn't necessarily proof of what they claim or justification for their own destructive desires/rationale.
Basically it comes across as disingenuous to use the phrase as a basis for wanting to destroy Iran, when idiomatically it's supposedly weaker than it's presented as being. But then again this whole affair is hopelessly mired in bad faith.
RedRegard
19d ago
I'd say the earlier era seem to have had greater contrasts, so that while Numenor and such have died off, so to have all the evil dragons and whatever that demon in Moria was. Good and evil were more distinct and individually potent, embodied by externalized creatures, whereas, as Middle Earth evolves towards the recognizable world, they collapse more towards a unitary point embodied by individual men (e.g. Boromir and Denethor). That is the main thrust of the matter I perceive, as far as its tendency towards one state or the other.
And if Middle Earth is literally darker, it is because it represents the world as an adult perceives it and not a little boy.
RedRegard
19d ago
I think the vanishing of the elves and all of that was more to express the author's nostalgia for a preindustrialized past or some such. It's not so much that the world becomes darker over time, but more that the magic goes away. This could also be seen as reflective of childhood nostalgia, perhaps, a theme that was popular in Victorian fiction and which Tolkien was probably influenced by. Of course, these ideas interact with the themes about good vs. evil in certain ways, but I would say that the overall idea presented is more nuanced and indefinite than 'the world becomes increasingly evil'. One of the story points is that while good becomes increasingly degraded, evil does as well, with Sauron being much weaker than Morgoth and so forth. It's an arc from fantasy to mundanity, until evil is represented by your bland cubicle boss.
To the extent that America's foreign policy was subject to democratic influence, I think it did lean towards a rules-based order to a greater extent than any other empires or hegemons have historically done. Vietnam as the crowning example - taking a geopolitical loss in order to stand by popular principles and appease the masses. The problem is that the people only take an active interest in foreign affairs from time to time, and quite a lot can be done clandestinely through the CIA or whatever. This gives the state department a lot of room in pursuing an agenda that's might-makes-right under the hood while preserving an outward appearance of civility.
But the very need to disguise their actions imposes some limitations, so even that can be considered a win for creating a more idealistic world.
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