site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1681 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 28, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Being a bit of a cheapskate, and a bit illiquid at the moment anyways, I haven't played around much with AI until the free tiers started getting good enough. Hot dang have I been having fun, and I have been cracking up at the edge cases of what they'll refuse or eventually create, sometimes in weird and roundabout ways, especially Gemini.

Overall, Gemini 2.0 produces more accurate images than Grok 3.0, but refuses way more often. Going back and forth to generate prompts in Grok then images in Gemini probably worked the best. It doesn't seem to like generating couples posing for a portrait, though I could generate more people (Gemini likes harems, can't decide if I'm surprised or not) and sometimes talk it into removing the extras. Families are difficult. I thought the problem was a reluctance to generate kids, but it's the same issue as couples- seems the content restrictions make it reluctant to one-shot (am I using that right?) a man and woman together. Generate a mother and child then add the dad back later, works. DALL-E 3 is... good at what it does, which seems to be only slightly related to the prompt but highly detailed. Ask for [detailed description of an adventurer and a witch about to enter an ancient forest], get back an old wizard with ridiculously ornate robes instead. Might try 4o next month or whenever the new image gen trickles down to us freeloaders.

Playing around with them for writing has been interesting and rather less convoluted. Someone on twitter mentioned Grok is especially good at "human prompting" and I agree, it's better with its own little suggested questions at the end. Feels a little less 'magic' than the image generation, though. Turning a thousand words into a picture in a few seconds is more affecting than turning a thousand words into... more words.

So! I'm sure I could dig through archives here but I'm lazy. Are there good, not-too-hyped resources for learning more about how these dang things work and how to wield them properly? Assume basically no programming experience, and my knowledge of how computers function is somewhere around "electric demons in magic sand" metaphor level. I've missed the boat on learning all that much but I'd still like to round out my knowledge a bit.

Are any of you using LLMs for fun projects? I've heard Claude makes a decent life-coach substitute but I haven't tried that out yet.

I have been using Suno AI to make music about silly events and inside jokes that amuse me. I have a song about my favorite character in Gloomhaven, a song about how much I hate snow, a song about my wife being a loot goblin in a game, a song making fun of some redneck who harassed my brother, a song about a tiny plant my wife got in a toilet-shaped pot that we put on top of our toilet, etc...

Most of them sound like real songs you might hear on the radio. Nothing super profound, but not terrible. Well, actually probably 80% of the time it's terrible, but as usual with AI you discard the garbage and retry and reprompt until you get something good. Occasionally I write the lyrics myself from scratch, but most of the time I prompt Chat GPT on a topic and then tweak the lyrics to fit the context better before giving them to Suno to make a song. It's wonderful, and I am gradually accumulating a playlist of actually good songs that mean something to me.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats