Zompist Bboard Again

jal wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 3:10 amUnfortunately, using AI for image generation is leeching off of real artists that put their blood, sweat and tears into their art (not to mention AI is burning the planet). So please don't use AI if you can at all avoid it.


JAL

Quite. Sorry if I sound like Cato the Elder with Carthage, but it's true. You can call it a moral panic but I call it defending humanity against the onslaught of a trillion dollar industry.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Fri Nov 28, 2025 4:58 amI apologize if I was rude. I have fallen for mass hysteria myself. I didn't intend to attack you. From my perspective, I was warning you not to fall for popular exaggerations.

Apologies excepted. I'm in IT, and AI is everywhere, so I'm pretty well informed on what it is, what it can and can't do, what the costs are, etc. The "exaggerations", if anything, aren't exaggerated enough. I wouldn't be surprised if the AI bubble bursting triggers an economical collapse much larger than the finanicial crisis of the 00s.


JAL

people, need I remind you all that you are in the entirely wrong forum to be speaking of the wrongs or rights of using generative AI? please, if you would so kindly, move this conversation to some thread in Ephemera?

The argument seems to be already over. It ended with apologies being offered and accepted.

Compass directions. I was thinking of dividing the compass rose into six basic directions rather than four. I was trying to think of any particular reason why it should be four by default. The best one I could come up with is - body plan and bilateral symmetry. If you orient yourself towards one direction, you will naturally have two "sides" facing other directions.

If you had some kind of different symmetry - like say, radial - maybe a six-way division might make more intuitive sense. But because I want bilateral body plans, that means that a four-way compass division is going to seem more "natural".

Other things being equal of course. Like if you lived in a landscape where you had six different winds or weather patterns depending on where you were facing, maybe that would give a six-way division.

Does this reasoning sound alright to anyone else?

So Haleza Grise wrote: ↑Sat Dec 13, 2025 10:35 pm Compass directions

Your reasoning sounds plausible to me.

In Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, different planets have different numbers of basic compass directions. Including five. No reason is given - I think the author is intending to give culture shock.

If you have a world that's a rotating planet, then the four "traditional" compass directions are the direction of the two poles and the directions that go with or against the rotation.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Dec 14, 2025 4:50 am If you have a world that's a rotating planet, then the four "traditional" compass directions are the direction of the two poles and the directions that go with or against the rotation.

Or, that is, from the perspective of someone on the surface of that planet, the direction of the sun at noon, the direction opposite to that, the direction from which the sun rises, and direction to which the sun sets. Of course, the first two are dependent on which hemisphere one is in.

Edit: fixed a typo

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Dec 14, 2025 9:33 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Dec 14, 2025 4:50 am If you have a world that's a rotating planet, then the four "traditional" compass directions are the direction of the two poles and the directions that go with or against the rotation.

Or, that is, from the perspective of someone on the surface of that planet, the direction of the sun at noon, the direction opposite to that, the direction from which the sun rises, and direction to whicj the sun sets. Of course, the first two are dependent on which hemisphere one is in.

Yes, the planet makes a four-direction system pretty natural.

On the other hand, local features can be more important for a particular people-- e.g. uphill/downhill or upstream/downstream.

Flying creatures would add up and down.

So Haleza Grise wrote:If you had some kind of different symmetry - like say, radial - maybe a six-way division might make more intuitive sense.

Interesting idea, but it's hard to think of anything that correlates to moving off 60 degrees to the right or left. But it'd work in a hex grid-based city.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Dec 14, 2025 5:37 pm On the other hand, local features can be more important for a particular people-- e.g. uphill/downhill or upstream/downstream.

Even so, all the geocentric systems I’m aware of have four perpendicular directions. It’s just a convenient way of specifying things.

Flying creatures would add up and down.

Don’t Chinese languages consider those cardinal directions too?

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Dec 14, 2025 6:33 pm

Flying creatures would add up and down.

Don’t Chinese languages consider those cardinal directions too?

No, Chinese considers the center a direction. Which you could say is good math thinking: no-operation is an operation.

So Haleza Grise wrote: ↑Sat Dec 13, 2025 10:35 pm Compass directions. I was thinking of dividing the compass rose into six basic directions rather than four. I was trying to think of any particular reason why it should be four by default.

Looking at classical vocabulary, the concepts of 'east' and 'west' do seem more firmly fixed than 'north' and 'south'.

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:52 pmLooking at classical vocabulary, the concepts of 'east' and 'west' do seem more firmly fixed than 'north' and 'south'.

Which makes sense as they're directly related to the sunrise and sunset. North and South are derived from those.


JAL

jal wrote: ↑Tue Dec 16, 2025 4:00 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:52 pmLooking at classical vocabulary, the concepts of 'east' and 'west' do seem more firmly fixed than 'north' and 'south'.

Which makes sense as they're directly related to the sunrise and sunset. North and South are derived from those.

In many languages, the names of the directions are of course derived from the times of day: east = morning/sunrise, south = noon, west = evening/sunset, north = midnight.

jal wrote: ↑Tue Dec 16, 2025 4:00 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Dec 15, 2025 4:52 pmLooking at classical vocabulary, the concepts of 'east' and 'west' do seem more firmly fixed than 'north' and 'south'.

Which makes sense as they're directly related to the sunrise and sunset. North and South are derived from those.

Hmm, are they? The highest point of the sun is always directly north (in the Southern Hemisphere) or south (in the Northern Hemisphere). By contrast sunrise and sunset can deviate quite far from the cardinal directions — over here, for instance, the sun will set today at 227°SW, which is closer to the south than the west.