92 karma · joined September 22, 2025
And whenever I see videos explaining the Gaussian splats, they always claim they are supposed to fix lighting issues.
Is this a function of "not enough detail" or.. Something else?
If you are in a band, and you are playing all the time, obviously you are an artist. The job is facilitating you playing. The playing is the focus.
Someone who decides in college, or directly after college, "you know what, I'm just gonna be a programmer." Then touches the piano every once in a while, or plays with his friends every once in a while. I don't call that an artist.
There are so many of these people. They aren't artists. Sorry. Are the smart, probably, are they talented, probably, are they committed, yes to programming.
Someone who decides, "I'll be a programmer for money," was never an artist. Someone who studies music in college and does admin for some company is not a "musician" and never was. It is the journey in art that makes the artist, not playing a piece.
Unfortunately art is just like that. The amount of time required in devotion to the skill is truly staggering and humbling. And then, it's never enough.
I don't know.
It is possible to make this commitment while working in some unrelated field, but it takes tremendous will-power. Charles Ives is an example I suppose.
I worked for 30 years as a pianist. The number of programmers who have told me they too are a musician... No- you aren't. And you never were. That's the thing, if you were a musician, you would be playing music. That would be your job.
I mean as a hobbyist, yes, sure, enjoy splashing paint and calling it art, but spending the tens of thousands of hours to learn what music actually is, no, no, no. You aren't. Would you call yourself an architect if you can draw a picture of a building? No, you aren't.
No artist wants to "create things which were beyond their capabilities" with an AI, they want to develop their capabilities to create things beyond who they are now. Art is about discovering the world, yourself, the strange magic of an ethereal plane, some how reached through vibrations.
I don't know. Reading programmers talk about art, as if they are not dilettantes, is always depressing for me.
I just don't understand why, killing one person is murder, but killing hundreds over many years is, "just the cost of doing business."
Growing up with the birth of the internet - I really did think it would be a force for transferring power and authority to the people. Sigh, I was I so wrong.
Where are the companies that declare, "we will be the best, come at us!"
Where are the politicians who are supposed to represent us? Oh, right. I forgot for a moment.
This might seem like I'm writing a nonsense, but read it again.
That's hilarious. I guess. Maybe not?
Instead of, "but this, but that," you say, "what about this?"
You use your considerable brain power, to, instead of finding faults and leaving it there, you suggest something better, that you believe can accomplish the overall goal. The overall goal, I believe, is fixing wealth disparity before violence becomes the only answer.
In this manner, we come to some solution that benefits society, rather than keeping the status quo which is obviously, without doubt, broken.
Yes, divestment.
Sure you must pick a point in time. But no matter. This is what we all do on Tax day. This how home owners pay property tax.
There does not need to be an exception for stock.
This argument you make, as if "but who can say how much it really is worth?" Sure. Just like a house. Somebody builds a freeway right next to you, guess what, your house is not worth as much as it was yesterday.
Your argument, "but you can hide your money in a company." Actually, this is good point. Perhaps companies shouldn't be allowed to hoard wealth, then buy up their competitors in order to skew the market.
Maybe this is a problem. Maybe we wouldn't the google/apple phone duopoly, maybe we wouldn't have Meta owning Facebook, and Whatsapp and etc, and all this AI, if they weren't able to hoard cash.
Maybe there should be some law that says, the maximum a company can pay the top is 100 times what they pay the bottom, including the janitors.
There are lots of solutions. If you stop trying to defend some random human having the wealth of a god, it's easy to come up with many, many ideas.
Instead of say, "but this, but that", say, "what if we tried that."
Post-Trump. The mask is off, and they are evil.
How many billionaires are there? I don't think we'd miss them if they were gone.
And it goes farther than this actually.
Should we have publicly executed the cigarette CEOs, and those CEOs of the drug companies who knowingly destroyed so many lives with opiates? What about the company CEOs who poison water.
Before Trump I would have said, "no." But now, "yes." They deserved it, and by not sufficiently punishing them for their crimes against humanity we sent a message to the likes of Facebook and OpenAI and the new batch of psychopaths, that there are no real consequences for their actions, no matter how base they are.
If Trump and his family does not sit in jail after he leaves office, if the democrats do not exact retribution for all he and his ilk have done, I think there will be rioting against both sides.
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I actually hope I'm wrong.
But I think I'm right. And even though this post will be down-voted for referencing violence as leverage, I think these ideas are mainstream now.
You might think: I can argue with them.
No. You can't. They literally couldn't care less about you or anyone else. They do, however fear retribution.
This argument you make is fine for spur of the moment violence, but for acts resulting from the structure violence of the super wealthy. Dunno.
I always assumed that this was the end goal of the AI. It's not for normal people, it's for the super wealthy to magnify their power, both economically and physically.
Do you think it's more likely robots are cleaning shit out of toilets at the behest of their human masters, or do you think it's more likely that humans will clean the shit from the toilets for their robot masters.
I mean come on. We are *made* to clean shit out of toilets.
Let's say there were a sub-species of psychopaths.
Let's say, for you to be "evil-beyond-reason" it takes M chromosomes having N genes.
As a psychopath, you probably want to associate yourself with other psychopaths, but maybe not live/work among them, except to breed.
Why would you want to associate yourself? Because if you work in tandem, you can exploit the rest of us with less friction, i.e. make laws. Each psychopath draws their own little kingdom, for them to rule.
Hmm, I guess, if the psychopaths could "feel" that another was "one of them" they may indeed work with one another.
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It is hard for me to think, that given the huge advantage of knowing "your kind" that you wouldn't somehow sense it.
This is crazy talk isn't it. But look at the world. It looks just like this.
Could 5% of humanity be a psycho-path-subspecies?
These psychopaths are basically leeches on the rest of us, maybe even a cancer. Not only do they feel no guilt for enslaving other (wage-slavery), but they are also fine with poisoning the body and the mind (too many to list).
Perhaps they can even identify others with the same causal DNA segments. Sight? Smell? Micro-movements? Perhaps they really do see all non psycho-path-bearing-DNA-offspring as worms. Perhaps they intentionally breed with each other to avoid spreading the gene to vasts numbers of people.
Could this explain the vast majority of suffering?
It has never been so obvious as now, that justice is not blind. Without justice there is anarchy.
And at this point, to be honest, I say bring it on- let's have the day of retribution before the billionaires have their AI robot armies.
Whenever I've been forced to use Plaid, I use a throw away "free-checking" bank account that has $1 in it.
I guess birds of a feather flock together.
I'll be honest, just the idea of working there makes me feel like vomiting. For me, they are bizarrely evil. They're not evil like, "we're going to destroy our competition through anti competitive practices," (which they do), but "let's destroy a whole generation of minds."
And now with the glasses. I mean, jeeze. Can there be a stronger signal of not caring for others?
It's as if Meta sees people as cattle. Though I think a lot of techies see humans as cattle, truthfully.
What was your rationale?
I guess this question is out-of-the-blue, and I don't mean for you to justify your existence, but I've never understood why people choose to work for Meta.
I wonder - if you hired a programmer for a day, trapped them in a cage, and then threatened them, maybe it would be more productive for a while. I mean, if I were writing that book, I could see how they would do great work for a bit.