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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I simply thoroughly disagree with this sentiment, and I am quite certain that I am not exceptional here. The process is important, the social context is important.

I would probably go as far as to posit applicability of some sort of labor theory of value: if you print out a random photograph, nobody will value it very highly, but if you paint the contents of the photograph on canvas, it will immediately be seen as having more value. Even more so, if we build technology that allows us to make a painting with a some kind of a gantry CNC painting machine, it’s product will be seen as less valuable than something that human painted by hand.

I think the above sentiment is shared by most normies, whereas your comment exhibits rather postmodernist ideals that few people actually share, as shown by revealed preference. Why are people spending millions on original artworks, instead of hanging cheap replicas that are exactly as beautiful? Because they strongly disagree with you.

I think most normies don't entirely care about the process. I could be wrong, but it really wasn't until recent decades where most people actually got to peer into behind-the-scenes stuff for things like movies, music, and video games. Now, there are definitely consumers and audiences of those things who do care and want to know, but at the same time, probably the broad majority of people in the world don't stop to think about how things are made, but just the thing in front of them.

Yeah, check out how few people view art streams vs viewing the same artist's art. Even very popular artists usually have less viewers than some no-name twitch game streamer or 2view v-tuber.

People into the process are mostly other artists trying to crib notes.

So what, specifically, is the source of that value? My intuition is that if the same painting were made not by a machine or a career-artist, but by a young child, or better yet, an animal, it would be seen as even more valuable, still. (Well, disregarding the effects of name recognition that can balloon chosen artists' work to staggering prices.)

At the risk of making things too meta, it seems to me like this value stands in proportion to how unusual (and thus rare and potentially otherwise-useful) the displayed skill seems to be. A great painter may be of extraordinary use in producing other great paintings that you want. A child prodigy, or an intelligent animal, may portend greater things still.

But a machine is just a machine, whose capabilities we know, just like we wouldn't care about the works of an animal if it were just an accountable product of instinct. The more of a good surprise it is, the more we treasure it, it seems.

But this is just my impression and I would be very glad to hear others with better theories.

I think you are in fact an exception, not the rule. The process isn't what matters to most, unless you happen to have an interest in learning about it. What matters is not the process, but the output.

And this isn't just for art. This is generally true. I personally enjoy programming and learning more about how different programmers have solved particular problems. I'm in the extreme minority, though. Most people don't give a shit, they want their software to do a task for them and don't care how it was made. A statistician may care about the beautiful mathematical model they use, but most people just want to be told the results. And so on, for pretty much any discipline you can imagine. People just do not care about the process by which things are made, unless they happen to have a particular interest in that topic.

Not to mention that the AI model itself is built using beautiful and creative mathematical ideas and engineering principles. The code can be elegant etc.

Why are people spending millions on original artworks, instead of hanging cheap replicas that are exactly as beautiful?

To show off. Jesus didn't say "yo, here's a loaf of bread, it's only one, so it's very valuable, make sure to hoard it". He instead multiplied the loaves of bread and the fish to feed the crowd. Sharing is good. If you have a reliable way to copy something, you should do it. Same way I think about file sharing, free software etc.

If what you say is true, there is no cause for concern! If there is some ineffable quality of realness to authentic human-made art, and revealed preference does indeed show people prefer it, then AI art is not a threat to real artists.

I wonder why all the artists don't have that same confidence.

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