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 -
You're evading a simple question, likely because the answer would indicate you are broadly aligned with the leftist hegemon.
I literally, unironically support the establishment of white ethnostates. Is that sufficiently opposed to the hegemon for you?
It is, though your initial evasiveness now leads to my being unavoidably skeptical of your assertions. Assuming you are telling the truth, and you would indeed rather see the right flourish above the left (rather than the left above the more-left), then you are evidence against my theory. I do not have an explanation for you; you could be evidence of my being wrong, or there could be an explanation I'm simply not seeing at the moment, given my inability to holistically examine you.
So let's proceed from the position you're sincere, and I am wrong. You see before you something that is going to transform the creative landscape - by empowering people who don't yield to the progressive hegemon to create things they like. You see an evolution of expression that will offer infinitely more creative freedoms to people.
You loathe this. Why?
That is one thing it certainly does not do. It does not expand creative freedom - it can only offer a kind of pseudo-creativity that further alienates people from authentic creativity and distorts the meaning of what creativity can and should be.
If what you want to create can be packaged into a convenient verbal "prompt", then it's probably not very creative. There are images in my head that I wouldn't even know how to describe to a human artist, because they're barely even images - more like indistinct nexuses of concepts, emotions, and desires, that also include some visual elements. Things like that can only be realized as what they are in the concrete working out of the thing, with all of the surprising contingencies that that process includes. You can't just say to another agent "make it so", regardless of whether that agent's intelligence is artificial or organic.
This is obviously, objectively false. AI will not beat you up and take your crayons, so at absolute worst it does nothing; but we know it does something, it gives people who have no artistic skills the ability to translate their thoughts into images. Even if it does so in a terrible, boring fashion that you hate, you have to admit it is expanding creative freedoms. I will not allow you to redefine the meaning of those words to complain about it. There is no "pseudo-creativity" and there is no "authentic creativity".
This sounds like a seething resentment for people with higher verbal IQs than you and the ability to more effectively communicate with AI generators. How is other people being able to succeed an obstacle in your way? What is the cost you see in letting people who can't make cool pictures make cool pictures?
No, that's exactly my point. It literally does not do that. It might trick you into thinking it does that, but it doesn't.
If you imagine a sexy large-breasted woman and do a google image search for "sexy large-breasted woman" then it might return images that satisfy your requirements, but none of them will be "your thoughts translated into image form" because none of them will match the exact woman you were imagining. Obviously the problem becomes more pronounced the more unique and complex the request is.
The AI is essentially doing the same thing as a google image search (in terms of how it presents results to you, not at the level of technical implementation). Of course, through the use of Photoshop and img2img you can take the output from multiple AI prompts and start fashioning them into something closer to your original vision, but the more you involve yourself in the process, the more you would just need to rely on traditional artistic skills anyway, rather than the AI.
Would you plug yourself into the Matrix and live in a pleasant simulated world, assuming we could alter your memory so you wouldn't be aware it was a simulation? If not, then you recognize a difference in value between authentic experience and pseudo-experience, and it shouldn't be too hard to apply the same concepts to creativity. If you would plug yourself in, then our worldviews are fundamentally irreconcilable and there's probably not much we'll agree on.
The Matrix has a common counterargument that you're not taking into account: its simulation is quite literally in someone else's hands. You become vulnerable and helpless to the reality above the Matrix, and unlike any hypothetical superrealities above ours, you do know this one exists, and would continue to exist after you plug in, filled with all sorts of people who can do whatever they want to your simulation.
I would certainly find it just as repugnant to be plugged into a simulation I control as one I do not.
Not I. I don't find it repugnant to use my imagination, after all. But there's a difference between merely holding the switch to the simulation and controlling it. The more AI is used in a creative endeavour, the more joy of imagining is taken out of it.
"What now - you're going to eat all that stuff in my stead too?!"
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link