8 karma · joined July 20, 2024
It’s unfortunate that we can’t monetize this stuff in the same vein as crypto and ChatGPT because I’d love to hear YouTube grifters telling you how you can make money overnight from quarks and neutrinos.
It amuses me to read these articles because it’s so airy and nebulous that there is all this text that doesn’t say much. I pretend it’s another pg article instead to humour myself further.
HN is perpetually being played by the storytelling of some minor event that the author saw - people taking care of orphaned children by some rotating number of adults - and is reaching conclusions “care doesn’t scale” as if to educate us. It’s like a TED talk, only even less structured. So all I’m reading is vain, egotistical puffery. There isn’t really anything here other than the author thinking they can bring the tablets to us, the blind unwashed masses. It’s not only software engineers who do this so I won’t say it’s a trait unique to them in any way, though I see software engineers trying to make grandiose life statements more often than not.
The hard part is articulating to someone to slow down because we run the risk of them being offended. But that’s a different thread altogether.
It’s amusing how often these sorts of exposés start off with this “the transformation that the world forgot” meme. There are enough writers out there who are making ends meet writing boring articles for publications like BT instead that, in all honesty, not enough time passes from one article to another on the same subject that gives enough time to forget. We constantly have to be reminded of some absolutely astonishing fact. Perpetually. I suppose this defines the 24-hour news cycle as applied to the internet.
The actual article itself is empty on juicy content and shills a book instead. Skip. Maybe the author forgot what good article writing is like, but that fact certainly won’t be lost on civilization as a whole.
The shit shows unfolding elsewhere fall into hypocritical territory - concerned about climate change yet are regularly flying. For these folks here, I’m willing to be more charitable. Looking forward to seeing more photos of, hopefully, simpler life.
Outrage posturing is the name of the game. Say a lot. Sound serious. Threaten action. Do nothing.
An equation given to you will be one of 2 forms usually; the raw equation that may come from optics, in which case expect an ass load of calculus and diff equations with arcane terms not seen outside of Maxwell’s equations. Or, in the likely case, the presenter is a PhD ubermensch nerd who has already pulled the terms out, rewritten them, is presenting them, and you need to be really paying close attention to every single word during their talk to figure it out. It’s at your discretion to determine which of the two forms is easier for you to deal with.
This has been the story for 20 years now. Not even exaggerating. We all knew it was expensive from the get-go because we all did things on prem.
I don’t know who Cal is and I have no idea what Deep Work he’s done since he quit social media, but, best of luck to the lad.
In truth, the data is weak and nonsensical and it’s used to peddle mysticism-tier shit out on unsuspecting rubes under the guise of “Science.” But that’s a separate discussion.
I don’t think the poor lad knows what Art is.
Put another way, we have hundreds of years of recorded philosophical texts and diatribes on what constitutes Art, and what art-making is. Often written by serious practitioners who dedicate their life to it rather than internet-dwelling dabblers and dilettantes. We have people who are deemed artists, not necessarily painters but people who are wired a certain way and are industrious with their abilities. Math geniuses attend certain schools and the other pupils may pick up a thing or two from them, but that doesn’t mean the other pupils are geniuses also. So too, do artists walk among us and may do what we do and we may imitate what they do. But that doesn’t put us on equal footing whatsoever.
Art doesn’t select for skill. This is a red herring and a misunderstanding. Art doesn’t select for anything, because if it did it wouldn’t be Art. This is an old somewhat trite topic that, historically, boiled down to no more than a pithy phrase: “Art cannot be taught.” as expounded by many teachers of incredible talent in their own right who have attempted to distill it into teachable material and realized their talent is not transferable as easily as they had hoped.
Most of what you read on this subject is nonsense sold to you by grifters who want your money. Now and today more than ever. I’m all for, say, “Art and Fear” and “The Art Spirit” and even a bit of “War of Art” to name some household items on the subject. These are all great recent texts. But let’s take these for what they are: self-help literature, and nothing more. The further back in literature you go the less of this patting-on-the-back attitude you get, and more serious the subject matter is treated (example: read the lectures on Art by the presidents of the Royal Academy, they are numerous, Archive has them all. One president basically tells students to choose a different profession, discussed as an aside topic in a book on portraiture from that time.)
Elsewhere in the comments people saying how art is simply good taste seem to be oblivious to the creations of artists that led them to make such a blundering conclusion. Your taste wouldn’t exist had an artist not created a thing to begin with.
We’ve used image generators for decades now. It gets the job done. The person using it may be an artist or just someone who wants a dynamic, changing generated image on the wall.