bombdailer

I happily call myself a luddite.

I find not using twitter to be the best solution.

Inventive markets is a better term for what they will become.

Until that becomes the metric measured in performance reviews.

The better looking the code, the less effort people will put into reviewing it due to the ease of reading it - the assumption being that what is beautiful is good. Just as a beautiful facade of a building can hide a cheap structure behind it, the same is true with code. Beauty itself is not a good signal for goodness as in excess it is in effect a rhetoric device that aims to mislead and draw ones eyes towards itself and away from what lies beneath it.

A beautiful building is only as good as the correctness of its foundation, framework, materials, and construction. Those qualities can only be assessed by those with expertise enough to understand their importance. Beauty in its proper place is the output of the intersection between a craftsman and a engineer. Beauty is optional, but it makes life more worth living. The same is true for code - attractive code is optional, but it makes being a SWE more rewarding.

Because the highest values of our society are non-values.

Humans participate in the human struggle of existence, limited in our time, attention, energy, and host of other various constraining natures. We are limited and finite. To learn from those of greater talent than yourself is to dedicate all of those resources towards its acquisition. AI has no such limitations, and so does not participate in the same category as humans. A human struggles to learn the patterns of an artist, a machine does not. A human tires of learning, a machine does not. A human puts in effort, a machine does not.

It is the humanness that is the difference, that which exists outside the abstraction of the imposed categories. The human cannot compete with the machine which ingests ALL works and renders the patterns easily available. The artist toiled to perfect those patterns, and now is no longer granted the decency of reaping the fruits of their labors. Humans can give, the machine can only take.

Here you make alike a human to a machine, telling of our times to fail to see the difference.

Every artist of worth has sought two things: to bring something of beauty into the world, and to be regarded in their worth in proportion to the greatness of their art. You suggest we take from them the beauty they have brought forth, and leave them with nothing in return but scorn. What then has the artist to gain from their endeavors, when not only are they the be ridden of the significance of their authorship, but that then their works are to be put to use to feed the all consuming machine which benefits not the artist but those running the machine?

Art is not just about the thing produced, stripped of its context and significance, and forced to be interpreted by ignorant minds who, in their ignorance, consider themselves capable of deriving meaning of value out of words and pictures they can scarcely comprehend from their own limited perspective.

The significance of all art is derived from its historical context, the authors implicit intentions and mode of creation, and the unique experience generated from an individual consuming the art. If you suggest only the consumers experience matters, then you are free to forgo the greater appreciation of art in favor of the lessened experience of it if you wish. For greater awareness and understanding of the details of the parts allow us to better understand the significance of the whole. Only art that is of little value is lessened by our deepened understanding of it.

It's hard to see very far when dreams of money cloud your vision. Even worse is what emerges if ever they see through, for in their ignorance they fail to make sense of the patterns at play, and as it is easier to miss the mark than to hit it, they miss it by miles.

I suppose it is antithetical for a tech bro to value virtue and wisdom, for that path is less profitable (monetarily) than the unjust path, and so never shall the two meet. Having money as the standard of the good life, and lacking in equal proportion any merit of virtue and wisdom, what is left for them but to aim wanderingly off the cliff?

The article is correct to call them children, for that is what our modern education makes of us. So bleak and inhospitable is the modern education that it likely does us more harm than good, for it abstracts the world of meaning away and replaces it with lifeless mind-numbing facts. And in that gloomy room they are fed to the wolves, or made to become a wolf themselves. Most adults are still traumatized from their educations, they still dream about it, they still carry on their childish behaviors; few ever mature and become wise.

There's nothing simple about this vast interconnected mess we find ourselves in, and even for one seeking to better themselves, they are, lacking good judgment, more likely to select the bad thing over the good thing. As it's no easy task to determine the middle way, to re-evaluate ones values, and find harmony with oneself and their environment, we can forgive them for having no idea what they're doing. They're kids with too much money, a poor education, and a withering spirit, and their attempts to exert their will on the world will send us further into our dark ages. All that one can do is educate themselves, and see the light themselves, and live by example I suppose.

Artists of worth can do both, like Brian Eno with Music for Airports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNwYtllyt3Q

But then do we not agree, for if your experience of the music has changed upon learning the meaning of the songs, then it was true knowledge of the meaning of the piece which in the end determined your appreciation for it. And that our experience is not a fixed thing at one moment in time, but can re-occur and is in flux and subject to change in its quality based on knowledge gained. So from this you cannot return to the naivety of a child unless you reject from your mind the notion that knowledge determines quality and that the meaning supplied from its makers influences our experience of it.

Who is more correct, the child or the adult? If you suggest the child, then what do you say to the adult who objects on the grounds of the meaning of the sounds uttered? The adult would say that though the sounds are pleasant to the ear, they are not good to the mind. Thus, rather than affirming the child's vision, they would reject the pleasant sounds with poor meaning in favor of higher quality ones which are as equal in their harmonic value as with the greater quality in their meaning.

As for the infinite regress, that only proves the value of knowledge all the greater, for if we can expand our knowledge on the origins of something continually, so too can our appreciate of the thing grow in proportion. This only leads to a richer and deeper appreciation for life. In this way I can reread or rewatch a show in time and see more and know more than in my first experience, and so grows my appreciation for the details that I missed the first time. And this may only occur if the subject at hand is of good quality in the first place, for else when we descend further into the details and meaning we would be dissapointed at its lack. But that which is rich in meaning lacks none and may reveal itself new with every experience. This is why knowledge of the good is required, and why AI and lackluster artists may only produce pleasant sounds.

The making of art is a personal experience, and the beholding of art is another type of personal experience. If we suggest that the two can be separated such that we can behold art without knowledge of the production of it, well I would consider that wrong. There is a reason each piece in a museum is given a plaque telling its medium and brief background. This is because the meaning of a piece is derived from its context and cannot be separated from it without making art an arbitrary sensory stimuli.

The issue with the reduction of art to experience is that it ignore that our knowledge shapes our experience, and so the more we know about an artist and their process, the more different our experience of their art will be.

If one sees the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, they might not think much of it if all they know is that it's very popular. Another who knows why the Mona Lisa is particularly popular, because of its historic theft, has a different experience of it. And the person who knows of Da Vinci's life, who has read his journals, knows of his elaborate painting process and sophisticated details and meaning supplied in his paintings, why that person derives much more joy out of the work than one who merely sees it as a visual appearance producing merely a arbitrary liking/disliking.

Perhaps you might enjoy an AI composed track, but would you not enjoy it more if instead that track were human produced, particularly if you held more knowledge of the people making it?

As for meaning living in the reader, that cannot be true, for a person can find meaning in tea leaves or moving clouds. True meaning, as intentional, is not derived, but supplied, and it is the goal of every reader to behold the authors vision. That one fashions a different interpretation for themselves over the authors intentions is of necessity, for no two minds will see alike, but to look only for the reflection of oneself in art and not look beyond, why that is the death of art, for art is the revelation of the soul.

Do you feel the veins transforming into wires?

A stonemason who creates pieces by hand gathers more respect than one who delegates their craft to a cnc machine. No person who respects their craft will use tools that devalue their relation to their craft. Only those who seek to maximize personal gain of wealth would use such tools. Such a person, who sees merit only in the ends produced, rather than in the means themselves, does not participate in the shared history of their craft, in artistry, or in their own personal development.

For a real musician, AI is already too much. For there to be meaning and soul in their music, is must be derived from the intersection of their skills and imagination, whereby the unconscious can make itself manifest in the utilization of ones virtues. Delegating this process to a black box deprives the art of its unique individual perspective that can only arise out of the finitude of human experience and learning. For though the black box may have superficial knowledge of generalizations of many such perspectives, it smooths out all paths into bland sameness. Thus no real artist of merit has any use for AI, for it is always of a lower degree than the more powerful tool that is their mind.

The type of people to use AI are necessarily the people who will struggle most when it comes time to do the last essential 20% of the work that AI can't do. Once thinking is required to bring all the parts into a whole, the person who gives over their thinking skills to AI will not be equipped to do the work, either because they never had the capacity to begin with or because AI has smoothed out the ripples of their brain. I say this from experience.

I have long viewed that the True and the Good require Beauty to make them appealable to the people. For since injustice is more profitable (in wealth) than justice, the good thing appears more hideous by compare. Plato makes quite well the case that the just person will be the recipient of much misgivings in their life, though still holds that the just life is still the best one. To do this he paints Socrates as a precursor to Christ, as the wisest man of all, of good character and honest word, and of being a man of virtue and love - though his physical appearance is markedly not beautiful.

Socrates as created by Plato acts as a sort of aesthetic beauty which adds strength to Plato's words by the seduction of Socrates. Just as Alcibiades is attracted to Socrates because of his character, so too are we the readers supposed to be. Plato attempts to elevate our conception of Beauty from the beauty of a particular (like the good looks of Alcibiades) to Beauty itself (as in the form).

In this way, Beauty is a tool which can make more attractive certain ideas by its association. The history of advertising is testament to such utility. In this way I do not think that beauty is linked to goodness or truth as a requirement, but bares only the right relation to them when it is used in their service. That is, the value of beauty is determined by goodness and truth, such that if something is beautiful but lacking in goodness and truth, though it remains beautiful, the value of beauty above all else is shown absurd. All values seem to work like this, where any value held as the highest value will in time negate its own value by the relative excess of itself to other values.

All that is to say, that the wise person utilizes beauty as a means of reifying the value of the true and the good. From this perspective, it is true knowledge that redeems the tactic of beauty (such as rhetoric) from sophistry. For the good word to not fall upon deaf ears, one must compete with the sophist and provide the same level of beauty but with right ideas. Of course, claims to true knowledge must be justified, and we should not appeal to beauty for their verification.

I think more that beauty is a sign of intellect, and intellect is a prerequisite for true knowledge. To create beauty requires knowledge of patterns and skill enough to weave those patterns together into something greater than the sum of those patterns. True knowledge cannot be known for certain we might say, but if one has it, it will be knowledge of true patterns of Nature, and so such a person would be in possession not only of true knowledge, but also of beauty since the patterns of beauty would be derivative of the patterns of Nature.

Thus, in writing of what is true and good, it is very likely to be beautiful, since the knowledge necessary to apprehend beauty is the same knowledge that is capable of producing it, and beauty flows most naturally where it is most welcome. But beauty fails in its virtue if the underlying content does not reflect reality.

I think we're mostly saying the same things but I find it a bit weaselly to say that something loses beauty when it loses truth or goodness, when what it loses is simply the truth/goodness. That our value of beauty changes in proportion to its relation to goodness/truth, does not mean that the beauty itself has changed. It is not beauty alone which will save the world, but goodness and truth delivered in the guise of beauty.

Nothing wrong with being a luddite. In time more people will be proud to be luddites, and I can see AI simps becoming the recipients of all the scorn.

Knowledge not earned is not gained.

No one using these tools will produce anything even a tenth as impressive as what was born out of the Renaissance, since their efforts were born of mastery, understanding, patience, a keen eye, and a love of nature and life. One who outsources their creativity and thinking to a machine will produce meaningless 'art' as empty as the shrinking contours of their mind as it withers away from non-use. Our world is not want for more quantity as we already drown in excess, and the quality and meaning inherit in masterful works of art born out of ones own hands will one day once again find their way to the center of our consciousness, as the world learns again that the value of art lies not solely in its appearances, but in its revelation of the human soul by means of Beauty, by which a human endeavors by great effort and skill to impart some aspect of their fleeting glimpse of the divine and sacred nature of being, by which our being here now as people of this earth and time consists of, which binds us all, now and through our history and our future.

Eventually we will find that the heat death of the universe and the big bang are the same thing, since the totality of the universe is always a oneness, then from the universal perspective the infinitely small and infinitely large are the same thing (one), then they by nature bleed into (and define) each other like yin and yang.

There's a reason Plato's Republic looks authoritarian to people, because it models a city in which justice is the highest good, and justice and freedom are ultimately opposed to each other.

Since governments and laws exist to ensure justice, freedom will always be the price we pay.

People don't care, in fact the average person finds LLM writing to be some of the best since it's so good at effortlessly conveying information (of what value..?). That ease of course comes with the loss of the real intent of the author. No longer their words, bearing no mark of effort and discernment, it becomes assimilated into the corpus of all that unthinking, unfeeling machination that lingers breathlessly with no pulse. No life exists in those empty words, no one who will take the stand to defend them, to hold them as true by the fire they alight in oneself. No, the LLM provides a cold flame, only pretty to look at - providing only the image of warmth. But perhaps the LLM reflects the soul of the modern person, who in becoming more machine like, comes to find their home amongst the shadows of that dim blue light.

Definitely seems like the whole thing has been given the AI treatment, but who knows, maybe people have just internalized the way it sounds by having too much dialectic with it. The sad thing is most people (even here) cannot detect AI writing anymore. In fact, I've seen some glaringly obvious posts which people in the comments even called the best writing they've seen. I guess ease of transmission is the basis for good writing now. I prefer for writing to have life in it, but I suppose I'm a dying breed.

Meanwhile this article is quite clearly written (or cleaned up) by AI. Or perhaps too much dialectic with AI causes one to internalize its tendency to polish turds smooth. It just has the unmistakable look of something where the original writing was "fixed up" and what remains is exactly the thing is warns against. I understand the pull to get an idea across as efficiently as possible, but sucking the life out of it ain't the way.

PoE2 on the other hand is some of the worst map generation iv'e ever seen. Like a copy and paste of the same exact thing hundreds of times to give you a large lifeless drudge of a map.

That makes sense given the analogous LLM, which doesn't 'think' via the individual or even sum of the tokens it produces, but in-between in the hidden layers. The output - or actualization of the token - is simply just the form of communication used to convey the 'thought'.

I guess you could say its inappropriate of an analogy since the LLM must use generated tokens to feed into itself in order to 'think' over time beyond a single token. But I would argue that's simply because we enforce the communication method.

One does not need language to have a known concept for "objects fall to the ground when let go". Babies learn this without language. They do not have words for the particular concepts such as "object", "fall", "ground", but as concepts they are learned all the same.

For thought, all there really is, are concepts, or forms in platonic terms. In our case, learned patterns in the world which correspond to particular sense perceptions. Imagination, or the latent space between the forms, is our initial (and only, I'd argue) mode of thinking. These forms, encoding both logical and sensory - of which they are inseparably bound - can be strung together to form thought. They agree to a type of logic, affording the capacity to extract meaning out of the world.

It is an embodied logic, not boolean algebra. The logic is grounded in the ground, the earth underneath your feet. It is grounded in the sun, in its heat and light. It is grounded in the logos, or the intelligible unfolding of the universe. The intelligibility is afforded because of its own nature - that it is built up out of real patterns, patterns all the way down. But it also requires the appearance of the patterns in our sense perceptions in order to be 'seen' and thus known.

As such, logic of this sort is found to be based off of the learned patterns of how the world appears to us so as to make it intelligible, affording our ability to live within it. Then you get sensory being mapped into grounded logic and vise versa, so as to experience the unfolding of the logic with imagination, and I suppose the affective state changes it produces are then fed back into the logic. So emotions seem necessary in order to 'react' to sense perceptions, so that the logic is grounded in caring about what happens, like a mother does with a child. Otherwise there is just appearance, which has no qualia in and of itself, and so the patterns that can be discovered in the world have no ground.

Determining the necessity of the ground of appearances is probably what will determine if we can have AGI or not. We'd like to think computation alone will get us there, or even embodied cognition, but without the transcendentals, its dimensionality of knowing will always exclude this ground, so it cannot know what patterns are most relevant or salient, so it cannot perform relevance realization and overcome combinatorial explosion. So AI cannot be a temporal embodied agent, since the logos of the world is incomprehensible, except through itself, of which we Beings are made out of. We rely on lower order logic, such as math, for our AI. It is how we make sense of the real patterns we see in the world, but they are an abstraction over the thing itself. So a machine is confined by boolean algebra, while we are confined by the logos itself. Sounds nice anyhow.

Took a class at UCI which copied much of the MIT class and dumbed it way down for us. Would recommend

I look at it as the impossibility of having regret once you understand that every decision you made in the past was the best decision you could have made. Which is to say you were some specific person, with a particular ego and relation to self and to world. Any decision made was being made withing some particular frame of mind - mood, energy, memories, as well as their relevance and salience mappings.

Making a decision while angry? If one has not the capacity to see through anger when making a decision - a lack of mindfulness perhaps, then that decision even when made in anger is the best they could do at that point. If one practices mindfulness and can often deal with anger but fails this time, that is still the best that person could do given who they are when a decision is being made. There is nobody to blame.

Even perceived self-sabotage is still acting within some particular framing. If that person Knew something different about the nature of their being at a perspective and participatory level, they likely would have made different more constructive choices.

Everything emerges exactly as it should due to what is Known and is at any particular time. The nature of self being a lifelong quest to understand, the more we understand about it the better the decision we can make. Probably explains the importance of 'Know thyself' to Socrates. But there is never a wrong choice as you say, only non-optimal. Only that which was made due to you having not been some particular other potential version of you.

Learning makes change possible. Not all learning is good for you. You never know you're learning as you're doing it - for if you're self aware you aren't paying attention as so can't learn, but if you are paying attention you're not aware about "learning". Thus we should pay attention to what is good and trust that we are learning. And trust that we are also learning when we pay attention to what is bad for us.

best blog is from ran prieur - also a great source of other interesting blogs.