ZzzleepingBear

I'd say that there are two different kind of manipulations. There is conscious manipulation, and there is unconscious manipulations. If you know that you are manipulating someone, you are then aware of your active choice of using mental leverage working against that person in doing you favours that they otherwise would decline if they knew why you are doing what you do. You are then primarily having a relation with, and taking advantage of their weak spots as that is what keeps the relationship "working". While unconsious manipulation is our own unkown limits when interacting with other people. And so we are primarily drawn to people like ourselves, since a high level of manipulation is not actively a trait that mentally healthy people priortise as they seek a mutual relationship in getting their wills met with others, and not against others. That is not to say that mutual relationships are devoid of any kind of manipulation attempts, but once manipulation attempts are discovered, they will be adressed and called out so there can be a new progress-point that both parties comes to terms with and are aware of inorder to get into a new mutually balanced relation with eachother. So the relationship can be elevated rather than declining as any manipulation comes to light.

What if the market becomes flooded with AI art from simple to medium long prompts, then there would be a growing desire to stand out from the popular crowd that would require longer and more complex prompts to generate more complex images. Maybe it becomes like crypto mining where the equations get's longer and longer for each coin with a rising cost for every newly produced coin. I wouldn't be surprised if people eventually get bored or too used to see images of cute animals posing in different clothing, or hot babes in less and less clothing, until the point that maybe the same category of pictures takes a new turn for a more interesting perspective than what has previously flooded the market from it's popularity. The promts needed for the best images will probably be many pages long in a near future, and the working load for the AI may go from 30 sec for a cool 8k images with some details, to proffesional studios who render super advanced and specific images that require many hours to render in and put togheter. And all the promts that the AI require, may take even more hours to experiment with, inorder to get different unique promt formulas that hasn't already been overused . A image alchemy lab in other words.

I think you guys should stop gossiping behind poor Ned's back. And go and meet him in person instead, you all will learn so much more by doing so.

My ass sure is enlightened, where else do you think the third eye would be??

Yeah I agree with most of what you mention here. This AI tool will definitely have some impact on the way we view art, and the direction some styles might develop. I stil see alot of limitation and differences to who and how someone may use this tool. For example, those who have little to no artistic understanding or experience may be thrilled in creating tons of cool images in general, but will lack the knowledge in how to cleanup their images and be stuck with possible imperfections. While proffesional artists would have to compromise on their own abilities and artistic expression to spend time to cleanup their images, so it may suck the fun out of their proffesion if they deside to speed up their workflow by searching for a satisfying randomized image to work on. Realistically imo where this AI are now, some art-styles may be in danger, while most don't. And for those styles who are in danger to be overly used, may turn into a new meta direction where the AI generated images may struggle more to replicate what is consider to be interesting apart from what has become over popularized. The compromising that has to be accepted when using this AI in general, may be too frustrating for established artists who have a strong will to take their art in a certain direction and who want to be the one in control of the final product, rather than relying on trying to gain better control over a AI tool that are in constant development in how it may randomize it's image of choice. There are alot of variables to consider or put more or less emphasis on when it comes to generate a certain feeling when creating art. So if all those choices are in the hand of the AI when creating a new image, there will always be a disatisfaction attached to a portion of the generated image no matter how many times you reroll the dice of the rendering (depending on your experience you have as an artist). I can possibly see some artists who may dislike the project they are working on, to have less care of the final product, and then have as their main goal set to get it all done and over with as fast as possible. Or if an established publisher decides to settle with more of the AI generated images for cheaper work costs, there will eventually be a noticeably difference in the end product that will be recognized overtime as it spreads. Anyways, I just ramble on here, but it's a interesting topic with no clear definitive answears. I guess time will tell, but I think there is plenty of room to be optimistic regardless of how fast this development seem to go.

True true, it sure has the ability to create images with an emotional message under the right cirumstances. I would like to suggest the exact oppositet to this. That you will be more likely to sell AI generated art to individual buyers that lack artistic understanding but appriciate what is presented if it suits their taste. But not as easy to sell to more established companies and big publishers that review thousands of images and styles. Yeah I think it can be more in favour for artists to get inspiration from this AI if anything. Those are some great images! And here is the great challange with AI generated art as I see it. If I was a potential client of yours, and asked if you could add some very specific details and angels and expression of any added characters to any of those images, then that would become quite a impossible task to get done unless you put in some serious work yourself and added what I ask for in the same style. My point being, is that the randomness of this AI art are fun to mess around with, but a hard beast to tame. And therein lies the challange to compete with proffesionals even if you render any image in matter of seconds, it might take hours of searches until you come up with something that come closer to what is both good and accurate to a clients specific wants. And you stil might need to clean up alot of thing in the rendered image manually, and need specific skills to addapt to the style of the rendered art to do so. But I think there is a strong starting point, from where you might be able to sell random AI rendered images until the market get's saturated just as with stockphotos in general.

I have always had a talent for drawing, and even though it's not my proffesion, I do relate to your line of thinking and worries here. I just watched some videos yesterday about Midjourney, and I get quite mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it's amazing how fast it creates art. And on the other hand, it's a efficent stealing machine basically. I can't help but to feel that the speed that it is spitting out art, there is a underlying sense of hollowness to the art since there is no meaningful backstory to why it express itself the way it does. For example. If I see some art that I know are made by a human, I'm not only seeing the art. I'm witness a certain conscious direction and expression made by that particular artist that reflects some aspect of their state of mind from a particular time of their life. I think what alot of people might not realize with art, or take for granted. Is that what they see, is that piece of conscious expression that it represent, and that is a big part of how beauty arise. And not just a good looking image of something or other that can be separated from it's source of expression. So while A.I art may remain popular and useful to a certain degree, I suspect that people overtime may need to seek a more meaningful relation with what they interact with when it comes to art. I think A.I art will be like that of fast food resturants, highly popular for a hungry consumerbase that enoy to consume. And traditional/digital art for those who don't really need to consume it for the sake of consuming. But who wants to engage in what is fresh in the sense of human conscious expression. Just like that of food, there will probably be a growing interest in knowing the backstory and process from the artist themselves in what drives them to a certain artistic expression at the moment. A level of new found engagement from both sides so to speak for something to remain meaningful and fresh for both parties involved. High sugar and salt in food will make it more popular and cheaper, but it is at cost of nutrition. I think the same principle will be the case for art in general, there will be a flood of beautiful pictures to consume and create. But popular art will merely be for those who are late to the party of what kind of beauty they are witnessing, and the new and fresh will be for the minority to be engaged with as their mind is present with what is felt to express now, and not what has been popular the last couple of months with the latest AI algorithms. Those are some of my thoughts on the matter.

I think you should give your thought on God a break, atleast for a moment and come to terms with that you have a individual mind to take care of in this present moment. The fear and anxiety you feel right now (you can't be them, but feel them) are a tell-tell sign that you have your head in the future. You can only be at one place at the time, as the human you are right now. And those places are the past/present/future. I've have felt the same existential terror that you felt, but from a dream I had when I was only a kid. And the terror felt just as sureal and intense as I woke up from the dream and was stuck with the realization that I was all there was. But this realization is only one aspect of the mind, you don't need to dubble down on one realization and run with it. Pause and come to terms that in this very moment, you are a human, with a limited perspective that can be explored further. Here is two Buddha quote I believe, that may be relevant to your current situation. If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present. Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment. If you need further guidence I highly recommed looking into Byron Katies work. She has some videos on youtube aswell.

- Human

I find it funny that you say this, as I explicitly put emphasis on the importance of separation to understand unity. It sounds like we are on the same page on this matter now atleast. What about it? I mean I don't see anything in particular that I would disagree with. But I don't see why you felt the need to explain your view of unity for me though.

If they where of mutual opposites yes, but they are not. What is good can alot of times fly under the radar of our perception. And the fact that your biased to what you believe to be good, hint to your innherent notion to favour somethings over other things depending on what your beliefs/experience and judgement are at the moment of choice. You don't need to become a masochist to understand, that they choose pain in favour of their liking of judging it as good. And to most people that seems odd, as masochists have a other relationship with pain than most people do. Just as working out or stretching has a certain pain, it is concidered good by the experienced. And initially bad by those new to those activities. All in all, we gravitate to choose what is considered good, wheter we know it to be good or not.

So you can't know bad without whats good. This is my point, and not the one you just assumed.

The reason I ask is. For you to know how bad something is, there needs to be a baseline of good by where you can judge how bad something can get. You can only make a value judgement out of a discernment from a baseline. And a resistance to something fundamental, is only as strong as the opposite force you manage to put out to prove it's validity to be true. If something is bad or horrible in your opinion, how do you come to such a final conclution unless your baseline value came from what is considered good?

For something to appear meaningless. There needs to be a notion of meaning that is obscured. Otherwise meaninglessness could not be seen as such.

Let me ask you this. Have you ever felt the opposite of the list of bad things you just described?

And yet we have to acknowledge the separation inorder to get to understand how unity came to be. Two people who doesn't love and desire eachother won't unite. So there is an underlying desire to something that what we consider to be love. We for example don't call raindrops falling to the ground, a process of "falling in love with the ground out of their desire", we acknowledge it to be to the force of gravity due to the collected mass forming into raindrops. I don't oppose the process of unity. I only opposing your lack of acknowledgement to how you arive at your understanding of the word unity. There is no unity outside of any prior separation. I think you can agree with that atleast.

I mean, if you want to say so, you can. But you will stil fail to explain unity as to how it comes to describe what it is pointing towards. The best way to describe unity by your standard, is to not mentioning it at all then. It sure can be. You make a indirect valuestatement out of the word nothing by saying that you love nothing. I have no conscious desire = I love nothing. And everything hint's towards alot of somethings once they are cherry picked out of all there is = Everything. Correct. There is alot of things to love. Good. I'm on my way.

Interesting idea. What comes to mind is either electronic "cyber-punkish" type of music, or any type of metal. Some great dystopian dance vibe I don't usually listen to Slipknot anymore and only a little in the past since I'm not a "metal-head" by any means, but this one is exceptionally good. They both pass the Nihilism vibe check imo.

Nothing as nothing is my way to describe to you that there can't be a unity to be recognized unless there is something uniting with something. So there needs to be something uniting with something else for the possibility to acknowledge a word such as unity to have meaning or validity at all. Identity is a common denominator for the ability to acknowledge a unique difference between things. That's why someone or something can be identified by some level of difference. My ultimate agreement with Socrates statement is that love is conditional to something. So love attach itself through desire of something rather than nothing. That's all. And so are your response here then. So.... And if your truth is that something is deeper because YOU say so. All I can really do with that, is to assume that you believe in something else that you can't or won't disclose for some reason or other. Because when we speak of love, and probably when we think of love too. We do so by objectifying it outside our selves, or make mental object out of it to make up the picture of what it is that we love. And so love contains the beauty and the ugly depending on if our loving desires are meet or rejected. But there needs to be something to be loved, to call it love. Love doesn't lack anything, it can only be added to, and that can be a problem depending on if you can pursue what you love or not. I don't mind you tooting your horn at all. But since you engage in the topics you do, you can't expect people to believe you in blind faith just because you make a claim and slap on a self certified "truth-lable" on it and call it a day.

What about pacemakers?

Agreed. A semantic issue that may create more confusion if left unchecked imo. So love is only beautiful until it isn't anymore. Love is conditional.

Unity isn't unity unless there is something or other that unites. So you can't for example say that you want to unite nothing with nothing. The distinction between something and nothing is that one of them represent form, while the other is either absence of form or just unknown. To say that something "is way deeper than that" is at best a weak argument for impliciting something or other that isn't even presented. To superimpose certain words as "deeper" makes what you try to convey even more shallow than if it was left unsaid imo..

I'd say this. I think we are on two different missions here when it comes to our angle of interest in this topic of definition. The gist I get from your explanations is that you try to show me a underlying reality to why language and definitions has the possibility to exist the way they do. And I am not saying I disagree with that take on definition and language per se. However I will try to clarify my position on the matter by first saying that I do recognize and acknowledge that there is a inherit limitation to language and definitions. And that is my intended position. So when speaking of love for example. We try to convey something or direct our attention with a inherit limited tool. So exploring and fintune the bounderies is the crucial part of definitions if we intend to be aware of it's full use on a concious level, and not be swept away by unconcious believs that may have attached them selves to certain words, imo. Here is example that I believe the majority of people with some dating experience understand, wheter that is consciously or unconsciously. If you go on a first date with a person, and you hit off really well. What you can't do unless you want to ruin your potential next date, is to say the word "I love you". This should be painfully obvious to most people, but I'm not sure if everyone who knows this can explain why you can't say that to others. And explanations like that it is "stupied to do so on a firt date" offers no further explanation to what is self-evident already. So here is the explanation why you can't say "I love you". To love something is a desire, it comes with a possesive strive that is conditional to get. So desire is a sticky behaviour that can't be separated from what you say you love. A first date can be enjoyable, and that is healty. But if someone say that they love a stranger on their first date, then it's a unhealty mental pattern of desire that has fully developed into "I love you". And the person who say such a thing has made the other person a desired object, instead of following the healthy pattern of wanting to know more about them. The desire for sex is diffrent from desire of a person as a whole. So it's possible to say, "I love sex" but "I don't love you" despite the persuing to have it with them. Anyways, I hope this wasn't to hard to follow. Point being, we seem to have different interest in the matter of definition on this particular topic from what I can tell.

You first imply to Socrates definition as "not that" for not being a correct argument, basically amount to no value = (nothing) and then you use love to refer to what you see as the correct statement that love is "the unity". Unity becomes the object of value labled as love. So the desire for unity is what binds it to the word love. Unity being something rather than nothing as a reference of direction for the word love to latch onto. You just proved Socrates statement to be correct by the way you use the word love.

I'd say that is a half-truth if there is such a thing. To break apart and divide things to distinguish them further doesn't come with a fixed number as you try to suggest. To give you a simple example, a cows tail is not half a cow. And no butcher would agree to such a deal for obvious reasons. Laguage has to first and foremost arive at a specific use. Speaking of definitions has another purpose in contrast to speaking of poetry or story telling where you may find play on words to be of more importance than what precise destinctions of word may boil down to. I can't tell what you try to convey other than saying that all is emptiness/everythingness/divinity in the end of the day.