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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30730 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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Likewise, it would be great if we could 100x or 1000x the population. More people means more and better artistic output.

Do you not have enough already?

Of course I am totally opposed to this view of art as a fungible good in the first place - this view that one can simply request "more art" in the way that one might request more bananas or more toothpaste. But even if that is your view of art, I can't see how you would be dissatisfied right now. There's already more art than can fit in one lifetime.

There's more art than I can consume, yet it's not really good, first-rate stuff that appeals to me greatly as opposed to only a little.

Do you not have enough already?

I can think of a few reasons more art is better, even though we already cannot consume all existing art:

  1. More art means more good art. 1000x the art doesn't just 1000x the low-brow stuff but also means 1000 top-quality world-changing pieces for every one which currently exists.

  2. More art means more art in each genre and subgenre. Each teeny tiny hyperspecific subgenre of current art will look like a full genre with its own miniscule subgenres when there is more art. Fantasy will have more books in it than Fiction currently does, Medieval Fantasy will have more books than Fantasy currently does, and so on.

  3. More art means more communication between artists. If there is 1000x the top-notch art out there, people have 1000x the good examples to emulate, which I think adds to the quality of each art piece. The field also presumably evolves faster with all the art coming out.

I'm sure @RandomRanger agrees that it's not just art that would be the output of a grossly larger population, but also science and industry.

That being said, I for one have no qualms about saying that yes, there isn't enough art out there, at least of the quality I enjoy consuming.

There aren't enough good movies and video games, and current discovery mechanisms limit me from finding enough of the kind of literature I like to indefinitely satiate my appetite for such.

I'm sure we can manage without all the additional people if we really have to, because of AI doing cognitive labor in their place. That's replacing quantity for quality to a degree.

I think we're pretty much post-scarcity for high quality artistic imagery as early as Midjourney V4. Not quite there when it comes to novels, movies, games or music, though the last is incipient as AI musicians become prevalent and continue improving. I give 30% odds that GPT-5 can write a novella I would enjoy reading, while 4 can't.

I think we're pretty much post-scarcity for high quality artistic imagery as early as Midjourney V4

My reaction upon reading this is, I assume, the same as the reaction you have when you see "unironic endorsement of degrowth": slack-jawed befuddlement.

The suggestion that not only are we suffering from a paucity of good art (which may be partially true, but it would be true for me in a sense that's different from yours), but that the way to rectify this problem is to ask Midjourney to draw certain representational images, is... really quite remarkable.

In spite of the depth of our disagreement, I do sincerely appreciate you being here to articulate these views, really. I would hate to have to discuss these matters in an echo chamber.

Oh, there's plenty of good art out there (at least, in self_made_human's sense). Midjourney makes it cheaper.

Depends on what you're looking to get out of art? I don't care much about the artist's intentions, only what emotional response it provokes in me.

AI art is certainly capable of being pretty, and right now with proper prompting it can also be compelling, and further when LLMs get even better at prompting, you can cut all the humans out of the loop and still have art that appeals to my sensibilities.

I'm sure you can agree that it's at least pretty and technically competent! Most human art doesn't meet that standard, just look at DeviantArt.

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