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Rosencrantz2


				

				

				

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Rosencrantz2


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What if the person you're discussing has paid all their taxes? Do you still encourage them to pay again and again and again or do you encourage them to fight the case? That is Ukraine.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Perhaps we don't disagree too much other than on the importance of assigning credit, which I think is quite a big part of what's going on in the practice of art. It's a game, generally speaking, of individuals putting created items up for our appreciation and if we sense there are not enough micro decisions involved, it's either a deliberate subversion of or commentary on the game, which I think most people are a little tired of (bananas taped to walls etc), or it's a kind of scam (artists claiming other people's decisions as if they made them, as with lazier ai art).


I certainly agree with your point that creative decision-making can be involved in any image making, including with ai, and it's perfectly possible for someone acting with enough intentionality and sensibility to create art we might appreciate as moves in the aforementioned game.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think people generally do think photography is different to painting (less artful even). Obviously there's a lot of creative decision-making involved in a given photo, but not as much as for a given painting. Across a photographer's oeuvre, you start to see more and more evidence of intentionality, and it takes collections and curation to establish your bona fides as a photographer to a greater extent than as a painter. What I'm saying is that density of micro decisions is a relevant criteria for assigning credit. I'm not suggesting that an ai prompter deserves no credit. They do deserve some, they could earn a lot depending on the details of their project. It seems clear to me though that they are also typically drawing substantially on how other artists would decide (not just the result of their decisions) as embodied in the AI. The decision-making patterns and tendencies of previous artists are captured in the model in a way that's different from making a paintbrush or lens, which relies on a craftsperson's decisions but doesn't typically preserve their decision-making as a living force.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A diffusion model or an LLM is "making decisions" in the same way that a bristle of a paintbrush "makes decisions" on where to place the paint on the canvas, i.e. by following the laws of physics, compelled by the human that's actually controlling the tool (whether through typing in a prompt or waving the paintbrush).




Just to try and prise apart these two types of case, what would you say about putting a penny into an art robot like Maillardet's automaton? It's hard to say that the person who activates the automaton has really created art by themselves. Maillardet did most of the decisionmaking, even if he died two centuries ago. I find myself wanting to say a similar sort of thing about AI, only a lot of people's decisions were involved in training it rather than just one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Humans can take credit for AI art to the extent I can claim to be an artist when I pay a human artist to "make me a picture of grapes and some flowers and a skull". If I specify the picture extremely specifically then I start to be able to claim a fraction of the authorship, but it takes a lot for us not to intuit that the dude holding the paintbrush deserves most of the credit. Most ai artists are more like commissioners.


(Relatedly the question of credit is separate from the question of whether something is art. It might be a defensible position to say that AI art is indeed art, it's just not art by the prompter. It's art by humanity. The prompter made an infinitesimal contribution to the process.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is true and probably could make a successful novelty restaurant concept as well. Context really is all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hmmm. Very difficult. Most people seem to approach artworks as they do flowers. They know which ones are pretty, how they're supposed to look, and they like having them in the room. Maybe that's 90% of people. But off the dome I'd go with 5% of people more than very occasionally having big emotional responses as they look at individual paintings. Good question though, on reflection I don't feel I have a good handle on this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Basically Hitler wanted to ban modernist experimentation and for artists to stick with existing, perfectly good thank you styles. Klee wanted to experiment with things like colour theory. This is not the kind of transgression I would consider capable of being morally bad.


I mean you can see the painting by Klee that was in the Degenerate Art exhibition. It's a picture of a fish, painted in a cool style. I struggle to see this as having any political or moral valence at all, but yes, that's because the water I swim in is tolerant of different styles as a very basic value. I guess this is controversial now.


For his role in the art industry, and the art industry often being pretty insufferable, sure, it's reasonable to give Klee a little blame. But it's a homeopathic dose.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I grant you that your examples are degenerate and at least some of them are kinds of art. But they aren't what the Nazis called "degnerate art", which was, broadly, all modern and abstract art, as well as art done by Jews, people with mental illnesses, Communists etc. This art was deemed evil largely independently of its content or intention, but because of who did it and the fact it was in styles other than the approved realist style. I don't think this was a coherent concept, and the elision of aesthetically displeasing with morally bad was all kinds of fucked up.


I realise I should have used my words more here instead of saying degenerate art wasn't a thing, as I have caused you to write quite a lot of stuff I fully agree with. Art is vitally important and has moral valence. It can be powerful in bad ways as well as good. That just doesn't apply (at all) to Klee, and a new term needs to be found for art with a clearly pernicious effects as with some of your examples. The Nazis have claimed "degenerate art".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Lots of it may not have been good but probably none of it was degenerate, and probably degenerate art isn't really a thing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the traits that are stable throughout life are often at a higher level than what we think of as taste. You discover when young that you like it when a movie surprises you, and you like the twist in movie x. A year later you've seen a lot of movies, and movies like x no longer surprise you at all. You've learned the structures and tropes. You're still you. You like being surprised. But your knowledge of film and your expectations have grown and your responses are different. It takes more subversion to surprise you. Your taste has changed.


Now if you have no taste for novelty, learning new perspectives or gaining new insights from the art you consume, then you may go ahead and like the same thing throughout your life. That's not wrong, you can like what you like. But I think most people do change their tastes as a result of their understanding and expectations changing. And even if they have very fixed tastes, on some level they do require novelty. They need more slightly different romance novels for example. Why would they crave that, if their response to the stimuli of the story is unchanged each time they read it?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I saw it as a teenager in reproduction. I was very interested in how someone who was really into making drawings, philosophy and music and ceaselessly inventing new styles was villified by the Nazis as creating 'degenerate art' despite the inquisitiveness and sometimes humour of his overall project.


Did I gain from viewing that individual image by itself? Not really. It's not my favourite or anything. I'm arguing against the position it is harmful.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think it is weird – we've all been massively oversaturated by visual imagery and it's phenomenally hard for an image alone to have an emotional impact outside of a great deal of surrounding narrative. For example, I was just now pushed to a heightened level of emotion by a shot in the show DTF St Louis (this is probably weird of me) of just David Harbour dancing, but the shot isn't inherently that special, it's just lent its power by the story (and yet the story without that image would not have half the impact). Images in stories are powerful because we allow ourselves to view them as component parts of something bigger. Life isn't a story, it's too fragmented, but every experience e.g. of food, is either good or bad, but only really gets value by being part of a whole moment. I agree food isn't that emotional, but I can't say I don't value a certain piece of fatty tuna sushi I had emotionally, because of the moment of my life it recalls.


A lot of this conversation is just people trying to experience atomic sensations and rate them. You can't do this, they're rarely that special. You have to give in to the right brain and experience wholes all at once.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think there are still visual combos of technique and modern subject matter/point of view to explore, even in traditional figurative painting. See for example Dana Schutz, someone who is making exceptional, critically acclaimed paintings that are stylised but not abstract.


I like the idea of artists coming up with generative AI btw. I wonder what they'd have done with it? Probably they would have tried to monetised the output instead of the mechanism.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I read this post with something close to physical revulsion. (It is the culture wars thread so perhaps that's par for the course.) Not because I dislike those older pictures, I love them. I don't even like Novus Angelus that much. But Klee is a for-real artist who devoted his life to his work and if you look across his oeuvre, you can't deny he was pursuing his interests and exploring interesting themes with craft and intensity and a deep aesthetic sense. To think that an example of his work would be corrupting to teenagers, 'evil' or 'filth' is offensive in its own right. He was great artist even if you don't like the work. And you certainly don't have to find it beautiful. But "filth"? "Evilness"? Absolutely, disqualifyingly, ridiculous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But a restaurant critic certainly could do a double blinded taste test to judge how good the food is,




Could they though? I am imagining a blindfolded critic being spooned with two mouthfuls, not knowing what they are going to be. With classic dishes I suppose it might work. They could say 'This tastes like lasagna. I preferred forkful A over forkful B as it tasted cheesier'. With unique dishes I don't even know what the test is supposed to look like as there will not be an obvious control dish to serve alongside it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the background of the work cannot modify the experience of a blind sampler




You'd have to do an analysis of what counts as 'the background of the work' to determine if this is true. If I am recruited as a blind sampler in a trial but not mind-wiped first, my experience of other art or the subject of the novel is still going to have massive impact on whether I like it or not. I may not enjoy certain historical novels if I start from zero knowledge of the relevant bit of history, but is that really an indictment of the novels? If I were a caveman I expect I'd be totally bowled over by the most rudimentary drawings, but so what?


Ultimately the question is who is a blind sampler? I feel like Scott is imagining a child with uncultivated tastes, and supposing that such a child lives inside all of us. I guess this is what you are talking about above when you mention 'a bare, brute fact of sensory pleasure'. To me that seems obviously falsified by facts such as e.g. I liked very sweet desserts once and now I find them sickly. It seems to imply an 'accumulative' model of how people grow (each layer of the self stays the same but we add on layers as we gain experience) that is very contrary to my intuitive sense of myself or others.


Then again it's the strength of intuitions here that makes it such a debated topic.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suspect you're 90% wrong. If it were this taste-centered, you'd see all the tables at fancy restaurants filled with people on their own and you'd see very fast service geared to deliver as many delicious tastes as quickly as possible (i.e. you'd get McDonald's). The vast majority of people going to a good restaurant go for a social experience shared with the people at their table, the others in their restaurant, the city they're in, the culinary tradition they're participating in etc. The taste is really important but you can't even decompose it as an individual factor as delicious food in a shitty, antisocial environment doesn't bring that much pleasure, and shitty food in a beautiful environment ruins everything.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You probably need a lot of men to produce just a few geniuses, so if you want to keep the discovery rate as is, you may not be able to reduce the male population all that much. Also, you might also upset some of the women who wouldn't like the lack of men, so some negative hedons there.


In terms of the moral principle violated, however, I think the small matter of forcing your vision of reproduction on billions of non-consenting people would be the main one!


If you can get everyone to agree to it though, have at it – I'll even sign your petition.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's vice versa: he shortcuts his supporters' brains with these three techniques, and in so doing drives his opponents crazy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Good does mean bad though, and has done since Michael Jackson.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why can't you let Trump's objectives be an ineffable and possibly divine mystery?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I can agree it's a euphemism treadmill and that euphemism treadmills are in a sense pointless. But there remains a problem of the commons to solve -- we can't just decide to get rid of euphemism treadmills. You would need a campaign to encourage people to keep using outmoded slurs, and a majority of people would need to care more about ending euphemism treadmills than they do about maybe offending others. Not easy to coordinate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, it's additive. Any sexual abuse that is filmed and shared is graver, even if only slightly, than the same sexual abuse that's not filmed. I really doubt the judges were saying that the distribution component alone is worse than the rape component?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am not too sure what you find objectionable or funny about this? (Unless you assume the bolded sentence is about children viewing pornography rather than being in it?).