This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not really sure what you're suggesting here. Are you envisioning a future where you just tell the AGI "make me something" and it handles everything from conceptualization to planning the story beats to the final rendering?
There is some limit, somewhere, to how much visual information you're able to encode in text. Otherwise, it seems plausible to imagine that a written description of an image would be an acceptable substitute for the image itself. But, it's not. You have to actually look at the thing to know what it looks like.
The appropriate thought experiment here is to imagine that you have a true AGI, and it can draw better than any human artist. Your own personal artist-slave at your beck and call, 24/7. Could you truly communicate to it everything that's in your head using only words, no images? Not even crude MS Paint sketches to indicate the sort of composition or mood you want? I suppose that's partially dependent on what's in your head and how much specificity you desire, but I think plenty of people would still find reason to communicate with the AGI in images and sketches, and not just purely in words.
Many years before AI art existed, I would see game programmers say things like "I just want to be able to draw well enough to get my ideas across to an artist, so he can finish them". It seems they also had the intuition that they wouldn't be able to fully communicate their visual ideas in words alone.
Seems like as good a time to ask as any.
I know you've talked in the past about how you're excited about the possibility of SD to level the playing field of visual expression, and enable people to express political and philosophical messages that they weren't able to before. Do you have any projects in mind that you want to accomplish with SD? Have you been playing around with it?
This will be done at some point, assuming no political hurdles. Taken literally, this will amount to a gacha roll, hardly any different from current prompt combinatorics. «Make me something with the quality of Netflix slop, but a better fit for my data-mined profile» plus a few tags to taste – I'd say it's more commendable than consuming Netflix propaganda, but it's not an artistic act on your part, indeed any more than ordering a dish and asking for it to be extra spicy makes one a chef.
Technically there isn't; after all, images are 0s and 1s as well. But my point is more that natural languages do not lend themselves naturally to describing very specific visuals. Imagine Syd had his hands crushed in a road accident, but was otherwise intact. Would he be able to create an equal piece of art using an «art slave» as you put it, or simply a very responsive AI, talking about tones and shapes and reflections and such, especially not referencing prior work? I get that text is the universal interface, but eh... sounds bothersome. And leaving aside subtleties lost in translation – how much of the original image even was in Syd's head, imagined ex nihilo, versus discovered serendipitously through actual work of drawing the piece, stroke by stroke, both «at inference time» and over the decades of «training the network»? Also, how well could that iterative process be substituted in collaboration with a command-interpreting «slave»? Great painters offloaded much of their work to assistants, but they could do the job of any given assistant even better… Then again, high-level imagination can be lost in the work, or perhaps exposed as a half-baked incoherent dream…
Those are not obvious questions to me. I do not wish to look down on manual technique, no matter how much /ic/ type artists beclown themselves with shitty arguments. It's a travesty that humans have to do art in such an inefficient manner (animation is the worst sort of bullshit – 1D acts to construct a 4D object!), but in practice it appears to be either very important or fully necessary to build one's creative ability.
It isn't sufficient, though, so some crabs clearly have no legs to stand on while they bash prompters.
I have, but playing around is the right way to put it.
My excitement was vicarious, on behalf of young people who haven't had the time or the insanity to acquire technique, yet believe they have something to show. It'll be more than a bit ridiculous to ape being a Creative now. This was a self-deprecating use of the term; I used to be an Idea Guy, but my Ideas are shriveled up and dead, visual or otherwise, just a dust-collecting folder with drafts. I'm not good at technique either. Sometimes I test it. For example, two months ago when I was dining out and saw this writingprompts thread «When humanity went extinct... Earth is now dominated by sentient trees» obviously baiting environmentalist nuts, and quickly wrote this , in the dry style of gwern prose.
It'd be relatively easy to expand my sketch into a larger-scale story, and illustrate with SD or Midjourney; I can envision most separate pieces. It'd communicate some of my politics and philosophy too. What would be the point, though? Even for better concepts of my own invention – who would need it? This tech is wasted on me, I admit it freely.
But there are other people.
What's the point of writing posts here? Communication and creation are their own rewards. Making something that you and others can enjoy is a delightful thing.
I find myself in much the same position. My head was once full of fascinating ideas, mostly abandoned now that I have an actual job. But it still has some of them, and I still grind a bit now and again trying to express them, and derive enjoyment thereby. Maybe I'll get around to pushing them out someday. The future is not closed until we are dead and gone.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link