Comment by INGELRII | Hacker News Reader

Comment by INGELRII | Hacker News Reader

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The corollary of all of this is that copying, mimicry and imitation is not lesser art.

Historically Asian artists and musicians imitated master's styles. Only after you are fully mastering the previous style, you can add something little of your own. "Confucian notion that all forms of creativity are for the collective; any copying or imitating is a high form of flattery, honoring one’s ancestors" [1]

This can extend to intellectual property and copying in industrial production. Making copies of products of others is seen very differently in China "Mutual reliance and sharing for the good of all have been most important for centuries in China, quite unlike the American belief of ownership of copyright and prot protection for the copyright holder."[1] "Intellectual property rights also do not show up in philosophical works or in literature, because of the general belief that knowledge cannot be owned. As we have seen, copying was a virtue in artistic production, and profiting from knowledge and artistic production was immoral." [2]

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[1] The Dissonance between Culture and Intellectual Property in China. Southeast Review of Asian Studies . 2008, Vol. 30, p182-187. 6p.

[2] Intellectual Property Rights and Chinese Tradition Section: Philosophical Foundations. Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Nov., 2006), pp. 1-9 (9 pages)

> Historically Asian artists and musicians imitated master's styles. Only after you are fully mastering the previous style, you can add something little of your own.

This sounds euro- or western-centric, which is interesting because it is how we've been taught the world is: everything of highest esteem originated in Europe, and different European cities were the cultural capital of the world at different times in history.

There may be some truth to that, but you're not recognizing the original and creative Asian art that does not imitate or derive from European influences.

My take on this whole AI-created influencer is that younger generations (putting aside race and ethnicity) prize beauty and perfection at the cost of human connection and personal stories in the "art" or "celebrities" they follow or admire.

My background is in the arts. I was taught that during most of the 1900s, art was about the process and what gave it value. The output was just an effect of the process of creation. Why did artists put such value in the process? Because that is precisely what is so hard to replicate. The final result (end product) is easier to mimic. The story behind the art is irreplaceable and as personal as the artist's soul, as trite as that may sound.

I would go as far as to say all artists, including Asian ones, understand this, which is what creates such a huge divide between "real art" and "massively produced art," where the human element is lost and things are produced in a "lab."

East/West cultural differences are very fascinating. I wonder if wider spread knowledge of this cultural disregard for intellectual property would have impacted the Western Capitalist drive to "crack the East". I am probably a bit older than most readers here on HN, being 57; I remember during the 70's a major American business initiative being trying to establish business operations in the "newly opened China". A great book about that era is "China Man", a book covering the multiple attempts and failures by American business to capitalize on China's new openness during the 70's and 80's due to gross cultural misunderstandings on both sides.

> Historically Asian artists and musicians imitated master's styles. Only after you are fully mastering the previous style, you can add something little of your own.

Yet there is a huge amount of poor imitations coming from Asia... Imitations are a good way to learn, but they don't make you the master, just (maybe) some master. Imitation doesn't let you learn the reasoning behind the process that leads to the result you imitate.

There is a huge amount of poor X coming out of every region that creates great X. Look at the amount of horrible software that comes out of Silicon Valley, or the garbage electronics out of Shenzhen. And yet the successes are overwhelming.

I disagree. Japan, Taiwan, Korea are a good examples. They started by copying and making cheap trash. Gradually improving and catching up. It was not until the 80s when people started to notice that Japanese quality was up. Korea and Taiwan followed.

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