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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32885 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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So you’re acknowledging that you like this technology because you see it as a way to inflict harm on people you perceive to have wronged you. I say “perceive” because, as far as I can tell as a card-carrying nerd myself, picking on “nerds” hasn’t been a thing in the US for at least a decade, if not more. Working in tech is considered to be relatively high status. There’s also some irony here because commercial artists, who stand to be impacted the most by AI, are also frequently loners and weirdos themselves who spend a lot of time surrounded by video games and comic books, and thus know full well what it’s like to be a “nerd”.

I don’t know why you thought this was supposed to make you appear sympathetic.

as far as I can tell as a card-carrying nerd myself, picking on “nerds” hasn’t been a thing in the US for at least a decade, if not more.

No, because the term has been diluted beyond usefulness by "Hollywood nerds" and the like. The people who used to be just picked on for being nerds are now "the wrong sort of nerds" and beating on them is still exactly as much fun for exactly the same kind of people it always was -- they're just pretending to be the "true" nerds, now, too, as a final insult.

Not at all. At least not enough to bias my judgement in any significant way. Or so I'd say.

I was just offering you a counter to the notion that people are showing their disdain towards artists because of some inherent jealously. That instead in some cases, people are just punching back.

Ofcourse its not that the "stemcels" never fling shit at the "creatives". "I'd like my big mac without pickles" is a classic. But one party making fun of the other is gauche and considered punching down and the inverse of that can range from an ice breaker to a status symbol. Seriously go spend some time in /r/redscarepod you will come away with the impression that knowing what an equation is is equivalent to living in the sewers to a certain type of people.

And for all I care, those people can eat shit. Ofcourse as always @DaseindustriesLtd says it better than I can.

I am sympathetic to those losing their jobs. If they had the intellectual honesty to say "its sucks that we can't pay rent anymore" I would feel for them. Instead they are doubling down at the face of almost literal science fiction as to how much of special snowflakes they actually are (despite being shown otherwise) and further doubling down at berating the people who hold the keys to their livelihoods. They are not exactly acting in a way that invokes a feeling of mercy.

There is no attempt to even retreat to the motte of "we just don't want to starve" they are fighting from their bailey of "artists have a touch of the divine, anyone who suggests otherwise is the devil and should be treated as such".

Working in tech is considered to be relatively high status.

Higher or lower status than art? The latter is usually associated with self-sacrifice, of pursuing beauty even at expense of earning potential. So I would say that there is no obvious winner: the engineer can afford to attend to attend an exhibition, but it is the artists work that will be viewed.

Being a tech bro is vastly higher status than "digital artist on Twitter". These people don't have art in galleries like the few high status artists.

Being a tech bro is also vastly higher status than most people working in tech. Most people working in tech aren't doing cutting edge innovation, they're debugging old code for some obscure system or programming some website that gets 2 hits a day or even just tech support. This whole thread is mostly just the apex fallacy, either comparing high status tech workers to average-status artists or high status artists to average-status tech workers in order to get the comparison that's favorable to one's particular narrative.

You will run afoul of that fallacy if you try to compare what I would call "socioeconomic status".

As @aquota mentioned, a lot of people are talking about a different kind of 'social' status. The kind of status that is associated with better social skills, taste, knowledge, more cultured, "more SOUL". As opposed to the kind of status that engineers and programmers have which is entirely a result of their income.

Those two statuses are correlated but not the same.

Journalists, Academics (humanities), artists, etc have more of that kind social status than engineers. They are perceived to be more well read, intellectual, "interesting", exciting, etc. As opposed to the engineers who lack social grace and are just cogs in a machine making their money because capitalism.

being a successful artist is high status, which most artists are not

Working in tech is considered to be relatively high status

I think it depends on how you define these things.

Almost all the status engineers have comes from their earnings, and if you take an engineer making $150k and a lawyer, artist, writer, etc making $150k, the latter will be viewed as higher status.

So, this all runs into a definitional question. Is tech high status? Or is being rich high status and tech is low status? idk - there's no "answer"

Like @EfficientSyllabus says, in «the real world» artists aren't doing too hot, whereas techies are in great demand. But in their own frame of reference, artists are the master race. Moreover, it's not mundane conceit, like low-grade techies' own boasts of having high IQs or earning a lot while creatives flip burgers. It's more similar to Russian ressantiment-powered invectives directed at the West: artists have unusual, rich SOVLS, and their entire trade is about conveying their inner depths to the thankful audience (which is near-universally despised and considered to be scum with trash taste, however – especially in light of their interest in AI content), Techies are the complete opposite of artists: ignorant of SOUL, of beauty and love and other lofty categories, mere bugmen churning out code to make the corrupt machine of capitalism run smoothly, crushing the fragile wonder of the human heart etc. etc.

This is insulting on its face and, what's more, it's laughable chutzpah. There is of course art in STEM and specifically in coding, and it's not lost on developers who wander into artists' dens that there's astounding cynicism, small-mindedness and mercenary attitude among artists. It's a crab bucket where every crab gatekeeps his secrets of drawing some perverted fetish (often a sort of furry or dickgirl) to cater to a niche audience of degenerates.

Thus their scorn.

Why do you capitalize SOUL? Because of that Indy PRG?

Because of that Indy PRG?

Magical Girl Celesphonia?

no, i thought about the one making a big fuss on 'determination'. Undertale

Ah, I couldn't stand its art style, so I don't know anything about it beyond the memes.

It’s a meme.

please, could you be more specific?

meme? Could you please be more specific?

So much of the hatred directed at AI art I see just makes me think of this old Futurama joke.

Relevant lines:

"With all that Salmonella and me been through, her sound is unique. All your fancy technology will NEVER be able to copy this guitar."

"Using my fancy technology, I can make an exact copy of this guitar."

Of course, duplicating a physical object is a different endeavor, but the fundamental phenomenon is the same.

In the real world, normal guys who study art and hope to support themselves off it are ridiculed as lazy unserious dreamers who have no willpower to study something difficult or work hard. In Hungarian they are nicknamed canteen-cloakroom degree programs, implying they don't have to go to lectures. I get the impression that it's similar in Western Europe too, not sure about the US. If a normal middle class parent hears that their kid wants to "become an artist" the reaction is "what the fuck, you want to flip burgers at McDonald's?". Art as in Michelangelo, Leonardo, etc. is in high esteem but not "art grads". It's a rockstar profession where a tiny minority gain high status with it.

I think artist is being use as a stand in for an much larger social clan that see the works of "Techies" or STEM people as at best lacking soul and more often just evil. I don't have a great word for it but it intuitively feels like there are two very different hierarchies in at least the united states. There is the "Physical" Hierarchy where people get status because of the things they make. There is also the "Social" hierarchy where one gets status by who holds them in high regard, who they are in particular. One interesting way these two hierarchies interact is in debates around things like socialism/communism, a system that totally collapses the way that the "Physical" hierarchy gets status and purports to level the playing field, but many people on the "physical" side correctly intuit that when you go to only one hierarchy there will still be rich people but they'll be the people rich in "social" status. Artists, journalists, politicians and many other professions are coded as "social" and techies intuit a strike against them as a win against the entire "social" hierarchy that increasingly seems to disdain them and call for their status to be revoked.

In all actual communist countries it was the physicals who controlled things like heavy industries or the military who had power. Artists were kept on a tight leash and only allowed to do things in a style that would uplift the status of the leaders of the physical hierarchy. It was the USA where the CIA pushed abstract expressionism as a way to undermine the Soviets.

To these types communist doesn't refer to historical communist regimes but idealized ones.

Isn't the relevant split just humanities vs STEM? As an aside, it's strange that there was no standard way to say STEM until the clunky acronym was invented. In Hungary it's common knowledge that there are "humán" and "reál" subjects and kids get categorized by parents and teachers into one or the other quite early. I don't think this is very good by the way (historically science and math was very connected to philosophy and humanities).

I also wonder where a pure math prof would fall in the dichotomy. They are certainly "reál" but not a "physical" maker. And a lot of artists are hands on makers, craftsmen, sculptors and painters (digital or not), they don't just talk. Maybe your split is just bullshitters/talkers vs doers/makers.

Working in tech is considered to be relatively high status.

Among some circles, it's high status. Among some circles, tech is high status, but the actual people in tech are low status.

Perhaps. But this is not an issue that’s unique to tech. It’s something that people in many fields have to deal with.

Do you think patreon furry porn artists are eager to share their job title at cocktail parties?

But this is not an issue that’s unique to tech.

It is. It's rare that the status of the field doesn't match the status of the people in it. In your furry example, they're both high status (among themselves) or both low status (at the party). Nobody's going to say "we need to get more of group X to be furry porn artists" while still holding existing furry porn artists in contempt.

I’m sorry, but I feel like everyone here is just inventing this persecution of tech workers out of thin air. It doesn’t match my experience at all.

I work in tech. I have never felt any qualms at all about telling people that I work in tech. It’s perfectly respectable. It doesn’t make people kiss my feet, but it’s not low status either. It’s just, fine. Normal. It’s absolutely higher status than telling people that you work in service or retail, which is the sort of answer that the majority of people have to give.

I think you are confused because you are confusing socioeconomic status with social status. The former is what you would be proud/ashamed of to tell your parents about. The latter is what would get you more/less matches in a dating profile.

Service workers and tech workers are not an apple-apples comparison. Compare with the economic factor adjusted.

Artists, singers, historians, bartenders are sexy DESPITE being poor. Tech workers are tolerable BECAUSE they're not poor. Is the cultural inertia not extremely self evident?

Have you seen many articles recently about how the practices in the service industry are sexist and racist and that the existing service workers are keeping women and minorities out of the service industry?

Isn't that the point? The racial grievance class demanding that more women and minorities be admitted to your niche is an indicator that your niche is prestigious.

It never occurred to me to take those articles personally?

I suppose I have, to use a term recently coined by Moldbug, some “dark elf” syndrome going on. Moldbug used the term to describe people whose acculturation and mannerisms mark them as blue tribe, but whose emotional sympathies lie with the red tribe. Similarly, I work in tech to support myself, but I detest “tech culture” and I don’t really view myself as being a part of it. If someone says “Silicon Valley delenda est”, they’ll get a “right on!” from me.

Plus, I hold many views that are popularly considered to be sexist and racist, and I made peace with that fact a loooong time ago, so accusations of racism and sexism don’t really bother me anymore.

This falls under "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." What matters with accusations of sexism and racism is not what you personally feel about them, but the fact that other people will act based on them.

Depends what kind of cock tail party it is, really

cock tail party

Cock tail party eh.

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