fuzzythrowaway

Visual creativity requires experimentation - trying things that shouldn't work, and teasing out some measure of emotional or intellectual interest. Systems that are increasingly only capable of outputting marketing visuals are caught in a blandness spiral. They're just going to get worse, so long as they filter out all the weird things artists might actually want to generate (six-fingered hands, off-center subjects, nude bodies). Imagine training an artist solely on magazine ads, or only allowing them to produce that kind of work. No figure drawing, no sketching from life where a pen slip produces a unique texture that becomes a signature element.

I say this as someone who's generating smut-adjacent, art-adjacent images almost every day. It's amazing what image models can produce, but (as with my traditional skills) they'll always be held back by a refusal to embrace holistic study of the world. Sometimes you gotta draw a lamp or weird sculptures or a vacuum cleaner or a dick. Sometimes you have to paint an empty sky or a nipple and do your damnedest to find an epic novel in them.

Yes, but I almost immediately break the keyboard. "No... No! There was time!"

But actually the answer is "thoughtcrime".

First, they came for the people who wanted to make kinky art, and I did not speak out, for I am a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition kinda dude...

Then, they came for the people who wanted to reverse-engineer video games, and I did not speak out, for I find no amusement in seeing Mario take down Elden Ring bosses...

Finally, they banned me for a politically incorrect/inconvenient prompt (like asking for help defending Luigi in a debate or something), and there was no one left to speak out for me.

1) You are describing something that is not UBI, and calling it UBI anyway. A rationing system that is not fungible and that varies allocation is not universal, and not income as capitalism knows it. The Soviet planned economy was categorically not UBI. Full stop.

2) >I pointed to a clear example where a UBI-like structure was tried and failed.

You did not.

3) That's not applicable here. Why did you respond to the UBI issue only?

>I do agree people can avoid having to submit to AI or ML systems though.

I didn't speak to this at all. The "artificial system of manufactured competition and unnecessary 'productivity'" is independent of AI and ML and has existed for several decades.

>my views aren't uneducated reactions.

See 1.

My conclusion is that you actually aren't interested in a conversation. You haven't responded earnestly or considerately to anything in my initial post except the portion suggesting UBI, which you dismissed with a faulty presence.

Here is my suggestion: talk about something else from that post. Anything else. Do not revisit the UBI topic.

1) No, they didn't.

2) America in 2026 is not the USSR in the 20th century, so even if they did, our circumstances are very different from theirs.

3) UBI was only the first suggestion; you completely failed to address the other and then jumped to a black-and-white conclusion.

The general thrust of my proposition was that people shouldn't have to submit to an artificial system of manufactured competition and unnecessary "productivity" in order to access goods that are objectively abundant. When people realize that and make the necessary compromises, they won't have to worry about shipping useless AI-assisted slop for "income security" and can focus on using AI to build consequential and useful software.

Please do not get bogged down in whatever kneejerk anti-UBI thought-loop your misaligned amygdala is screaming at you.

UBI or a living wage for part-time workers in-line with what was expected would be possible from productivity gains over the past half-century would do that. You just have to get the "hard workers" who are happy to race to the bottom on their way to the top, and undercut/throw under the bus everyone else in the process.

Can we please, for once, stop trying to figure out how to "get ahead" of each other, and instead figure out how to build a decent and dignified floor for as many people as possible? Because I imagine that, "Ultimate power in the hands of anyone with enough VRAM to run GTAVI," works better when people are in a culture of looking out for each other, versus a culture of clawing their way to one of the limited lifeboat spots (under the mistaken impression that there ARE lifeboats, when, again, everyone potentially has the power to blow up the lifeboats).

A 4K OLED panel equivalent to a $1000 smart TV is $10,000.

We're all naked under our clothes, I don't see the problem. One of the funniest shock-bits I've ever seen was when Jon Stewart's book on American government and history included full-frontal (Photoshopped) nudes of SCOTUS, but I guess he couldn't get away with that during the current era of Puritanical panic.

It's just an adult human body, Michael, what could it cost? One('s) dignity?

None of these advances matter if the hyper-Puritan guardrails continue to be in place. If you can't make a nude, you can't make art. If you're incapable of making something that might offend someone, you can't make art. It's not just about smut peddlers; classifiers are dumb and make mistakes, so "unsafe" generations that are actually objectively "safe" get swept up with bona fide illegal ones, and become tantamount to them. These are just glorified ad and propaganda machines, literally neutered. It's a form of censorship, and these systems have a chilling effect on the output of people who use them.

Hopefully we leave the AI Hays Code behind soon.

I think the thing people miss is that American friendliness is a bit fake, just not malicious. It's built on our pastoral history, but has evolved into a way to smooth down the sharp edges of a very competitive society - especially when that pastoral mindset ran headlong into the immigration that made contemporary America what it is.

Which is why I think the whole premise of GP is kind of suspect. China has housed a highly-developed society - not just a civilization, but a contiguous, if evolving, social order - for longer than most of the rest of the world. Even what they consider backwoods and rural is basically urban by most historical standards.

These aren't the problems of a society rising out of a state of nature; as TFA states, "The narrative is that China experienced a “century of humiliation”". I think certain aspects of Chinese culture as we know it, writ-large, make more sense coming from people who weren't just recently struggling as a society, but who are well aware of how that condition compares to their historical one.

I like the interface; very useful for some use cases that would otherwise be quite frustrating. Dislike that it's yet another platform held back by arbitrary moderation. You can't make a bicycle for the mind that locks if you try to ride it in the wrong direction.

The computer sections feel warm and sort of anchored in place, whereas those shots of the arcade gave me the "liminal space" heebies. I wonder why.

Are there any places like this in the US?