Comment by GPerson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GPerson | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with a lot of what you’re saying except I’m still choosing to create things, knowing full-well the computer can (or will be able to) do better. I’m going to choose to create things that are interesting or challenging, and I’m going to share them with a few friends in my vicinity.

“I used to write music. I'd argue there's absolutely no point in anyone wasting their time with music now. Unless you're extremely talented AI is going to do a better job than you. Unless you get a kick out of prompting AI to produce music or enjoy creating subpar music there's no point.”

I do disagree with this conclusion. Screwing around on the keyboard is fun, and I imagine people who actually make music like yourself have fun doing structured versions of that. Why deny yourself that enjoyment? It’s not like there weren’t more talented people around before the AI craze started (presumably) at making songs. This can be cured with a perspective shift I’m quite confident.

> I do disagree with this conclusion. Screwing around on the keyboard is fun, and I imagine people who actually make music like yourself have fun doing structured versions of that. Why deny yourself that enjoyment? It’s not like there weren’t more talented people around before the AI craze started (presumably) at making songs. This can be cured with a perspective shift I’m quite confident.

It's also not a novel argument. Why write new music or perform music at all in an era in which recordings are widely available?

> It's also not a novel argument. Why write new music or perform music at all in an era in which recordings are widely available?

I actually agree with this, but not everything has been written.

Everything I created had to have some uniqueness. That was something I was obsessive about. If I thought you could find anything I wrote on some other blog or on Spotify then I wouldn't write it. There would be no point.

Thanks for the reply.

I don't think you're wrong, I think I'm just wired differently. I really like achievement. And effort without achievement seems pointless to me.

I was never particularly talented at music, but I could do things most people couldn't and so there was a sense of pride.

Similarly with my writing, the topics I covered in the way I did required undeniable thought, effort and care.

Today if it wasn't for the metadata showing a pre-2023 creation data, you'd genuinely struggle to know if it was 5 mins of prompting or days of effort... The last 2 decades of my effort can be summed up in this way. If I've waste 2 decades, I don't want to waste anymore time. I just have to try to find other things I can be proud of and that requires moving on from the things that once gave me joy.

I wrote all this and it’s kinda disorganized but hopefully there’s something worth reading here.

I think your way of thinking is the ordinary one (though you might be exceptional in your honesty). So maybe with such a demand for the opportunity to have extrinsic achievement, it will be manifested.

I doubt our ancestors would truly recognize our achievements and conversely (I have no deep knowledge of history, but this just sounds right). And I’m worried that you and I will not be adapted to whatever future version of achievement manifests (without a certain amount of pain at least), but at least it seems to me like future generations will be. Abstractly humans want extrinsic validation, and probably will learn to find it.

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