Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
Not posted for approval, if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact ... you know the drill.
"A #darkness in the world you're simply not ready to accept."
I think it's the other way around. The world can be very dark, no question—but that darkness is messy and chaotic and caused by a million different things. #Conspiracy theorists desperately want a single explanation for all of it. They feel like if they can identify and name it, that knowledge gives them a measure of control.
What they're not ready to accept is that there *isn't* a single source for all the pain and suffering, and even if you get rid of one, there will always be more to take its place.
The rest of us understand this. We know we'll never solve all the problems, or even most of them. Just do the best we can, with our own little corners of the world, and try to make things a bit better. Accepting that is a lot tougher, but it's worth the effort.
These people have no idea how badass they're making #Biden look. This may be the best #DarkBrandon meme yet. Keep up the good work!
#Philosophy students who fail to answer this question correctly are in danger of having their #livers devoured by #eagles.
"So what do we have here, Sergeant?"
"Looks like a eucalyptus deal gone bad, Detective."
"All right. Round up the usual suspects."
Says it all, really. #evolution #creationism #transitional #fossil
The usual disclaimers: not posted for agreement (although I did get a chuckle out of the first image), if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact, originally posted by a friend I won't name unless they want me to because I'm not looking for a fight ... etc.
I really hope it's possible to have a middle-ground discussion about this.
On one hand, the idea that #AI-generated #text and #images are purely #plagiarism strikes me as fundamentally untrue. If you prompt #ChatGPT to write you a story, it will give you a combination of words which has never existed before. With a little back-and-forth, those words will be at least a reasonable approximation of the #story you had in your head when you started. Same with #Midjourney and pictures. That is a #creative act.
On the other, it's not just a tool like pen and paper, or word processors, or even add-ons like suggested text. You can plagiarize with all of those—but they don't *push* you toward plagiarism the way ChatGPT does, and although I'm not a visual artist I understand Midjourney is even worse. (I'm using those as the two best-known examples; I know there are lots of others.) My #writing contains turns of phrase from favorite books, and so does everyone else's. But not whole paragraphs or pages with the names changed ... if there's even that much editing.
So it seems to me that neither "nothing generated by AI can ever be true art" nor "stop whining, it's just another way to tell stories" is quite right. One thing for sure is that it's not going away, and things like the open letters urging a halt to AI development strike me as more attention-seeking stunts than serious attempts to solve the very real problems involved. We need to find a way to deal with it that respects *everyone's* rights.
Please tell me I'm not the only human, typing on my keyboard with my normal human hands, who sees it this way?
"ToughVet." Okay, sweetie. I think I covered that here:
It would be kind of amazing how many #racist #asshats are still celebrating this pathetic attempt at a country that only existed for fourteen years and ceased to exist before many of them were born, until you consider that many of them are also still celebrating a pathetic attempt at a country that only existed for four years and ceased to exist before many of their *great-grandparents* were born.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the "#Rhodesians" did, in fact, fucking die.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
