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This is morally obvious. We only have a law about it because somebody's feeling greedy or squeezed.

Law is a maximally complex representation of reality manifested by anxiety.


that last sentence is great.

Critical thinking won't save you. Emotion trumps rationality. This stuff plays on emotions.


...which critical thinking skills help you to notice, so that you are less likely to fall prey to it.


The point, perhaps, is that you can't use reason to convince someone to be more reasonable. Humans are fundamentally emotional animals, and if you want to get them to start valuing reason, you have to use emotional arguments to do so, by definition.


I don't think it matters whether it was created by an AI or an advertising agency or a dude in his basement. What matters is how powerful it is.

The powerful stuff will play your little mind like a piano. One glance and you're lost.


I agree. It doesn't matter. Even if a human wrote it, how does that change anything? It certainly doesn't make it more true or a more honest reflection of somebody's feelings. These people who keep worrying about AI generated content don't seem to realize the rubbish that humans create is not better.


Hard agree. Kony2012 was human made (or at least human started) and then it went on and spread like wildfire by using useful idiots along the way...


The technology of mind-control is advancing at a furious pace. These AI generated images and videos are just the latest evolution.

Who is vulnerable? Who is immune? What will its final form look like?

What do the scifi prophets say?

(This vast irresistible mind-control machinery serves the billionaires of course)

Poverty is probably your best shield. Because then you can't afford a phone. Someday the universal suicide order will drop and the only people left will be monks and beggars.


> Poverty is probably your best shield.

I am betting on relationships with people, and avoiding public Internet, except for shitposting on here.

This can be modelled as the back half of a whalefall. The Internet used to be a magic place where you could just stumble into community, useful information, etc. Now it's been over-exploited and game is becoming scarce.

The information is saturated with crap and mass media was never a substitute for friendships. Even though it's the hardest thing I've ever done, I'll have to make real friends.


I upvoted you.

What you wrote sounds a bit "out there", but, like Margaret Atwood's work, it's actually not too far away.

> Who is vulnerable? Who is immune?

I'm reminded of Hiro Protagonist (living in a storage unit), or Ready Player One protagonist (living in some impoverished mobile home stack) -- these are the "vulnerable".

As for "immune", it's the people who "control the supply":

https://www.cnet.com/culture/all-the-ways-people-freaked-out...

P.S. Like all real-world examples, we have an exception -- Felon Husk, who gets high on his own supply, making him simultaneously victim and perpetrator.


My first thought, sitting by the bay : Beautiful. Perfect. Now they just need to get rid of all these damn people.


Hey I've done some samatha meditation.

In samatha you do a thing with your attention.

Your attention is basically your root sense. The sense behind your seeing, thinking, hearing, smelling etc.

Your attention is usually all boggled and agitated, so it doesn't see so good.

In samatha you de-agitate your attention. Make it calm. When it's calm you see better. Much better. Stuff that was invisible becomes visible.

Samatha is a refined form of concentration. All of the people here are pretty familiar with concentration and what it's good for. So in samatha you just take it further.


Sounds useful - do you still practice samatha meditation? If not then what made you stop?


I do not practice samatha meditation anymore. I practice a different kind of meditation now.

We basically have 2 kinds of meditation.

1) Concentrate on a thing for a while.

2) Watch sensations come and go while refraining from moving your attention in reaction to what you're watching.

I did the first for a few years. Then I did both for a few years. Now I only do the second.

Both deliver the calm but they do it differently. They also do some other stuff.

The second is trickier than the first.


> Watch sensations come and go while refraining from moving your attention in reaction to what you're watching.

This sounds like standard "mindfulness" meditation, to me.


It is. Samatha is often contrasted with vipassana in the Buddhist traditions. Samatha being calm concentration, vipassana being analytic insight meditation. "Standard mindfulness", i.e. the distillation of Theravada Buddhist insight techniques into the western mainstream, is rooted in vipassana.

However, when you learn vipassana from a religious lineage, the various teachers and monasteries have slightly different techniques and progressions of the practice from what we'd consider "standard mindfulness".


I like to call it "turning into a big fluffy cloud".


Is the second akin to zazen?


Ya.


I feel similarly about my time at art school.

(It's the people. There is a deep humility in artists. A tolerance for uncertainty. A respect for mystery. It's rare.)

My naive self could have gotten more out of it.


Coincidentally, Libgen has been down for 4 days. Never saw that before.

Maybe the dark publishing forces are trying to corral their herd.


Charge bleeding through a semiconductor


Who would you say is the asshole here?

Is Banksy being a hypocrite?

Is Andrew Gallagher being rude to a great artist?


Gallagher is the asshole. Do you think he'd allow me to start making and selling a Full Colour Black greeting cards despite:

They(Gallagher's company/lawyers) added that the artist owning the trademark is “problematic for the industry [because it] allows Pest Control to flex their muscles in a way that is potentially unfair for competition.”

being his position?

I don't think Banksy is being a hypocrite - one can be critical of the rules while still following them.

Gallagher is being very rude - in fact trying to pass of your own work as someone else's without their permission to fraudulently sell it for more money has a name: Forgery. It's so rude it's illegal.


Lawyers. They're milking both sides.


Gallagher badgering an artist: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ypn8jz9q7o

.. and, quite possibly, coordinated manufactured outrage to drive sales and lift name recognition .


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