Disagree. The technology will never yield AGI as all it does is remix a huge field of data without even knowing what that data functionally says.
All it can do now and ever will do is destroy the environment by using oodles of energy, just so some fucker can generate a boring big titty goth pinup with weird hands and weirder feet. Feeding it exponentially more energy will do what? Reduce the amount of fingers and the foot weirdness? Great. That is so worth squandering our dwindling resources to.
I really don't know whats going about the Anti-AI people. But is getting pretty similar to any other negationism, anti-science, anti-progress... Completely irrational and radicalized.
Sorry to hurt your fefes, but I don't like theft and that is what AI content ALL is. How does it "know" how to program? Code stolen form humans. How does it speak? Words stolen from humans. How does it draw? Art stolen from humans.
Until this shit stops being built on a mountain of stolen data and stolen livelihoods, the argument is over. I don't care if you like stealing money from artists so that you can pretend you had any creative input into an AIs art output. You're stealing the work of normal people and think it's okay because it was already stolen once before by the billionaires who are now selling it to you.
Yes, please apply the logic of stealing form large multi-national corporations to individual artists. Sterling logic.
I know why my boss makes more money then me. Because he is my enemy in a class war.
If any of these AI models draws art that is slightly too close to looking like Mickey Mouse the Disney corporation is sharpening the lawyer axe. I wonder why. But sharing is caring, right? Why would they do that?
Oh right because they want to decide what their intellectual property is used for. A right that wasn't afforded to basically every single artist whose stuff was used to train these models. These artists often rely directly on selling their art for their daily survival. Maybe they would have liked some money to sell their art for this purpose? Maybe they didn't want to sell it at all? Doesn't matter, they weren't asked. If you don't have an army of lawyers, the corporations will do as they like. Which is why Disney is save, while normal artists are fucked and weren't even asked in what hole they would like it before they were.
So shut the fuck up about sharing is caring, it's easy to say that if you are the one taking advantage. I don't know what field you work in, but I hope you lose your job to a robot that they trained on recordings of your work. You can tell me then how good it feels to share your skills.
Disagree. The technology will never yield AGI as all it does is remix a huge field of data without even knowing what that data functionally says.
We definitely don't need AGI for AI technologies to be useful. AI, particularly reinforcement learning, is great for teaching robots to do complex tasks for example. LLMs have shocking ability relative to other approaches (if limited compared to humans) to generalize to "nearby but different, enough" tasks. And once they're trained (and possibly quantized), they (LLMs and reinforcement learning policies) don't require that much more power to implement compared to traditional algorithms. So IMO, the question should be "is it worthwhile to spend the energy to train X thing?" Unfortunately, the capitalists have been the ones answering that question because they can do so at our expense.
For a person without access to big computing resources (me lol), there's also the fact that transfer learning is possible for both LLMs and reinforcement learning. Easiest way to explain transfer learning is this: imagine that I want to learn Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, and Computer Science. What should I learn first so that each subject is easy for me to pick up? My answer would be Math. So in AI speak, if we spend a ton of energy to train an AI to do math and then fine-tune agents to do Physics, Engineering, etc., we can avoid training all the agents from scratch. Fine-tuning can typically be done on "normal" computers with FOSS tools.
all it does is remix a huge field of data without even knowing what that data functionally says.
IMO that can be an incredibly useful approach for solving problems whose dynamics are too complex to reasonably model, with the understanding that the obtained solution is a crude approximation to the underlying dynamics.
IMO I'm waiting for the bubble to burst so that AI can be just another tool in my engineering toolkit instead of the capitalists' newest plaything.
Sorry about the essay, but I really think that AI tools have a huge potential to make life better for us all, but obviously a much greater potential for capitalists to destroy us all so long as we don't understand these tools and use them against the powerful.
How will these reasonable AI tools emerge out of this under capitalism?
How does any technology ever see use outside of oppressive structures? By understanding it and putting to work on liberatory goals.
I think that crucial to working with AI is that, as it stands, the need for expensive hardware to train it makes it currently a centralizing technology. However, there are things we can do to combat that. For example, the AI Horde offers distributed computing for AI applications.
And how is it not all still just theft with extra steps that is imoral to use?
We gotta find datasets that are ethically collected. As a practitioner, that means not using data for training unless you are certain it wasn't stolen. To be completely honest, I am quite skeptical of the ethics of the datasets that the popular AI products were trained on. Hence why I refuse to use those products.
Personally, I'm a lot more interested in the applications to robotics and industrial automation than generating anime tiddies and building chat bots. Like I'm not looking to convince you that these tools are "intelligent", merely useful. In a similar vein, PID controllers are not "smart" at all, but they are the backbone of industrial automation. (Actually, a proven use for "AI" algorithms is to make an adaptive PID controller so that's it can respond to changes in the plant over time.)
A deep neural adaptive PID controller would be a bit overkill for a simple robot arm, but for say a flexible-link robot arm it could prove useful. They can also work as part of the controller for systems governed by partial differential equations, like in fluid dynamics. They're also great for system identification, the results of which might indicate that the ultimate controller should be some "boring" algorithm.
This has been going on since big oil popularized the "carbon footprint". They want us arguing with each other about how useful crypto/AI/whatever are instead of agreeing about pigouvian energy taxes and socialized control of the (already monopolized) grid.
Pollock's paintings are art. a bunch of paint buckets falling on a canvas in an earthquake wouldn't make art, even if it resembled Pollock's paintings. there's no intent behind it. no artist.
because if you teach me to pronounce some japanese words without teaching me what it means, i may say them perfectly, and even trick some people who don't see my face into thinking I'm speaking native japanese, even though i don't know what the fuck I'm saying. the fact that i tricked some people into thinking otherwise does not make me a japanese person.
Any work made to convey a concept and/or emotion can be art. I'd throw in "intent", having "deeper meaning", and the context of its creation to distinguish between an accounting spreadsheet and art.
The problem with AI "art" is it's produced by something that isn't sentient and is incapable of original thought. AI doesn't understand intent, context, emotion, or even the most basic concepts behind the prompt or the end result. Its "art" is merely a mashup of ideas stolen from countless works of actual, original art run through an esoteric logic network.
AI can serve as a tool to create art of course, but the further removed from the process a human is the less the end result can truly be considered "art".
As a thought experiment let's say an artist takes a photo of a sunset. Then the artist uses AI to generate a sunset and AI happens to generate the exact same photo. The artist then releases one of the two images with the title "this may or may not be made by AI". Is the released image art or not?
If you say the image isn't art, what if it's revealed that it's the photo the artist took? Does is magically turn into art because it's not made by AI? If not does it mean when people "make art" it's not art?
If you say the image is art, what if it's revealed it's made by AI? Does it magically stop being art or does it become less artistic after the fact? Where does value go?
The way I see it is that you're trying to gatekeep art by arbitrarily claiming AI art isn't real art. I think since we're the ones assigning a meaning to art, how it is created doesn't matter. After all if you're the artist taking the photo isn't the original art piece just the natural occurrence of the sun setting. Nobody created it, there is no artistic intention there, it simply exists and we consider it art.
there's something's highly suspect about someone not understanding the difference between art made by a human being and some output spit out by a dumb pixel mixer. huge red flag imo.
and yes, the value does go. because we care about origin and intent. that's the whole point.
if the original Mona Lisa were to be sold for millions of dollars, and then someone reveals that it was not the original Mona Lisa but a replica made last week by some dude... do you think the buyer would just go "eh it looks close enough"? no they would sue the fuck out of the seller and guess what, the painting would not be worth millions anymore. it's the same painting. the value is changed. ART IS NOT A PRODUCT.
there's something's highly suspect about someone not understanding the difference between art made by a human being and some output spit out by a dumb pixel mixer. huge red flag imo.
Translation. I can't argue your point so I'm going to try characters assassination.
if the original Mona Lisa were to be sold for millions of dollars, and then someone reveals that it was not the original Mona Lisa but a replica made last week by some dude... do you think the buyer would just go "eh it looks close enough"? no they would sue the fuck out of the seller and guess what, the painting would not be worth millions anymore. it's the same painting. the value is changed. ART IS NOT A PRODUCT.
Pretty ironic to say art is not a product and then argue that its monetary value would decrease, which can happen only if you treat art as a product.
Imagine if instead of a physical painting Mona Lisa was a digital file and free on the internet, would people think Mona Lisa is less impressive as an art piece because anyone could own it? I think it's artistic value wouldn't decrease, only its value as a product would decrease because everyone could get it for free.
it's not a product in the sense that its value does not come from its function, otherwise it would not lose value when it would be revealed to be of a different origin, but otherwise exactly the same. i spoke of the monetary value just because it's quantifiable; it's not otherwise relevant.
if Mona Lisa was free and digital it would be as valuable as a digital Mona Lisa could be. being free and digital doesn't make it pointless, without agency or intent like AI art is.
It seems like you're agreeing with me on the reasoning why AI art is art, you just refuse to accept AI as art. So let's try a different way. Who says art has agemcy or intent? Clearly it's not just "everything made by humans" because if I showed you the toilet paper I used to wipe my ass we can both agree that it's not art. Neither is the comment I'm writing right now. So there needs to be something more that separates not art and art. The two most common ways would be the intent of the artist and the perceived intent of the viewer.
If it's what the artist intended the am artist can prompt AI until AI generates the image the artist intended. Since the artist intended the AI generated image to look that way the intent is inherited from the artist.
If it's what the viewer perceived we can reach the original question I postulated. If an image makes you feel something and you can't know if it's made by the artist or by AI, how do you know it's art or not? If we take by whether you perceive intent of not then you're attributing intent to art and it doesn't matter how it was made. If you feel something and after the fact you find out it was AI generated image then it doesn't invalidate what you felt.
You can come up with whomever to validate intent or agency and I'll show you how AI wouldn't play a role in that decision because AI isn't sentient. It's a tool like a camera or a paint brush or just chalk. We give the intent by using the tools we have.
AI is a tool used by a human. The human using the tools has an intention, wants to create something with it.
It's exactly the same as painting digital art. But instead o moving the mouse around, or copying other images into a collage, you use the AI tool, which can be pretty complex to use to create something beautiful.
Do you know what generative art is? It existed before AI. Surely with your gatekeeping you think that's also no art.
I'm so sick of this. there are scenarios in which so-called "AI" can be used as a tool. for example, resampling. it's dodgy, but whatever, let's say the tech is perfected and it truly analyzes data to give a good result rather than stealing other art to match.
but a tool is something that does exactly what you intend for it to do. you can't say 100 dice are collectively "a tool that outputs 600" because you can sit there and roll them for as long as it takes for all of them to turn up sixes, technically. and if you do call it that, that's still a shitty tool, and you did nothing worth crediting to get 600. a robot can do it. and it does. and that makes it not art.
So do you not what generative art is. And you pretend to stablish catedra on art.
Generative art, that existed before even computers, is s form of art in which a algorithm created a form of art, and that algorithm can be repeated easily. Humans can replicate that algorithm, but computers can too, and generative art is mostly used with computers because obvious reasons. Those generative algorithms can be deterministic or non deterministic.
And all this before AI, way before.
AI on its essence is just a really complex and large generative algorithm, that some people do not understand and this are afraid of it, like people used to be afraid of eclipses.
Also, you seems not to know that photographs also take hundreds or thousands of pictures with just pressing a button and just select the good ones.
cameras do not make random images. you know exactly what you're getting with a photograph. the reason you take multiples is mostly for timing and lighting. also, rolling a hundred dice is not the same as painting something 100 times and picking the best one, nor is it like photographing it. the fact that you're even making this comparison is insane.
If you know how to use an AI you also know how it's working and what are you going to get, is not random. It's a complex generative algorithm where you put in the initial variables, nothing more.
the AI itself doesn't know what it's doing, neither are you. the fact that you're putting in words to change the outcome until the dice fall somewhat close to where you want them to fall doesn't make it yours. you can't add your own style to it, because you're not doing it.
Please, do not extend your lack of knowledge to me. Thanks.
Also, most traditional artists never develop a style of their own. If you believe that every single artist has its own unique style... You'd be much incorrect. That does not make it less of an artist.
I remember back in the day when lots of people followed the Bob Ross style to do some nice paintings. Luckily you are here to gatekeep them from doing art.
Nothing forbid anyone to train an AI with its own drawings in its own style.
Once again, AI is a tool. Like many others used in digital art. It's just a statistically driven generative algorithm. People can use a tool as they please to make art, same as they can use any other tool, and you have not the authority to gatekeep an artist of doing art just because you think their tool, their style, the object or anything about the artist does not fit with your morals.
And they also can, and will, mix it with other tools to produce the piece of art they want to create.
Also all this discussion about "the style(tm)" could be just disproven given the fact that if you weight your variables and use a specific dataset you can generate consistent images in a determined style. And some AI artists does have a representative style due to this... So...
People said exact same thing about CGI, and photography before. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody scream "IT'S NOT ART" at Michaelangelo or people carving walls of temples in ancient Egypt.
the "people" you're talking about were talking about tools. I'm talking about intent. Just because you compare two arguments that use similar words doesn't mean the arguments are similar.
Intent is not needed for the art, else all the art in history where we can't say what author wanted to express or the ones misunderstood wouldn't be considered art. Art is in the eye of the beholder. Note that one of the first regulations of AI art that is always proposed is that AI art be clearly labeled as such, because whomever propose it do know the above.
I get you but it's really not necessary. In case of (somewhat) realist art you can still recognize AI artifacts, but abstract art is already unrecognizable (and this is the precise reason they want AI art to be marked, so they won't embarrass themselves with peans over something churned out by computer in few seconds), not to mention there is also art created by animals, and it is considered art but it's not created with intent, except maybe the intent of people dipping dog's paw in paint. Thus we again just get to the distinction that art needs to be created just by living things? It's meaningless.
Anyway, i guess next few years will make this even more muddled and the art scene will get transformed permanently. Hell recently i've encountered some AI power metal music which is basically completely indistinguishable from normal, but in this case it mostly serve to show how uninspired and generic entire genre is.
Technology is a cultural creation, not a magic box outside of its circumstances. "The problem isn't the technology, it's the creators, users, and perpetuators" is tautological.
And, importantly, the purpose of a system is what it does.
So you're using a different specific and niche technology (which directly benefits and exists because of) the technology that is the subject of critique, and acting like the subject technology behaves like yours?
"Google is doing a bad with z"
"z can't be bad, I use y and it doesn't have those problems that are already things that happened. In the past. Unchangeable by future actions."
No one wants to ban technology outright. What we're saying is that the big LLMs are actively harmful to us, humanity. This is not fear mongering. This is just what's happening. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are stealing from humanity at large and setting the planet on fire to do it. For years they told us stealing intellectual property on an individual level was a harmful form of theft. Now they're doing the same kind of theft bit its different now because it benefits them instead of us.
What we are arguing is that this is bad. Its especially extra bad because with the death of big search a piece of critical infrastructure to the internet as we know it is now just simply broken. The open source wonks you celebrate are working on fixing this. But just because someone criticizes big tech does not mean they criticize all tech. The truth is the FAANG companies plus OpenAI and Microsoft are killing our planet for it to only benefit their biggest shareholders
I did not believe in Intelectual Property before. I'm not going to start believing now.
The same I think that corporations having a hold on media is bad for humandkind I think that small artists should not have a "not usable by AI"hold on what they post. Sharing knowledge is good for humanity. Limitate who can have access or how they can use that knowledge or culture is bad.
The dead of internet have nothing to do with AI and all to do with leaving internet in hands of a couple big corporations.
As for emissions.. are insignificant relative to other sources of CO2 emissions. Do you happen to eat meat, travel abroad for tourism, watch sports, take you car to work, buy products made overseas? Those are much bigger sources of CO2.
You dont think polluting the world is going to have a net negative effect for humanity?
What exactly is there to gain with AI anyways? What's the great benefit to us as a species? So far its just been used to trivialize multiple artistic disciplines, basic service industries, and programming.
Things have a cost, many people are doing the cost-benefit analysis and seeing there is none for them. Seems most of the incentive to develop this software is if you would like to stop paying people who do the jobs listed above.
What do we get out of burning the planet to the ground? And even if you find an AI thats barely burning it, what's the point in the first place?
What exactly is there to gain with AI anyways? What’s the great benefit to us as a species? So far its just been used to trivialize multiple artistic disciplines, basic service industries, and programming.
The whole point is that much like industrial automation it reduces the number of hours people need to work. If this leads to people starving then that's a problem with the economic system, not with AI technology. You're blaming the wrong field here. In fact everyone here blaming AI/ML and not the capitalists is being a Luddite.
It's also entirely possible it will start replacing managers and capitalists as well. It's been theorized by some anti-capitalists and economic reformists that ML/AI and computer algorithms could one day replace current economic systems and institutions.
Things have a cost, many people are doing the cost-benefit analysis and seeing there is none for them. Seems most of the incentive to develop this software is if you would like to stop paying people who do the jobs listed above.
This sadly is probably true of large companies producing big, inefficient ML models as they can afford the server capacity to do so. It's not true of people tweaking smaller ML models at home, or professors in universities using them for data analysis or to aid their teaching. Much like some programmers are getting fired because of ML, others are using it to increase their productivity or to help them learn more about programming. I've seen scientists who otherwise would struggle with data analysis related programming use ChatGPT to help them write code to analyse data.
What do we get out of burning the planet to the ground? And even if you find an AI thats barely burning it, what’s the point in the first place?
As the other guy said there are lots of other things using way more energy and fossil fuels than ML. Machine learning is used in sciences to analyse things like the impacts of climate change. It's useful enough in data science alone to outweigh the negative impacts. You would know about this if you ever took a modern data science module. Furthermore being that data centres primarily use electricity it's relatively easy to move them to green sources of energy compared to say farming, or transport. In fact some data centres already use green energy primarily. Data centres will always exist regardless of AI and ML anyway, it's just a matter of scale.
No. I'm just not fear mongering things I do not understand.
Neither am I. When you're defending whatabputism, it's best you at least try to represent the arguments of the person you're arguing with accurately.
False equivalence is a classic. Biotechnology is not a technology, for example, it's billions of technologies informed, designed, and implemented, by humans, technology is a cultural feature.
Technology as this thing free from the ethics of its use is tech bro ancap cope to justify technological pursuits with empty ethical value. You can think "banning human progress in any way" is evil. But that would make you wildly uncritical of your own beliefs.
Feel free to take your arguments back to e/acc, where that level of convenience induced niavety is considered rhetorically valid.
Technology is a product of science. The facts science seeks to uncover are fundamental universal truths that aren't subject to human folly. Only how we use that knowledge is subject to human folly. I don't think open source or open weights models are a bad usage of that knowledge. Some of the things corporations do are bad or exploitative uses of that knowledge.
You should really try and consider what it means for technology to be a cultural feature. Think, genuinely and critically, about what it means when someone tells you that you shouldn't judge the ethics and values of their pursuits, because they are simply discovering "universal truths".
And then, really make sure you ponder what it means when people say the purpose of a system is what it does. Why that might get brought up in discussions about wanton resource spending for venture capitalist hype.
That's not at all what I am doing, or what scientists and engineers do. We are all trained to think about ethics and seek ethical approval because even if knowledge itself is morally neutral the methods to obtain that knowledge can be truly unhinged.
Scientific facts are not a cultural facet. A device built using scientific knowledge is also a product of the culture that built it. Technology stands between objective science and subjective needs and culture. Technology generally serves some form of purpose.
Here is an example: Heavier than air flight is a possibility because of the laws of physics. A Boeing 737 is a specific product of both those laws of physics and of USA culture. It's purpose is to get people and things to places, and to make Boeing the company money.
LLMs can be used for good and ill. People have argued they use too much energy for what they do. I would say that depends on where you get your energy from. Ultimately though it doesn't use as much as people driving cars or mining bitcoin or eating meat. You should be going after those first if you want to persecute people for using energy.
It does not appear to me that you have even humored my request. I'm actually not even confident you read my comment given your response doesn't actually respond to it. I hope you will.
Think, genuinely and critically, about what it means when someone tells you that you shouldn’t judge the ethics and values of their pursuits, because they are simply discovering “universal truths”.
No scientist or engineer as ever said that as far as I can recall. I was explaining that even for scientific fact which is morally neutral how you get there is important, and that scientists and engineers acknowledge this. What you are asking me to do this based on a false premise and a bad understanding of how science works.
And then, really make sure you ponder what it means when people say the purpose of a system is what it does.
It both is and isn't. Things often have consequences alongside their intended function, like how a machine gets warm when in use. It getting warm isn't a deliberate feature, it's a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics. We actually try to minimise this as it wastes energy. Even things like fossil fuels aren't intended to ruin the planet, it's a side effect of how they work.
It's a very common talking point now to claim technology exists independent of the culture surrounding it. It is a lie to justify morally vacant research which the, normally venture capitalist, is only concerned about the money to be made. But engineers and scientists necessarily go along with it. It's not not your problem because we are the ones executing cultural wants, we are a part of the broader culture as well.
The purpose of a system is, absolutely, what it does. It doesn't matter how well intentioned your design and ethics were, once the system is doing things, those things are its purpose. Your waste heat example, yes, it was the design intent to eliminate that, but now that's what it does, and the engineers damn well understand that its purpose is to generate waste heat in order to do whatever work it's doing.
This is a systems engineering concept. And it's inescapable.
The purpose of a system is, absolutely, what it does. It doesn’t matter how well intentioned your design and ethics were, once the system is doing things, those things are its purpose. Your waste heat example, yes, it was the design intent to eliminate that, but now that’s what it does, and the engineers damn well understand that its purpose is to generate waste heat in order to do whatever work it’s doing.
Huh? Then why is so much money spent on computers to minimize energy usage and heat production? This is perhaps the biggest load of bullshit I think I have heard in a long time. Maybe there is some concept similar to this, but if so you clearly haven't articulated it well.
Anyway I think I am done talking about this with you. You are here to fear-monger over technology you probably don't even use or understand, and I am sick of lemmings doing it.
More likely you're more interested in finding a way to disagree with the concept of posiwid than in doing basic research or listening.
It's funny when y'all use "fear mongering" for people pointing out systemic issues with ai and its hype. Though it's honestly tragic how uninterested you are in considering why AI and its hype is being criticized. Whatever makes the exploitative slave labor trained energy hungry silicon make venture capital money disappear, eh?
I installed Linux on my gfs (now wife) old laptop years ago when the beginner distros was way less user friendly. When I asked on a forum for help it was just the sound of crickets. When she made her first post starting with "my boyfriend installed Linux and I don't understand how to..." They fucking fell out trees to answer her questions
I do not trust any "livability" statistic that lists Frankfurt as the most livable city in Germany.
Also, the chart does not give its selection criteria. Medium sized cities to cities on the smaller side are completely missing. I get not including towns, that would overwhelm the graph.
Then again, what even is a city, what sets it apart from a town? Different regions in Europe have vastly different definitions of that, with the UK's definition being particularly notable for how useless it is.
Some of the others high up on that list are equally absurd. OK, Zürich and Geneva are maybe nice if you are a millionaire, but for everyone else they are absolutely unaffordable.
Toxicity is one thing for sure but I don't like how the commercialization of MP has shaped it.
Indie games have a very different feel in their online gameplay compared to "commercial" games.
Even way back, HL1 online and those online experiences felt so different because it was designed to be about the group experience rather than level up and get a skin, buy a weapon, our skill tree is massive.
Sure technology was holding it back but I wish I could see what it would've been without the massive push for $$$.
I only want to play single player games. I’m not a super big gamer, but I just want campaigns. I recently got a PS5 and I’ve been struggling to find newer games that have a great single player campaign. RDR2 is my style, it’s my favorite game. The gameplay itself is a little problematic, but it’s gorgeous and the story just gets me where I live. And that’s what I want.
Thats the problem tho, the new mozilla leadership is on the "do anything but nothing" ship. I really hope they either dont do anything too horrible or someone forks it if they do.
You mean hope that they too don't become subject to enshittification? I don't have a lot of faith in that.
Besides that, Google is controlling as fuck. They might keep fucking themselves over but there's no way they won't start attempting to ruin things for the rest of us.
Thankfully the AI use is very tame so far, used for stuff like offline alt text generation and offline translation. I'm personally still concerned about copyrights and ethics of the models used, but at least it's directed towards providing specific features, not a magic cure-all.
152 is the sum of the + and -1 votes
82 % were +
So 18% were -
So 18% of + were canceled from the -
So what we see is the remaining 64% positive, which means that 100 % are 237 votes (42 downvotes, 195 upvotes)
Interesting. My app allows me to have them separate, so I see all the up separate from all the down, and always have. I refused early on to use anything that combines them because I want the full picture of engagement.
If you use an app, check through the settings and see if it’s supported (all the iOS apps I tested have it). Idk about web, might be something to look into tho since the data is all there, so it’s just be a matter of handling.
That’s actually pretty easy once capitalist USA is abolished and thus no longer violently interfering with the internal affairs of socialist countries.
I am not so knowledgeable so forgive my ignorance, but why do most communist States have this knack for massive intelligence gathering on its own citizens? Are the concepts of personal privacy with freedom and working towards collective good so mutually exclusive?
Again this is not sarcastic, I genuinely wish to know.
PS I also hate capitalism from the core of my guts.
Are the concepts of freedom and working towards collective good so mutually exclusive?
Not necessarily, and I also disagree with the commenter above that without the USA suddenly the world would be singing kumbaya.
The problem was dictators seizing power in turbulent times. In Russia, Stalin abolished the soviets (A.K.A worker's councils, kinda like mega unions) in the Soviet union. I think that says a lot.
In Romania (I'm a bit better equipped to talk about this one), things were a bit different.
The original communist government (1945) was essentially a Russian puppet state that drained the wealth of Romania via war reparations. Stalinist purges happened often during this period.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Romania got a degree of independence and things were actually looking up. Society in general (infant mortality, gender equality, literacy, standard of living, etc) were all improving rapidly without Russia draining us and making decisions for us, and we didn't have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later. This was a period marked by political battles between the liberal communists and the Stalinist communists for control, with Stalinists commiting some pretty horrible atrocities (if you want nightmare fuel for some reason, look up the Pitesti experiment).
Then, 1965, Ceacescu took power. During his early years, he actually looked like a liberal (EDIT: Just to be clear: I mean a liberal communist. This means more individual freedom for citizens in a communist economy). He allowed some emigration, some free speech, and even spoke out about the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. This, at the start, did not look like a typical authoritarian communist state. Unfortunately, Inspired by the "amazing" society of North Korea in 1971, he started to make changes in the structure of society to be more like it, which included an expanded Securitate. 2 years later, harsh austerity policies to repay foreign loans led to a massive drop in living conditions, which led to riots, which led to crackdowns. Things rapidly spiralled, and the Securitate were given more and more power to keep control.
This then became the police state that everybody thinks of when they think of communism. A combination of too much power in 1 person's hands, an authoritarian imperialist overlord (Russia), and rising backlash against dropping living conditions.
"we didn't have a surveilance state of the scale that would come later"
For all of you that preach communism please make an imagination exercise just for a minute and imagine what kind of Authoritarianism you ask for when you will have a neverseen kind of Technological Communism, using current available surveillance technology (in place) like your smartphone for example (which I know a lot of people don't know what is its real use...)
In Russia, Stalin abolished the soviets (A.K.A worker’s councils, kinda like mega unions) in the Soviet union.
Are you referring to the constitution of 1936, which established 4 layers of representative councils (local, regional, national, union) as Stalin dissolving the Soviets?
why do you think that is worse
why do you blame it on Stalin? Seems like a thing that was written and implemented pretty democratically.
No, I'm not talking about the 1936 constitution. I meant specifically the disempowerment of local and union soviets.
I'm no expert on Russian history, so I may be misinformed about this, but as far as I understand it he put in place a series of reforms that stripped power from the local level and empowered the central committee.
This is partially true. Issues arose from trying to marry central planning with localized production, so there were a series of reforms that shifted the balance of control. This didn't end worker representation, it was a major shift that changed its form as the USSR industrialized and grew beyond where it once was.
Was it perfect and entirely democratic? No. Was it far more democratic than Capitalism? Absolutely, without question.
Shifted power in the sense of the local branches were federated within the same structure now, but honestly that seems more accountable and democratic?
Because once the dictatorship of the proletariat is installed it needs to defend itself from counter revolutionaries who want to reinstate class inequality. Actually similarly to how the US and other capitalist states are heavily surveilling and infiltrating communist and other anti capitalist groups in- and outside of their own countries.
It's less that Communist States have massive intelligence networks on their own populace because they are Communist, and more that states kinda just do that. American privacy violations are horrifying.
The "difference" largely comes from bourgeois media overplaying the bad elements and underplaying the good elements of Communist projects, while downplaying the bad elements and overplaying the good elements of Capitalist projects.
Combine this with the widespread fact that the US intentionally infiltrates and destabilizes states that even flirt with Socialism in the Global South, with hundreds of assassination attempts on figures like Castro, and it starts to seem more reasonable.
Media nah leave it, advertising I'd absolutely be down for. Advertising and Marketing are essentially the science of tricking our brains, and when that lever is exposed to capital you get enshittification and misery.
Basically when you do a socialist revolution your national bourgeoisie and international bourgeoisie are willing to crush it through any means necessary. You unfortunately have to use the machinery of the state to protect from bourgeois subversion, or you get shit like Indonesia, Chile, overthrow of the USSR through executive coup, etc.
Thank you all for the valuable insight. I can't reply to everybody individually so I am replying as a collective. From what I can surmise, basically, the state becomes the sort of mega Corp that capitalism inevitably breeds and data mining becomes legal as you are the law and data mining is necessary to hold power and prevent further revolutions.
It makes me wonder, how do new economic models come to be? Does it always have to be Einsteinian, that one man is a genius, or can economics do collective progress like modern science. Obviously economics has more artificial hurdles to overcome, but we should have something better by now when we know that both systems suck. I don't know, I am just a random guy on the internet
BTW, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the root cause of these problems is one human having enough power to decide life and death of another human. Like maybe due to our origin by subjugation of other species, but people holding power over other people is creating a huge crap fest. Plus there is the worst inequality of all.... Inequality of BIRTH.
Honestly,i dont know, most dystopias come about because of some persons dream of utopia.
That's an interesting take, wanna tell me more? (I'm sick right now and my brain cells don't function well enough to think for myself but that's unironically an interesting take)
well I meant that most business tools have a free/affordable tier or competitor, there's little structure holding back a profit-sharing model in terms of infrastructure
Shit, we have examples or socialized markets that run whole economies. We don't need to go far... Shit enforcing the current rules equally would change the world..
Because communism requires everyone to be willing to work for the betterment of society, not money. But unless everyone (or at least almost everyone) does that, it doesn't work.
Lol, all these GIMP haters who don't seem to understand the goal was being on par with Photoshop when it was a desktop application. It works exactly like Photoshop always did. And I agree, selection makes sense. There were many apps that worked the same.. Paint Shop Pro as well.
I guess the kids have all grown up with some other tools and would rather call things they don't understand stupid than try to grasp where the tool came from.
I'm not sure how Krita is different but then again I haven't used it. I installed it, saw it looked like a fork of GIMP, and stuck with what I knew. Which is probably what anyone who hates GIMP should do.
I was using Mac OS 9 at the time! But PS 7's workflow was already pretty similar to what it is today, and far more intuitive than GIMP which I tried for the first time in 2006-ish.
Interesting. I remember trying a copy of newer Photoshop a few years and being genuinely confused by how layers worked as they've always been part of my flow.
The old versions of photoshop and paint shop pro were heavily layer based and selections were automatically a mask of the current layer as in GIMP so GIMP was easy for me to transfer too at the time.
I also find that intuitive is a relative term. Relative based on your own experience.
I mean, even if that was what they said, that would make it and things that function like it more intuitive to them, wouldn't it? And someone who's used to a different workflow would find it unintuitive.
Note where you said "only ever used Gimp", when they said they have, in fact, used Photoshop. Additionally, nowhere in that did they say they've not used anything else since then even, just not Photoshop.
But you think you've made some credible point here, and likely won't back down no matter how wrong you are, so go ahead and respond telling me some twisted logic about why you're right and I'm wrong and I can ignore it so you can walk away thinking you've won some useless internet points.
You said they admitted to NEVER using anything but GIMP. Your gotcha screenshot screenshot you're spamming literally proves otherwise. It was the user at the top of this comment chain that never used anything but GIMP, not the one you've been replying to.
I also find that intuitive is a relative term. Relative based on your own experience.
That's a very good point. As a counterpoint though, pretty much every other app (Affinity Photo, Photopea, even Krita to a certain extent) emulates the PS workflow, which makes GIMP feel even more odd. Its paradigm was probably OK in the early 00s but the world has moved on.
Yeah that's fair. I'd have to figure out how people are getting on without layers, probably take myself back to basics and pretend I know nothing and see how the 'learn from scratch' track teaches these skills today.
OTOH, I also getting to the old dog point, not because I can't learn new tricks, but because I have so many responsibilities I have little time to do so, which is another reason ideological camps like this form. Which frankly is the wrong reason for them to exist.
I should go figure out how the new apps work, but when I do need to do graphics (since its not my main bread and butter but usually an additional skill I need to help develop something) I habitually pull out the familiar to save time.
Totally understandable in your case. I'd like to see GIMP merge the PhotoGIMP project and make further modifications to bring the app more in line with current best practices. They could make the "classic" vs "modern" UI toggle-able on first launch. Its underlying functionality is not bad, but it's just so far outside of what people are used to today. It's like like asking a random 20-year-old to use dialup and Netscape Navigator.
The problem with that, though, is if they changed the workflow to be like Photoshop, it would leave those of us who know how to use Gimp but not Photoshop high and dry
Gimp is intuitive to me at this point because I have some idea of how it looks at raster image manipulation from using it off and on for years. I have no clue how to do things in Photoshop that I can do easily in Gimp. It may be the better user experience, I don't know.
If they ever do that, I really hope they leave the option for it to work like classic Gimp in there, because people like me don't actually do image editing that much overall and relearning would be painful for much longer than someone who can deep immerse themselves until they get it. I'd hate to do it but I think I'd have to stick with an old version if that happened without any way to keep doing things the same way
if they changed the workflow to be like Photoshop, it would leave those of us who know how to use Gimp but not Photoshop high and dry
That's a VERY good point. I think a good example would be how Blender has evolved in the last decade or so.
It started out very "in-house" and unconventional, but it had very specific UX principles in mind rather than just aping "ThE iNdUsTrY". Coming from learning 3D MAX to OG pre-3.5 Blender was really difficult. Right-click select?!
But like Blender, I feel like GIMP could benefit from having easily adjustable settings that could line up with what a particular user finds intuitive. Certain layer behavior seems to be the big one here. The settings are there, they're just awkwardly small buttons or buried in menus.
(Adding the universal transform tool was a VERY nice jump in the right direction.)
Blender's UI / UX overhaul caused a bit of screeching, but overall was instrumental in balancing accessibility with familiarity to existing users. It made those options very accessible and modular.
For instance, I always use left-click-select, but I use the "Blender way" for everything else. If someone's coming from Maya? There's the "industry standard keymap" for them.
To add to this, it's not like other apps have just blindly copied Photoshop. Affinity Photo has shape tools that are far less convoluted than Photoshop but they still feel instantly familiar.
Even when they couldn't stick to common patterns (such as the eyedropper tool) they still manage to communicate how the feature works just by designing intelligently, no Googling required.
But every time I've used gimp, common tasks feels like a collection of workarounds for missing features. Someone elsewhere in this thread asked how to place an ellipse and got told that wasn't something commonly needed but to make a selection and fill it using the paint bucket tool (and a modifier key).
That solution is jankier than MS Paint, which at least offers you an actual tool and a short period where you can make non-destructive modifications to the stroke, fill, size and position.
But since you've technically got the circle you asked for, it's treated as "people who don't like GIMP are just haters" rather than "people don't want to use bad tools for their job"
Biologically and functionally speaking, he's whatever and everything. Practically speaking, he chooses to have a dick and look like a big muscular man that looks nothing like his previous form (so its even more deliberate), so it seems the only thing that survived his ascention was his gender identity.
In my headcanon, the further into the future you go the less attached to his humanesque form Dr Manhattan becomes, and eventually he just becomes a sentient force that does things that are beyond comprehension without needing a physical body at all.
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity.
I have used Jan Kruegers guide along with Sqouzen and Open Cola to find the correct ratios needed. Jan's recipe was chosen because its sugar free and skips the step with making sugar syrup, and you end up with 257ml syrup that gives 45l cola.
I'm on the fourth 1/4 scale batch, and weigh everything because its more precise than measuring volume, and that have helped me dial in the correct amounts.
I found that it's fun it is to tinker with all the ratios in a spreadsheet, while dialing in the recipe to my taste.
Even Coke got rid of the kola nut, so the caffeine is purely optional at this point. Other than the caffeine, all it offered was a bitter flavor that needed to be offset by sugar and acid.
Edit: though caffeine itself is also bitter so you can't just completely remove it without either significantly modifying the recipe or adding a bitter replacement
I only play single player games, but couldn't care less about achievements. It is all about exploration, story, game mechanics and modding for me.
People treat achievements as if they are a status symbol. I mean sure, if you don't know what else to do in a game, they can give you some goal, but IMO the game itself should encourage you to reach the goal, not some external badge. The experience doing the task should be the reward in of itself.
depends on the game, achievement hunting can be a lot of fun in a game u already love its just more stuff to do and more reasons to play, sure if all the achievements in a game are things like getting all of a collectible or beating certain story missions/quests they are pretty boring but in pdx map simulators for example many of the are interesting run ideas or they indicate where the hand crafted content is at. And despite how much i love the game i dont think i would have played as much of Tyranny as i did if i hadnt decide to get all the achievements.
There used to be an effort made with how you play a game to get achievements. The Orange box was a great example of this. The 'Little Rocket Man' and 'The One Free bullet' achievements both made you play the game in a different way. Sadly now it's mostly just 'play the game' 'collect all the things'.
Only silly people flaunt achievements. I use them as a meta-gaming guideline, which in a good game leads to interesting and fun challenges. In an RPG, it's like a check box for getting every ultimate weapon, fighting every boss, etc.
Can also give me something to do in a game I've played but loved. Retroachevements for instance encouraged me replay SaGa (aka Final Fantasy Legend) with only one character in the team. Wasn't too hard, but definitely a second playthrough thing.
True, if and when I ever get around to replaying things that could be a problem (although the industry has seen to remaking everything I cared about, sometimes poorly, but that's another problem).
Another shout-out to the nerds running retroachevements though because they thought it that; they have an encore mode that let's you redo achievements. Although honestly you could just make a second account, that stuff is for emulated content anyway and it's not like it's DRMed, haha.
I love any game with a handcrafted map and some exploration. Even Satisfactory, a factory building game, does an excellent job at that. Procedural generation has its uses but lacks soul I guess.
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