The meaning of progress
January 21, 2024 1:51 AM Subscribe
Romanticists need to accept that the nobility of suffering has always been a coping mechanism — a way to sustain hope through the long twilight of apparent futility. And they need to accept that heroism is always inherently self-destroying — that saving the world requires that the world is worth having been saved. And they must at least try to understand that in a more general sense, happiness isn’t truly shallow — it just has a different kind of depth. from Toward a shallower future
The modern world of push-button marvels has lost something, but it has gained more than it has lost. By celebrating it, we honor the countless millennia of heroes who worked in some small way to bring it about, even as we dedicate ourselves to continuing their great enterprise. Our legacy is to fill the Universe with children who laugh more than we were allowed to.
Fill the Universe, is it? Fuck's sake. It's almost as if the well documented history of colonial expansionist immiseration have taught Noah Smith nothing. Dude gonna take a pop at romantics while barfing horseshit drowned in that much petunia wants a good long look in the mirror.
How about we just aspire to making the normal human experience involve long, contented, peaceful, fulfilling lives on the planet we're already on, in numbers insufficient to fuck it up?
posted by flabdablet at 2:50 AM on January 21 [15 favorites]
Fill the Universe, is it? Fuck's sake. It's almost as if the well documented history of colonial expansionist immiseration have taught Noah Smith nothing. Dude gonna take a pop at romantics while barfing horseshit drowned in that much petunia wants a good long look in the mirror.
How about we just aspire to making the normal human experience involve long, contented, peaceful, fulfilling lives on the planet we're already on, in numbers insufficient to fuck it up?
posted by flabdablet at 2:50 AM on January 21 [15 favorites]
People on Twitter want Haring's art to be respected for the reality of what it IS (a piece that happens to depict great despair and suffering), and this guy thinks people are saying Haring's art deserves respect because despair & suffering is how all art OUGHT TO BE. People are saying "depth in art comes from the humanity of the artist," and this guy hears "depth in art comes from the suffering of the artist."
What a weirdo this Noah guy is. What is his peculiar mistake formally called, I wonder? Is it just a basic straw-man - he has constructed a fake and absurd argument for his opponents and knocked it down? Is this the is-ought fallacy (people want this piece of art to be respected as-is, and he somehow thinks they mean art always ought to be like this piece)? Is it a generalization fallacy (just because this particular piece of art being defended from dehumanization depicts suffering, he thinks people are saying the only kind of art worth defending from dehumanization is art that depicts suffering)?
posted by MiraK at 3:45 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
What a weirdo this Noah guy is. What is his peculiar mistake formally called, I wonder? Is it just a basic straw-man - he has constructed a fake and absurd argument for his opponents and knocked it down? Is this the is-ought fallacy (people want this piece of art to be respected as-is, and he somehow thinks they mean art always ought to be like this piece)? Is it a generalization fallacy (just because this particular piece of art being defended from dehumanization depicts suffering, he thinks people are saying the only kind of art worth defending from dehumanization is art that depicts suffering)?
posted by MiraK at 3:45 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
I think y'all are maybe taking his musings farther than he is trying to push. I appreciate his point that suffering should not be heroicized for its own sake, that great art need not come from suffering, and that when it does, it's not the suffering itself that should be romanticized.
Where I quibble with him is "But whether or not that sort of institutional cycle exists, the technologies discovered during the last upswing will be preserved. Countries may collapse, but humanity will not forget antibiotics." Vaccination requires societal buy-in, and that's completely crumbled this generation.
posted by rikschell at 5:27 AM on January 21 [15 favorites]
Where I quibble with him is "But whether or not that sort of institutional cycle exists, the technologies discovered during the last upswing will be preserved. Countries may collapse, but humanity will not forget antibiotics." Vaccination requires societal buy-in, and that's completely crumbled this generation.
posted by rikschell at 5:27 AM on January 21 [15 favorites]
I don't understand how AI art is an achievement on the level of the discovery of antibiotics. That faux Breughel is more disturbing than the original it's supposed to sanitize.
posted by kingdead at 5:40 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 5:40 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
Reading Noah is always such a strange experience, because there he is, in my inbox, with some cheerful optimistic read on history or technology, maybe not always something I agree with, but y'know, fun to read nonetheless, then I step out into the internet and everyone is like he is WRONG and BAD and possibly EVIL and A GALLERY OF GOD'S MISTAKES and IS THIS WHAT MYXOMATOSIS DOES TO THE BRAIN. I don't think I even want to know what people think of his latest piece on planned communities in California. (nb: I guess I'm about to find out)
posted by mittens at 6:26 AM on January 21 [5 favorites]
posted by mittens at 6:26 AM on January 21 [5 favorites]
Spartans Were Losers
Instead of a society of freedom-defending super-warriors, Sparta is better understood as a place where the wealthiest class of landholder, the Spartans themselves, had succeeded in reducing the great majority of their poor compatriots to slavery and excluded the rest, called the perioikoi, from political participation or citizenship. The tiny minority of Spartan citizens derived their entire income from the labor of slaves, being legally barred from doing any productive work or engaging in commerce.
And rather than spending their time in ascetic military training, they spent their ample leisure time doing the full suite of expensive, aristocratic Greek pastimes: hunting (a pastime for the wealthy rather than a means of subsistence in the ancient world), eating amply, accumulating money, funding Olympic teams, breeding horses, and so on. Greek authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch continually insist that the golden age of Spartan austerity and egalitarianism existed in the distant past, but each author pushes that golden age further and further into that past, and in any event, archaeology tells us it was never so.
posted by Brian B. at 7:00 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
Instead of a society of freedom-defending super-warriors, Sparta is better understood as a place where the wealthiest class of landholder, the Spartans themselves, had succeeded in reducing the great majority of their poor compatriots to slavery and excluded the rest, called the perioikoi, from political participation or citizenship. The tiny minority of Spartan citizens derived their entire income from the labor of slaves, being legally barred from doing any productive work or engaging in commerce.
And rather than spending their time in ascetic military training, they spent their ample leisure time doing the full suite of expensive, aristocratic Greek pastimes: hunting (a pastime for the wealthy rather than a means of subsistence in the ancient world), eating amply, accumulating money, funding Olympic teams, breeding horses, and so on. Greek authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch continually insist that the golden age of Spartan austerity and egalitarianism existed in the distant past, but each author pushes that golden age further and further into that past, and in any event, archaeology tells us it was never so.
posted by Brian B. at 7:00 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
I agree with MiraK. I have no quarrel with what he’s saying (suffering is bad, we should not be morally attached to it) but it is a total nonsequitur to why the sanitized Haring painting is offensive. We don’t keep a Holocaust memorial because we think the Holocaust was great. That AI typist basically desecrated a grave.
posted by eirias at 8:07 AM on January 21 [9 favorites]
posted by eirias at 8:07 AM on January 21 [9 favorites]
I am sure that I have subscribed and then unsubscribed to Noah Smith's newsletter at least twice in the past. I didn't make notes as to why, but maybe I too was turned off by techno-optimist talk of orbital habitats or the like.
Nevertheless, his point here is a good one. Hardships don't make people better. A world where less people suffer and die of neglect and privation is preferable. Even if that means somewhat less art is created as a means of coping with that suffering.
He is also right in his implication that one cannot trust any man who believes , “Hard times makes strong men.” That only sounds true to exactly the kind of men who can't be trusted. I actually read a G. Michael Hopf book because I got it for free a decade ago. He's the fascist symp who came up with that phrase and that's all you really need to know about both him and that book.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:14 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
Nevertheless, his point here is a good one. Hardships don't make people better. A world where less people suffer and die of neglect and privation is preferable. Even if that means somewhat less art is created as a means of coping with that suffering.
He is also right in his implication that one cannot trust any man who believes , “Hard times makes strong men.” That only sounds true to exactly the kind of men who can't be trusted. I actually read a G. Michael Hopf book because I got it for free a decade ago. He's the fascist symp who came up with that phrase and that's all you really need to know about both him and that book.
rikschell: “Where I quibble with him is ‘But whether or not that sort of institutional cycle exists, the technologies discovered during the last upswing will be preserved. Countries may collapse, but humanity will not forget antibiotics.’”This stood out to me too. We live in an age where one person can easily carry the sum total of all human knowledge, but the chain of technology required to make accessing it possible is much longer than for the printed word. Even so, as Ish finds out in Earth Abides, even if people have access to a university library, that means teaching the children to read and then use the library, plus keeping vermin and weather from destroying it, is required in perpetuity.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:14 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
> A world where less people suffer and die of neglect and privation is preferable.
Literally nobody claimed otherwise, though? I have no idea why he feels the need to write essays about how suffering is bad, actually. This is not a "good point", it's... ridiculous.
posted by MiraK at 8:31 AM on January 21 [4 favorites]
Literally nobody claimed otherwise, though? I have no idea why he feels the need to write essays about how suffering is bad, actually. This is not a "good point", it's... ridiculous.
posted by MiraK at 8:31 AM on January 21 [4 favorites]
Far be it from me to defend a writer I don't usually agree with, but Smith's point is that romanticists — whom you and I might call fascists — do think a world with more suffering is better in the long run and there seems to be a helluva lot of them around lately.
posted by ob1quixote at 8:41 AM on January 21 [4 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 8:41 AM on January 21 [4 favorites]
> Smith's point is that romanticists — whom you and I might call fascists — do think a world with more suffering is better in the long run and there seems to be a helluva lot of them around lately.
IDK but I'll take your word for it. However I don't see any romanticists attacking this piece of AI art on a pro-fascist basis. Noah doesn't quote anything like it.
He quoted people who seem to be saying that art is valuable only because it is human - in much the same way that romantic relationships are only valuable because they involve human beings. AI art is valuable only to the extent that it expresses humanity (e.g. in its adherence to training data sets which were created by humans, or in the mind of the human being who creates meaning out of totally inhuman AI art).
Without being fully grounded in humanity, AI art has no meaning and no value, and indeed isn't art at all - much like a romantic relationship with an inflatable doll isn't a romantic relationship at all.
This was an instance where AI was used to thoroughly dehumanize an artwork. That's why it's terrible.
posted by MiraK at 8:42 AM on January 21 [5 favorites]
IDK but I'll take your word for it. However I don't see any romanticists attacking this piece of AI art on a pro-fascist basis. Noah doesn't quote anything like it.
He quoted people who seem to be saying that art is valuable only because it is human - in much the same way that romantic relationships are only valuable because they involve human beings. AI art is valuable only to the extent that it expresses humanity (e.g. in its adherence to training data sets which were created by humans, or in the mind of the human being who creates meaning out of totally inhuman AI art).
Without being fully grounded in humanity, AI art has no meaning and no value, and indeed isn't art at all - much like a romantic relationship with an inflatable doll isn't a romantic relationship at all.
This was an instance where AI was used to thoroughly dehumanize an artwork. That's why it's terrible.
posted by MiraK at 8:42 AM on January 21 [5 favorites]
I open up the article and see what appears to be a Bruegel like painting, that looks utterly bland and under closer look, I notice the smeared faces. Then I read the caption. It’s an AI rendition of The Triumph of Death, a painting that I have appreciated for years, without death. What the fuck indeed. One of the purposes of art is to give us the chance to experience horror, death, unreason, etc without actually experiencing the same. We get a glimpse of it, and we can always turn away. Buddhism began with the understanding that life is suffering. But the Buddha offered a way out. Without the recognition of suffering, no one would do anything to alleviate it. That AI bullshit picture does represent The Triumph of Death, the death of compassion.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:47 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 8:47 AM on January 21 [7 favorites]
Far be it from me to defend a writer I don't usually agree with, but Smith's point is that romanticists — whom you and I might call fascists — do think a world with more suffering is better in the long run and there seems to be a helluva lot of them around lately
Fascists generally want others to do the suffering - they need to persuade the mass that suffering is inevitable or deserved or ennobling, depending on who will be suffering and how bad it is.
But also, I think a lot of people believe, at least semi-consciously, that suffering is good. Consider how awful schools are - even a good school is pretty bad. My public school system was well-regarded and I got a good education and it was awful. We accept that children should be bored and confused at best and bullied terribly at worst as part of their character formation. We accept that starter jobs (or maybe permanent jobs if you're working class) should be pretty horrible - maybe we want some reforms, but we mostly accept the idea that a large number of people should work boring, deskilled, stressful jobs for low wages while many of us work at least tolerable and even pleasant jobs for relatively high wages.
It's that "suffering is good actually, or at least it is necessary" thing that IMO renders us susceptible to early stage fascism. Many a center leftist or liberal who wouldn't buy into Trumpism does accept the idea that homeless people are either too messed up to be helped or deserve what they get. Or that it's reasonable for trans people to have to leap through fifty million hoops and be treated with suspicion to access gender affirming care. There's a reason that these are wedge fascist issues - people who wouldn't sign up for sending Victor Jara to the stadium will sign up for the cops trashing people's tents, meds and paperwork because we accept that in our society some people just have to suffer.
Honestly, this piece has revised my opinion - ha ha - about Noahpinion. It's not deep, the scholarship is uneven (a lot of people were doing pretty good in 1400 in China, for instance) and if you asked your average Very Online Person "do you consciously believe that suffering is necessary and makes people better", we'd all say no. But it does identify a real, pervasive and dangerous strain of thought that a lot of us accept automatically as long as it's sneaked in. Not everything has to be sophisticated high theory to address real social issues.
posted by Frowner at 8:55 AM on January 21 [8 favorites]
Fascists generally want others to do the suffering - they need to persuade the mass that suffering is inevitable or deserved or ennobling, depending on who will be suffering and how bad it is.
But also, I think a lot of people believe, at least semi-consciously, that suffering is good. Consider how awful schools are - even a good school is pretty bad. My public school system was well-regarded and I got a good education and it was awful. We accept that children should be bored and confused at best and bullied terribly at worst as part of their character formation. We accept that starter jobs (or maybe permanent jobs if you're working class) should be pretty horrible - maybe we want some reforms, but we mostly accept the idea that a large number of people should work boring, deskilled, stressful jobs for low wages while many of us work at least tolerable and even pleasant jobs for relatively high wages.
It's that "suffering is good actually, or at least it is necessary" thing that IMO renders us susceptible to early stage fascism. Many a center leftist or liberal who wouldn't buy into Trumpism does accept the idea that homeless people are either too messed up to be helped or deserve what they get. Or that it's reasonable for trans people to have to leap through fifty million hoops and be treated with suspicion to access gender affirming care. There's a reason that these are wedge fascist issues - people who wouldn't sign up for sending Victor Jara to the stadium will sign up for the cops trashing people's tents, meds and paperwork because we accept that in our society some people just have to suffer.
Honestly, this piece has revised my opinion - ha ha - about Noahpinion. It's not deep, the scholarship is uneven (a lot of people were doing pretty good in 1400 in China, for instance) and if you asked your average Very Online Person "do you consciously believe that suffering is necessary and makes people better", we'd all say no. But it does identify a real, pervasive and dangerous strain of thought that a lot of us accept automatically as long as it's sneaked in. Not everything has to be sophisticated high theory to address real social issues.
posted by Frowner at 8:55 AM on January 21 [8 favorites]
Fill the Universe, is it? Fuck's sake. It's almost as if the well documented history of colonial expansionist immiseration have taught Noah Smith nothing. Dude gonna take a pop at romantics while barfing horseshit drowned in that much petunia wants a good long look in the mirror.
Yet how is that trend going? Will we take that lesson, and allow it to continue, or stifle it with concerns about character?
Literally nobody claimed otherwise? I have no idea why he feels the need to write essays about how suffering is bad, actually. Kinda sounds like he's in love with the smell of his own farts
No gain without pain is a maxim I think the US has been particularly in love with. What does not kill me makes me stronger seems to have a certain hold on popular thought. I've rarely felt such ideas were used to make useful points. The benefits of suffering have deep roots going much further back than Nietzsche. Huge religious traditions emphasize it.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:03 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Yet how is that trend going? Will we take that lesson, and allow it to continue, or stifle it with concerns about character?
Literally nobody claimed otherwise? I have no idea why he feels the need to write essays about how suffering is bad, actually. Kinda sounds like he's in love with the smell of his own farts
No gain without pain is a maxim I think the US has been particularly in love with. What does not kill me makes me stronger seems to have a certain hold on popular thought. I've rarely felt such ideas were used to make useful points. The benefits of suffering have deep roots going much further back than Nietzsche. Huge religious traditions emphasize it.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:03 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Without being fully grounded in humanity, AI art has no meaning and no value, and indeed isn't art at all - much like a romantic relationship with an inflatable doll isn't a romantic relationship at all.
This was an instance where AI was used to thoroughly dehumanize an artwork. That's why it's terrible.
I'm not finding this very convincing. I think art has meaning dependent on the viewer. Had you not known art is AI generated, would it make a difference? There's no way I would have known the AI-completed Haring was AI completed. Had nobody told me, why would I think it dehumanized?
I open up the article and see what appears to be a Bruegel like painting, that looks utterly bland and under closer look, I notice the smeared faces. Then I read the caption. It’s an AI rendition of The Triumph of Death, a painting that I have appreciated for years, without death. What the fuck indeed. One of the purposes of art is to give us the chance to experience horror, death, unreason, etc without actually experiencing the same. We get a glimpse of it, and we can always turn away. Buddhism began with the understanding that life is suffering. But the Buddha offered a way out. Without the recognition of suffering, no one would do anything to alleviate it. That AI bullshit picture does represent The Triumph of Death, the death of compassion.
That's an interpretation. What's funny is that I find Bruegel and many of his contemporary created art that is occasionally bland. Or grotesque. As if humans were doing their best to emulate 2024 AI.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:21 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]
This was an instance where AI was used to thoroughly dehumanize an artwork. That's why it's terrible.
I'm not finding this very convincing. I think art has meaning dependent on the viewer. Had you not known art is AI generated, would it make a difference? There's no way I would have known the AI-completed Haring was AI completed. Had nobody told me, why would I think it dehumanized?
I open up the article and see what appears to be a Bruegel like painting, that looks utterly bland and under closer look, I notice the smeared faces. Then I read the caption. It’s an AI rendition of The Triumph of Death, a painting that I have appreciated for years, without death. What the fuck indeed. One of the purposes of art is to give us the chance to experience horror, death, unreason, etc without actually experiencing the same. We get a glimpse of it, and we can always turn away. Buddhism began with the understanding that life is suffering. But the Buddha offered a way out. Without the recognition of suffering, no one would do anything to alleviate it. That AI bullshit picture does represent The Triumph of Death, the death of compassion.
That's an interpretation. What's funny is that I find Bruegel and many of his contemporary created art that is occasionally bland. Or grotesque. As if humans were doing their best to emulate 2024 AI.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:21 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Another thing about the reactions to the piece that struck me is, how mad people got about Haring. Haring is the perfect target for AI. His style--to put it nicely--relies on an easy reproducibility. It's poster-illustration, meant to catch the eye once and only for a moment. There's nothing to look at for any longer. It is flat, bland, energetic and commercial-friendly. Nothing is lost by having an AI finish it, except insofar as the only reason people care about Haring's work is because they care about Haring as the artist.
posted by mittens at 10:36 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 10:36 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Haring's art would be incredibly difficult to reproduce using AI because, the obvious reproduction issues that AI has aside, a lot of Haring's work was explicit. His depictions of cocks and sodomy keep him safe from Midjourney.
posted by kingdead at 11:15 AM on January 21 [4 favorites]
posted by kingdead at 11:15 AM on January 21 [4 favorites]
This article is like dog crap studded with semiprecious stones. There are gems there, to be sure, but if you pick them out to use, there's a bad smell that you've got to deal with.
So far as I can determine, the lesson of suffering is simply that there is suffering. Is that good? Sometimes, when it teaches you to avoid some entirely natural consequence by, say, bundling up when it's cold or not touching hot pans. But there are a lot of things that are not necessarily immutable natural consequences. Disease is one of them, and human cruelty is another. Suffering doesn't teach you anything about that at all, and if anything, it will make you afraid to learn otherwise.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:21 PM on January 21 [4 favorites]
So far as I can determine, the lesson of suffering is simply that there is suffering. Is that good? Sometimes, when it teaches you to avoid some entirely natural consequence by, say, bundling up when it's cold or not touching hot pans. But there are a lot of things that are not necessarily immutable natural consequences. Disease is one of them, and human cruelty is another. Suffering doesn't teach you anything about that at all, and if anything, it will make you afraid to learn otherwise.
posted by Countess Elena at 12:21 PM on January 21 [4 favorites]
MetaFilter: like dog crap studded with semiprecious stones
posted by chavenet at 12:25 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 12:25 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]
Although suffering and war aren't the same, Smith's tagline "adversity isn't worth the price of adversity" seems to license an analogy between his essay and William James's famous (and also quite problematic) essay "The Moral Equivalent of War," which likewise begins by considering the difficult question of whether past adversities were "worth it" in general. James is essentially an optimist progressive, like Smith, and provides some valuable insight into the thinking of the opposing 'romanticists' (fascists). James concludes that you need to replace the adversity with something that motivates people (the 'equivalent'). Smith says, "Nah." Not taking a position here, just noting a similarity and a difference.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 12:45 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
posted by demonic winged headgear at 12:45 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]
FTA: " Without AIDS, the world might have been a bit shallower, with less tragedy for humans to struggle against. "
Assuming for the sake of argument that tragedy may somehow be eliminated, there would be no less opportunity for struggle in that event. Things can always get better, and without intervention they nearly always get worse, and many interventions also make things worse so that there's more stuff to fix. There will always be plenty of aspiration to go round, always plenty of work to do for people of good will.
Adversity doesn't make people stronger. It makes them harder. As a young person I was directed into many painful and difficult activities with the explicit object of hardening parts of my body. It worked. Someone got a scratch from shaking my hand; another injured themselves hitting me.
The hardening goes beyond the literal. Scarcity makes people less generous when they are as generous as they can afford to be. Betrayal makes people less trusting. Pain, inclement weather, and frequent hunger can cause people to become desensitized. This lack of sensitivity can feel like a superpower, and can lead to contempt of others. I have observed this directly.
Hard people injure softer people, with or without intention. This helps nothing: hardness is not strength. Strength is useful and can be shared. Hardness helps only the individual and exacts a toll on social ability.
Some hard people cover this up by preferring to socialize with other hard people. This gives rise to a "natural" hierarchy in which the hardest wear the others down and out. In order to stave off loneliness, they may then force adversity on others in the hope that those others then become hard people who prefer the company of other hard people, scoffing in contempt at the soft. We know where this leads.
It's possible for hard people to soften. It takes work and acknowledges the value of softness, so it is uncomfortable socially for some. Hardness is not strength, and soft people can work together without injuring one another inadvertently. Working together multiplies strength. Hard people are frequently surprised at the strength of softer folk. Rarely do they learn from it. Cults are like that, including the cult of hardness.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 2:17 PM on January 21 [14 favorites]
Assuming for the sake of argument that tragedy may somehow be eliminated, there would be no less opportunity for struggle in that event. Things can always get better, and without intervention they nearly always get worse, and many interventions also make things worse so that there's more stuff to fix. There will always be plenty of aspiration to go round, always plenty of work to do for people of good will.
Adversity doesn't make people stronger. It makes them harder. As a young person I was directed into many painful and difficult activities with the explicit object of hardening parts of my body. It worked. Someone got a scratch from shaking my hand; another injured themselves hitting me.
The hardening goes beyond the literal. Scarcity makes people less generous when they are as generous as they can afford to be. Betrayal makes people less trusting. Pain, inclement weather, and frequent hunger can cause people to become desensitized. This lack of sensitivity can feel like a superpower, and can lead to contempt of others. I have observed this directly.
Hard people injure softer people, with or without intention. This helps nothing: hardness is not strength. Strength is useful and can be shared. Hardness helps only the individual and exacts a toll on social ability.
Some hard people cover this up by preferring to socialize with other hard people. This gives rise to a "natural" hierarchy in which the hardest wear the others down and out. In order to stave off loneliness, they may then force adversity on others in the hope that those others then become hard people who prefer the company of other hard people, scoffing in contempt at the soft. We know where this leads.
It's possible for hard people to soften. It takes work and acknowledges the value of softness, so it is uncomfortable socially for some. Hardness is not strength, and soft people can work together without injuring one another inadvertently. Working together multiplies strength. Hard people are frequently surprised at the strength of softer folk. Rarely do they learn from it. Cults are like that, including the cult of hardness.
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 2:17 PM on January 21 [14 favorites]
Haring's art would be incredibly difficult to reproduce using AI because, the obvious reproduction issues that AI has aside, a lot of Haring's work was explicit. His depictions of cocks and sodomy keep him safe from Midjourney.
I don’t know, I think that’s precisely the danger. The output in question is an existence proof that it can produce something Haring-like. Is it worse to produce a body of derivative outputs that is statistically equivalent to Haring’s, or one that is a biased version, bowdlerized by algorithm? They both do violence to his memory in some way.
posted by eirias at 6:24 PM on January 21 [3 favorites]
I don’t know, I think that’s precisely the danger. The output in question is an existence proof that it can produce something Haring-like. Is it worse to produce a body of derivative outputs that is statistically equivalent to Haring’s, or one that is a biased version, bowdlerized by algorithm? They both do violence to his memory in some way.
posted by eirias at 6:24 PM on January 21 [3 favorites]
Ain't likely much of value here, given how Noah Smith beleives impossible exponential growth solves everything.
We'll never "fill the Universe with children" (Smith) due to energy limitations. We'll hopefully settle Mars and even some other solar systems, but..
We've made no progress on the first step, which is living sustainably on Earth. KSR's SciAm article What Will It Take for Humans to Colonize the Milky Way? expresses this:
As for "who laugh more than we were allowed to" (Smith)..
These interstellar voyages "would require the establishment of something like a totalitarian state" (KSR). I'd expect terestrial civilizations who'd send generation ships would be totalitarian in our eyes too, because they'd still hoard energy & resources away from their citizens' individual passtimes. Now these humans might be happier than us, and avoid the depression Smith mention, because their lives would serve a purpose of settling other stars.
We're nowhere near being sustainable here on Earth. We do have examples of island bound human civilizaitons being fairly sustainable, but think Shogunate Japan (see discussions with Giorgos Kallis or Joe Tainter), so they only arrived there after some collapse. Again these humans maybe happier, but they're much less materially wealthy, and their society might look stagnant to us, so not happiness by his definition.
Admitadly though he said "laugh" not happiness.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:50 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]
We'll never "fill the Universe with children" (Smith) due to energy limitations. We'll hopefully settle Mars and even some other solar systems, but..
We've made no progress on the first step, which is living sustainably on Earth. KSR's SciAm article What Will It Take for Humans to Colonize the Milky Way? expresses this:
The preparation [for space settlements] itself is a multi-century project, and one that relies crucially on its first step succeeding, which is the creation of a sustainable long-term civilization on Earth. This achievement is the necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for any success in interstellar voyaging. If we don’t create sustainability on our own world, there is no Planet B.“No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers” (and consumption) - Carl Sagan
As for "who laugh more than we were allowed to" (Smith)..
These interstellar voyages "would require the establishment of something like a totalitarian state" (KSR). I'd expect terestrial civilizations who'd send generation ships would be totalitarian in our eyes too, because they'd still hoard energy & resources away from their citizens' individual passtimes. Now these humans might be happier than us, and avoid the depression Smith mention, because their lives would serve a purpose of settling other stars.
We're nowhere near being sustainable here on Earth. We do have examples of island bound human civilizaitons being fairly sustainable, but think Shogunate Japan (see discussions with Giorgos Kallis or Joe Tainter), so they only arrived there after some collapse. Again these humans maybe happier, but they're much less materially wealthy, and their society might look stagnant to us, so not happiness by his definition.
Admitadly though he said "laugh" not happiness.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:50 AM on January 22 [1 favorite]
We'll hopefully settle Mars
I say we automatically award anybody whose net worth rises above a billion 2024 dollars a free one-way ticket. Then we just expropriate everything they've left behind and transfer it into public ownership, because what are they gonna do about it?
posted by flabdablet at 4:59 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]
I say we automatically award anybody whose net worth rises above a billion 2024 dollars a free one-way ticket. Then we just expropriate everything they've left behind and transfer it into public ownership, because what are they gonna do about it?
posted by flabdablet at 4:59 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]
Romanticism is a big topic, an aesthetic/naturalist movement that stood against industrialization beginning in the early 1800's. It was always criticized for its agrarian resistance to so-called progress, rightly and/or wrongly. We are now in the age of robotics, or any self-directed machine dedicated to a purpose. Desired colonization of space is missing the point if it imagines anything but those machines doing the colonization. In other words, they won't be sending agrarians to grow beans anywhere but Antarctica. The cost of boosting a payload into space is exponential to its weight, needing more fuel for the fuel itself, as the rocket equation goes, so life support for least efficient humans is the new romanticism. It helps to see Star Trek as futuristic metaphor instead of science realism. Progress is useful for constraining our growth to match our levels of desired comfort, which is based on innovation. The notion of suffering has always been assumed by both sides as either surrender or motivation, by assuming we can't or shouldn't constrain growth, sort of how we first assume we need more technology to feed ourselves instead of planning for less people in the future. The bias is ancient, based on the agrarian practice to expand labor to grow more, because most of it was taken by land-owning elites, to enable their leisure and conquest. It is not a coincidence that world religions emphasize suffering commensurate with enlightenment or personal reward.
posted by Brian B. at 11:58 AM on January 22
posted by Brian B. at 11:58 AM on January 22
I think billionaires mostly disapear once you crash the financial system. There are still people who own all the land and machines, but billionaires' wealth should disapear when their companies disentegrate. It's all number go up fantasies underneath, with economists like Noah Smith acting as salesmen.
“By & large, mainstream economics exists to justify the behaviour of the powerful.” - Blair Fix
Afaik cheap Mars missions cost around 1 billion USD, some like Viking cost way more. There are estimates of 150 billion USD for NASA's envisioned 9 person round trip Mars missions, which ignores vehicle design costs. It's cheaper one-way but still above $1 billion USD per person. An actual collony should cost way more of course.
I do think semi-totalitarian states could settle Mars, but capitalists doing so sounds impossible.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:24 PM on January 22
“By & large, mainstream economics exists to justify the behaviour of the powerful.” - Blair Fix
Afaik cheap Mars missions cost around 1 billion USD, some like Viking cost way more. There are estimates of 150 billion USD for NASA's envisioned 9 person round trip Mars missions, which ignores vehicle design costs. It's cheaper one-way but still above $1 billion USD per person. An actual collony should cost way more of course.
I do think semi-totalitarian states could settle Mars, but capitalists doing so sounds impossible.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:24 PM on January 22
the people saying the garbage AI "completion" of Haring is indistinguishable from Haring's actual work … have any of you ever actually looked at Haring's work? Because it's made up primarily of people (and sometimes other anthropomorphic creatures). People in motion, people dancing, people interlocked and interdependent with each other, in a convocation so dense it becomes almost, but not quite, an abstract pattern.
The AI picks some lines to continue in superficially-plausible directions, and matches the colors, but there are no people in the part it "finished".
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:38 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]
The AI picks some lines to continue in superficially-plausible directions, and matches the colors, but there are no people in the part it "finished".
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:38 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]
I mean, compare with one of Haring's finished pieces. This one's very saucy; people are sucking and fucking. I think i see a pregnant woman; there's definitely a winking penis. But the whole painting is full of figures, expressing joy and messiness.
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:41 AM on January 24
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:41 AM on January 24
« Older In the original book, he kills the cricket with a... | What Caused the Mysterious Extinction of... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:12 AM on January 21 [14 favorites]