Zompist Bboard Again

naaah, imprinting meaning onto something is easy: "PREMIUM THREAD BUY NOW" has meaning: it means that especially good thread is for sale, and that the speaker wants you to purchase it presently.

imprinting beauty, profundity, awe, depth, joy, despair, and doing so in such a way that it makes other people's lives richer, now that's the struggle. maybe that's the core of content vs. art: art makes the beholder's life richer, content makes the influencer and the ad man richer. something can, inprinciple, be both, of course.

it's not a struggle if it's easy...
even if each of us struggles according to his own possibilities,
art is about expressing what expresses ourselves...

semantics is semantics, i guess that can be art but then what do we call the really good stuff ?

the one that touches you,
making you feel a little of what the artist has tried to put into it,
a little of himself...

but it's all relative,
and your insensitivity
doesn't detract from the victory he may have won...

mñeh. i don't buy it. it's very romantic and might sound deep, but i think in practice art doesn't mean that, and that that's not what we care about when we say art is a worthwhile thing: people don't like asimov's foundation, chopin's nocturnes etcetera because they give them a glimpse into the soul of the writer, or because the composer managed to express something about themselves, particularly: we like art because it makes *our* lives better, because we enjoy it, or it makes us think, or something like that: if what we wanted was someone expressing themselves and so on we'd all be reading fanfiction written by teenagers and listening to yoko ono, and we really don't. and artists aren't that concerned about achieving communication, but about perfecting technique, understanding composition, achieving relevance, exploring ideas and concepts, understanding harmony and contrast, and ultimately about effecting something in the beholder, listener, whatever.

A couple of hours ago, I got an email where I'm not sure whether it was written by an AI or a human being.

It started when I wrote a complaint email to an online shop where I had bought something. I had ordered one thing and they had delivered something else. Now, five minutes after I sent the email, I got a response. It was not one of those completely automated "Thank you for contacting us Your issue is very important to us bla bla bla" emails. No, it looked like something written by someone who had read my email, understood what my problem was, and was trying to solve it by sending me what I had ordered. It had apparently been signed by a human being, but that could, of course, be fake.

What made me suspicious about this is that I'm not sure that someone could open and read my email, look at the attachments I included to document my case, make a decision on how to react, formulate a response email, and type and send that response email, all in five minutes. Then again, I've always been fairly slow at physically writing stuff, so I might underestimate how fast other people can type.

On the other hand, the email was friendly, competent, and helpful, and neither confrontational nor condescending. That doesn't really fit with what I've heard about AI generated text.

So what do you think?

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 2:02 pm So what do you think?

I imagine it was probably a form email submitted by a quick typist who probably saw that the item was obviously not what was ordered and didn't make a fuss about replacing it. A lot of places I've ordered from seem not to make a fuss about refunding a wrong item, and seeing you took the time to document things probably convinced whatever human being was there to do what you asked.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 2:02 pm
So what do you think?

Sorting through customer feedback and flagging complaints is a typical use case for AI and quite a few companies make use of it. I don't know about the email answer. A LLM could handle that but that sounds like overkill when a set of form emails could do the job just as well.

yeah, it's most likely a predefined text with replacements for your name and so on

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 07, 2023 8:28 pm While granting that there have been plenty of problematic and even reprehensible artists, I really don't understand the connection between art and mystical fascism. One could certainly call Mishima and Wagner fascist mystics, but not every artist is Mishima or Wagner and it seems weird to cast them as representative of art. The notion of art as inclined toward political reaction seems utterly contrary to everything I have ever heard. The left wingers I know and read overwhelmingly align themselves with the humanities rather than STEM in terms of careers and interests. If anything, I usually hear it suggested that STEM trends right while the humanities trend left. It really surprises and baffles me to hear anyone claim otherwise.

I agree that everything you have ever been told is a lie.

Since fascists don't have any actual ideas, they have historically pushed for an aesthetic revolution. The idea that a leftist revolution can be primarily aesthetic is relatively recent.

Traditionally, Marxists prided themselves on being "scientific". Recently, Marxism has been co-opted by the Frankfurt School, which is closer to Hegelian idealism than Marxist social science.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 4:00 amRecently, Marxism has been co-opted by the Frankfurt School, which is closer to Hegelian idealism than Marxist social science.

Yeah, a bit weird that a movement saw itself as Marxist, and was even seen as such by its opponents, when that movement seems to have been mostly about a bunch of middle- and upper class academics - that is, by old-school Marxist standards, bourgeois academics - expressing their disdain for any form of entertainment that might actually be popular among proletarians.

(And even aside from the "a bunch of bourgeois academics expressing their disdain for any form of entertainment that might actually be popular among proletarians"-aspect, the Frankfurt School seems to have generally been a bunch of German intellectuals doing what German intellectuals do best: taking themselves way too seriously and being generally verbissen.)

That said, I think you're overdoing it with the connection between fascism and the arts. There might have been something to it when fascism first got going, but that was a while ago, and we live now. Besides, even back then, at least outside of Italy, fascists seem to have hated all those art styles that were actually fashionable among the "artsy types" of the time. To the extent to which there was an artistic element in fascism, it seems to have been more a thing among failed artists, who dreamed of taking absolute power in society so that they could get to decide who was a successful and who was a failed artist, then among artists who were successful before the fascists took over.

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 4:42 am That said, I think you're overdoing it with the connection between fascism and the arts. There might have been something to it when fascism first got going, but that was a while ago, and we live now. Besides, even back then, at least outside of Italy, fascists seem to have hated all those art styles that were actually fashionable among the "artsy types" of the time. To the extent to which there was an artistic element in fascism, it seems to have been more a thing among failed artists, who dreamed of taking absolute power in society so that they could get to decide who was a successful and who was a failed artist, then among artists who were successful before the fascists took over.

But fascism originated in Italy, and there, they had the Futurists (who, TBH, I kind of like). And the Marxist Left had its origin in hard-headed economic analysis, not art. I started identifying with the Far Left after reading Classical Econophysics by Paul Cockshott, a Computer Scientist. ...

That said, I don't think art is fascist or anything like that. I am just pushing back against the vulgar Art:Tech::Left:Right narrative.

Some links that might serve as a guiding beacon for the feeble 21st century intellect:

The orientation of Marxism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdc8y5QDBTk

Marx's The Holy Family: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... /index.htm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:39 pm Wut?

Three Japanese people have won a Nobel in literature: Kazuo Ishiguro, Kanzaburo Oe, and Yasunari Kawabata

A little Googling found this page and this page on best Japanese writers that don't include Mishima. Admittedly he often appears in such lists, but it's worth noticing that not everyone agrees.

He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion. Some of my favorite writers never won the Nobel Prize. My favorite Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, did not. Some of his descriptions in Norwegian Wood practically paint Studio Ghibli scenes in my mind. You once said denying Borges the Nobel Prize discredits the Nobel committee, remember? Milan Kundera didn't win the Nobel prize, and neither did Nabokov.

Personally, I don't like Yasunari Kawabata.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:39 pm Wagner died in 1883, before Hitler was even born. Anti-semitism is old as dirt, but it's pretty eccentric to blame it on fascism, to say nothing of blaming art on fascism.

Hitler used to stage The Master-Singers of Nuremberg at his Nuremberg rallies. The association is rock-solid, I'm afraid.

Sure but I feel like you're ignoring present day realities in favor of abstract theory and older trends. Certainly the old guard fascists were quite inclined toward romanticism and art. But their modern analogs have proliferated in the tech world and STEM more generally. It seems like I can hardly go one day without reading about Elon Musk palling around with the far right these days. Pretty much every techie I hear about leans well to the right, either as libertarian or fascist. Marx may well have approached economics with the cold and rational gaze of a techbro, but he's been dead for nearly 150 years at this point. His ideas and perspective could use some updating. Should we really ignore all the right wingers in tech just because one failed artist really liked an overwrought composer 80 years ago?

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 5:46 am

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:39 pm Wut?

Three Japanese people have won a Nobel in literature: Kazuo Ishiguro, Kanzaburo Oe, and Yasunari Kawabata

A little Googling found this page and this page on best Japanese writers that don't include Mishima. Admittedly he often appears in such lists, but it's worth noticing that not everyone agrees.

He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion.

You said "Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer". If you're backing off from that claim, great. You do not have to underline the choices of "a certain set".

Some of my favorite writers never won the Nobel Prize. My favorite Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, did not. Some of his descriptions in Norwegian Wood practically paint Studio Ghibli scenes in my mind. You once said denying Borges the Nobel Prize discredits the Nobel committee, remember?

Yes, duh. I mentioned the Nobels only to counter your claim that Mishima was "Japan's best writer." I provided other evaluations as well. I'm glad you've changed your mind on his reputation.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:23 am Sure but I feel like you're ignoring present day realities in favor of abstract theory and older trends. Certainly the old guard fascists were quite inclined toward romanticism and art. But their modern analogs have proliferated in the tech world and STEM more generally. It seems like I can hardly go one day without reading about Elon Musk palling around with the far right these days. Pretty much every techie I hear about leans well to the right, either as libertarian or fascist. Marx may well have approached economics with the cold and rational gaze of a techbro, but he's been dead for nearly 150 years at this point. His ideas and perspective could use some updating. Should we really ignore all the right wingers in tech just because one failed artist really liked an overwrought composer 80 years ago?

Techies aren't as cold and rational as they like to imagine. If they were, they'd come to similar conclusions as Marx. And a few, like Paul Cockshott's disciples, do. One of the largest tankie channels on YouTube, thefinnishbolshevik, is run by a computer guy.

As for Elon Musk, he's a Ketamine junkie. He thinks the letter X is "art deco". IIRC his wife took his trans child away or something, which is why he really wants to misgender people. This is why one man should never be given the power to mold the public square in his image. Who's doing this today? Capitalism, not Stalin.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:53 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 5:46 am

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:39 pm Wut?

Three Japanese people have won a Nobel in literature: Kazuo Ishiguro, Kanzaburo Oe, and Yasunari Kawabata

A little Googling found this page and this page on best Japanese writers that don't include Mishima. Admittedly he often appears in such lists, but it's worth noticing that not everyone agrees.

He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion.

You said "Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer". If you're backing off from that claim, great. You do not have to underline the choices of "a certain set".

Some of my favorite writers never won the Nobel Prize. My favorite Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, did not. Some of his descriptions in Norwegian Wood practically paint Studio Ghibli scenes in my mind. You once said denying Borges the Nobel Prize discredits the Nobel committee, remember?

Yes, duh. I mentioned the Nobels only to counter your claim that Mishima was "Japan's best writer." I provided other evaluations as well. I'm glad you've changed your mind on his reputation.

This is just spite now. I clearly said "reputed to be". All claims of best writer-hood are circumscribed within factions, and there are factions that believe he is Japan's best writer. There is no objective answer to this question, which is why I said "reputed". He's certainly not my favorite Japanese writer. I've been a Murakami fan since high school.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 7:09 am

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 6:53 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 5:46 am
He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion.

You said "Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer". If you're backing off from that claim, great. You do not have to underline the choices of "a certain set".

Some of my favorite writers never won the Nobel Prize. My favorite Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, did not. Some of his descriptions in Norwegian Wood practically paint Studio Ghibli scenes in my mind. You once said denying Borges the Nobel Prize discredits the Nobel committee, remember?

Yes, duh. I mentioned the Nobels only to counter your claim that Mishima was "Japan's best writer." I provided other evaluations as well. I'm glad you've changed your mind on his reputation.

This is just spite now. I clearly said "reputed to be". All claims of best writer-hood are circumscribed within factions, and there are factions that believe he is Japan's best writer. There is no objective answer to this question, which is why I said "reputed". He's certainly not my favorite Japanese writer. I've been a Murakami fan since high school.

Compare your own wording.

"Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer"
"He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion."

These are not the same thing. Somehow he's Japan's best writer when you want to make some point about fascism, and now he's not Japan's best writer, apparently because you need to have some sort of disagreement with me. (How horrible it would be if you had to simply admit you misspoke three weeks ago when this came up!) You're trolling and I have no desire to play games with you.

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 7:39 am Compare your own wording.

"Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer"
"He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion."

These are not the same thing. Somehow he's Japan's best writer when you want to make some point about fascism, and now he's not Japan's best writer, apparently because you need to have some sort of disagreement with me. (How horrible it would be if you had to simply admit you misspoke three weeks ago when this came up!) You're trolling and I have no desire to play games with you.

I take "Take the guy reputed to be Japan's best writer" as meaning "there are (many) people who think that Mishima is Japan's best writer (not necessarily myself)", which is much closer to "He's reputed to be the best among a certain set, not in my opinion" than you make it out to be here.