Just as CGI replaced a lot of practical effects in film AI innovation may end up eliminating real cinematic photography altogether (if it is cheaper). This prospect is terrifying. Films will become more structured like video games, where actors perform the movement and voice work, and AI tools enhance the aesthetic skin/style/rendering. There still will be a lot of work to be done for any creative enterprise that isn't just a basic prompt image generation.

From the standpoint of having an original vision as an artist, you still can't really achieve it from AI prompts at all. Heck, I'm sure even many artists have trouble translating their vision to whatever medium. Prompt generation also leaves out the sometimes fun/therapeutic process of doing art -- it sometimes being as much about the journey as the end product.

The youtube channel Corridor (a crew of CGI enthusiasts) made an animated film using AI in the style of the gothic Vampire Hunter D films (which were painstakingly hand drawn). While it doesn't meet the aesthetic quality of the hand drawn films, and acting/writing is pretty garbage, it is still really impressive.

But what of hedonism and uncontrolled self indulgent pleasures of the senses would this, if it went unchecked have a negative effect on a higher cultured society, would it bring it down say or have these two always co-existed ? — simplyG

Maybe wealth could be a proxy for a kind of capacity for pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. The Gulf petrostates always come to mind when I think of dissolute hedonism. These countries/states are theocratic, conservative, Muslim, which contrasts absurdly with the most extreme kind of luxury eyes can behold, for privileged classes of course.

According to civil service minister Khaled Alaraj, many Saudi government employees are really only working for an hour each day.

Almost 70% of employed Saudi nationals -- more than 3 million -- hold jobs in the public sector, according to McKinsey. The cushy positions are highly coveted because they offer ironclad job security and lucrative salarie. — https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/20/news/saudi-government-workers-productivity/index.html

One wonders how civil society functions within Saudi Arabia if a majority of its public sector only work a few hours a day. There must be a considerable underclass/immigrants holding things together. Some folks in a subreddit were commenting on this CNN article, sharing stories of how working with Saudi public sector was frustrating because they won't do what they consider "slave" work and instead have recourse to outsourcing tasks they don't want to do. This sounds so absurd and is probably awful for the stability of the nation in the face of possible economic downturns.

Neither a year nor a kilometer exists as such, i.e. physically. You cannot perceive them with any sense. They are concepts. They are conventions. — Alkis Piskas

Yes and to be consistent you apply this also to the notions of space and time, infinite and continuous. They are concepts. They are conventions. With this in mind, what supports the belief that space and time are really infinite and continuous rather than finite and discrete?

Because there is no start or end in either of them. Neither any point in the middle. At least we cannot define any of them, therefore we cannot assume that they exist. — Alkis Piskas

There is no start or end to time and space. I'm just saying that this attribution is as imaginary/arbitrary as any contrary claim, that there is a start or end to time and space. Not a bid deal, just a silly quibble. It just occurred to me as a possible inconsistency on your part, but maybe I don't understand you.

Neither a year nor a kilometer exists as such, i.e. physically. You cannot perceive them with any sense. They are concepts. They are conventions. — Alkis Piskas

It's odd to assume time and space are really infinite and discontinuous on one hand, then deny the existence of a kilometer. If we're to be consistent here, time and space don't exist either. Personally I find units of measurements far more tangible and intuitive than any applied notion of infinity.

My quibble is pointless though. Thank you for your responses.

I believe that ancient people, the lives of whom were much simpler and without such a multitude and amount of measurements, had a better notion of time and space! — Alkis Piskas

Here I would assume any ancient people's notion of time and space was conditioned first by everyday discrete objects and relevant measurements that became standard to help them in their everyday lives. Zeno's preoccupation with infinity wouldn't be ordinary in any sense, and therefore wouldn't be suggestive of a common people's notion of time and space. But I don't really know.

Zeno assumes falsely --but I believe for us only, not for himself-- that time and space are finite and have a discrete (discontinuous) form, and so they are divisible. But this is a fallacy. They are not; they are infinite and continuous, so they are indivisible. — Alkis Piskas

Why is it right to conclude that time and space are really infinite and continuous rather than discrete and discontinuous? Either of these abstract properties are just mathematical inventions/conventions which prove to be useful. Time and space can obviously be divided (measured in units), or treated as infinite and continuous.

If time is infinite, it's still divisible by seconds in relation the diurnal or lunar cycle.
If space is infinite, it's still divisible by length of feet in relation to how much horse food, water or minutes it takes to get to town.

Through ordinary material/spatial divisions,we see that are practical/natural limits to the notion of infinity.

So what am I missing?

Is that a Socratic tendency? — Vera Mont

Sorry, there were four too many of those questions. :sweat:

Guess I merely stating my belief in psychological hedonism, that a pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain is the primary source of human motivation.

Find why Zeno's Achilles and the Tortoise is such a pseudo paradox ... — Alkis Piskas

What passes as a rigorous explanation for why Zeno's paradox isn't a paradox? One can race a man against a turtle and see that men and turtles traverse finite distances over time.

The length of every half distance to reach the finish line infinitely diminish within the finite distance because it is imagined so. This is the dream of some mathematician, who introduces infinity as a problem to a real world scenario. If a finite distance is infinitely divisible in the realm of maths, so be it, but it doesn't apply in a way that makes motion in time impossible.

Most decisions, whether toward short or long term gratification, involve the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain.

Imagine the classic scenario of the marshmallow test for very young children. They're told if they can delay gratification for a bit they'll be rewarded with more marshmallows. If they didn't have an expectation of a any enjoyment, or the avoidance of pain, there would be no incentive to do anything.

Is the preference to avoid pain at the expense of transient moments of high pleasure, considered hedonistic?

Consider possible outcomes of a more sadistic version of the marshmallow test. The children are told that they will be harshly beaten if they eat the marshmallows that sit on table in their room. Those that make the mistake get beaten. Would there be any children, who having lived through the experience of being beaten for eating the marshmallows, continue to choose to eat the marshmallows again and again because the pleasure of the eating outweighs the pain of the beating?

Even an ultimate pursuit of ascetic self-denial must have an incentive. The subject that demands such self-control must know the anticipation for reward/relief, even if it never comes.

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The dark facilitates the light? — chiknsld

More so, you can't meaningfully have the concept of one without the other, and how we value either is dependent upon a variety of contexts in which both (stimuli and its absence) play potentially good and bad roles in relationship to what we are.

I might ask, is it possible that darkness could ever be considered good? — chiknsld

This thread seems rhetorical/poetic and maybe plain silly. You might upset the neighbors.

Toward the question, sure, like anything else, it's just a question of moderation and balance. Darkness is fine, insofar as one always has means/access to light, given how vital our vision is for navigating the world. It's too much or little of anything, or stimuli in the wrong proportions, which threaten well being or life.

Some folks buy black out curtains with a desire to help themselves ease into sleep by shutting out the light. That kind of sweet darkness before bed is bliss.

How could the good exist without darkness, if one is necessarily conditioned by the other?

We all understand what may compel a person to say that life has no meaning. It all boils down to what seems to be pointless and gratuitous suffering. A life form must sustain costly and improbable structures of all kinds against the flow of entropy. No wonder folks get lost (and drown) in the sauce. So many things can go wrong and if we feel we can't adapt, we freak out.

Reality goes on for those who aren't asleep. They might look at your unconscious body and count the hours.

And so we'd expect, when the earth loses its last sleeper, that the universe is deaf, dumb and blind to itself -- like one asleep.

A canid is a chien is a koira is dog. Whether each is real or imaginary doesn't depend on labelling laws but on whether they can bite. — Vera Mont

Just being a bit silly over here, so don't mind me. But we agree, by your criteria, a dead dog is not a real dog.

There is a tiny country in Europe, sandwiched between the border of Andorra and France, which has stringent labeling laws for canned goods. They believe it a crime to equate the material identity of fresh fruit with processed fruit. Canned peaches are not real peaches in this country. This also extends to deceased humans. No dead body shall bear any resemblance in memory to its former person and that is why it is perfectly fine to eat and can the dead.

You'll find the canned smeaches right next to corned schmeef, and though these may have been derived from peaches and people, they are not real peaches and people.

So I'm guessing what is real, depends on your criteria of what is real as it might concern the borders of identities.

Arguably some cases of media coverage of public mourning are beneficial, insofar as it encourages more meaningful kinds of charitable support for those affected by the loss. Though this wouldn't seem to apply to celebrities and heads of state much of the time.

This maybe a stretch, but maybe some of the outpouring of emotion over Diana's death was related to having some good reason to love her character. She was a humanitarian, or at least played one on television. What else can one affiliated with the monarchy do to serve (or to appear to serve) the public? This kind of virtue signaling has tangible benefits in the promotion of charity.

Just saw some ultra nationalist folks mourning the loss of Prigozhin. Imagine if he was as beloved by the public as Diana, and not in the way North Koreans mourned the loss of their former head of state, Kim Jong-il (as if it were one's civil duty to do so).

I call it maudlin commercial sentimentality. People seem to have rejected reason, perspective, any sense of proportion in favour of raw, undisciplined emotionalism. — Vera Mont

Does this same assessment apply to folks that go to musical concerts or sports games? How much of culture then can be judged so? Few might call a PGA golf tournament an example of undisciplined emotionalism, but it is arguably as absurd if not more so than a pop up memorial.

People, hundreds of people who had no personal acquaintance with any of the casualties, leave heaps of flowers, candles, greeting cards, stuffed toys and balloons at the site of the lethal incident. — Vera Mont

Most sites of typical mourning that I've encountered are not that big and if they are big it relates to the notoriety of the deceased, or what their passing represents or evokes in strangers. When a community loses a beloved hero, there is a show of great mourning. Sometimes the tragedy of the case and subsequent news coverage can bring various communities together. Urban mourning site might be quite different in this respect, with more contributions.

A local case that spring to mind was about a mother rental cleaner who was randomly beaten to death in front of her child by some meth addicts. It was so sad and I could see why strangers could be moved to contribute to a street memorial. Another involved a missing child presumed dead at the hands of her foster parents. Both of these cases were extensively televised, which no doubt generates a chain effect of gossip/discussion/participation.

Am not likely to ever leave something at a pop up memorial. Would be more interested in visiting the graves of famous authors/scientists to see what is left there.

"Can you really contemplate without having a conversation with yourself?" — believenothing

Your thread is possibly in the Lounge because the answer is straightforward and obvious, unless you want us to equivocate around your terms toward a contradiction or a new question.

If all/any contemplation amounts to a kind of conversation of the self with the self (reflectivity), correlations between internal private phenomena and external public phenomena, can we converse with ourselves without ever contemplating within ourselves?

Imagine a hypothetical simulacra of a person who has no sense of interiority at all. From the outside you might conclude they are fully capable of conversing with themselves... but would they also be contemplating? Can there be thought without interiority? If so, why does interiority exist at all?

Can a computer capable of some "thought" have zero sense of interiority?

Since when is perfection and omniscience necessary for knowledge??? — creativesoul

Yes, why make any criteria for absolute knowledge impossible. Instead we could just rely on ordinary language as when someone says "I know with absolutely certainty at this time that..." and said knowledge also can't reasonably be doubted, Is accepted as universal fact.

I'm absolutely certain at this time that if we remove your head from your body by whatever method you will die. No one can dispute this without an appeal to some extreme contingency or medical miracle that doesn't currently exist. That I know there could be hypothetical exceptions just further informs the perfection of such knowledge.

Maybe the next Black Swan will be a Talking Bodiless Head... Then we will just get used to the fact that some people don't die by absolute decapitation.

If we can dispense with the doubt that everything is possibly an illusion and therefore an epiphenomenon of an underlying truth, there are many indisputable facts. Why wouldn't these facts count as a provisional kinds of absolute knowledge.

I need to absorb water to survive as a large mammal currently. This doesn't eliminate the possibility that I could survive without water in some unknown future by some novel physiology but many would agree the fact is indisputable.

• Being held responsible/reprimanded for an outcome that isn't my fault.
• Not being able to contact a service representative for poor/absent service as a customer.
• Managing passwords
• Folks in stores who are looking at their phone while blocking isles with their cart/bodies.
• The gratuitous concrete features/surfaces at my job which are functionally useless and have to be pressure washed multiple times a year.
• Pressure washers ( one of mankind's worst inventions, as they are pieces of fucking shit!)
• Discontinued or unavailable manufacturing parts or planned obsolescence (should be laws against this bullshit)

No, they are proof that we can build things. — Sir2u

Actually, button pressing and channel changing à la the metaphor is about ending one's life.

A more direct, sober, offensive question is under what circumstances should suicide be condoned?

Since the state of death is not an experience, the only experiential alternative to death is a kind of life. Might this make the prospect of death less psychologically severe for us if we believe it.

There will only ever be life after death but it won't be my or your life. Possibly it is like something to be a turtle with a straw stuck up its nose.

I keep asking ChatGPT at what ambient temperature it is impossible to eat pizza in and this it what it gives me:

"there is no specific ambient temperature at which it becomes impossible to eat pizza."

Surely there is an ambient temperature in which it is impossible to eat pizza, right?

Then it tries to correct itself:

"Apologies for any confusion. Yes, there is indeed an ambient temperature at which it becomes physically impossible for a human being to eat pizza. That temperature is absolute zero, which is approximately -273.15 degrees Celsius or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit."

Can I eat pizza on the Sun?

"No, it is not possible to eat pizza on the Sun. The Sun's surface temperature is estimated to be around 5,500 degrees Celsius (9,932 degrees Fahrenheit), which is incredibly hot and would instantly incinerate any object, including pizza."

Is the best weather to eat pizza in any possible weather to eat pizza in, if eating pizza at any time is the best time?

"Yes, if you enjoy eating pizza at any time, then any weather can be a suitable time to enjoy pizza. "

How do you know you're being objectively correct in attributing the change in taste to your appendectomy?

It's not a matter of negative symptoms from eating fatty foods but purely down to taste?

Edit: They say there is a connection between taste and your microbiome and so it stands to reason if you were given a broad spectrum antibiotic for your surgery, maybe your change in taste is a result of a change in your GI flora. But that was 15 years ago, so what has sustained your opinion that you dislike fatty foods?

Sounds like you are talking about something more than the television.
But no, there is no remote to the channels of life. — Sir2u

But to serve this cringey metaphor my way, there are plenty of button-like events that can turn off the television, which amounts to changing the channel. :chin:

This is the age of remotes. The buttons are everywhere, illumined on glassy surfaces. They are the proof of our free will.

No one is responsible for tire dust. — Nils Loc


I’m responsible for the tire dust that my tires and I produce. — praxis

Well we've encountered the obvious implicit yet again: the problem of a diffusion of responsibility and its relationship to the tragedy of commons.

Thoughts and prayers :pray: for a livable future.

Where I live, society entitles me to do a lot of messed up shit with things I may own. I’m responsible for all of it. — praxis

Tire dust is supposedly an environmental/health catastrophe that no one ever mentions. No one is responsible for tire dust.

@NOS4A2

Would be interested in NOS's response to the OP. :naughty:

No. There are already plenty of laws that determine what you can and can't do with what is owned, depending on what that thing is.

Neither ought we have the entitlement depending on external costs to others. We own nothing in perpetuity, so to destroy something that might have many generations of utility (like a sustainable output of land) is wrong.

But the devil is in the details concerning what we ought to be allowed to do with what things.

The annoying guru, Sadhguru, performs an age old ritual of supposedly turning mercury into a solid by mind alone. This is purely chemistry however, where a different metal is introduced into the mercury at room temperature to create an amalgam. He's a liar!

What degree of certainty do we have about the immediate outcome of taking the red pill and forgoing simulated happiness? I feel like the red pill offers an absolute unknown. What if the truth is really horrible/regrettable, like one is forced into a condition where whatever constitutes this new found "truth" of another world is next to useless.

The blue pill gives us what is ostensibly certain, assuming we trust whoever allows us to make the decision. We get to live a long and happy life, after being reborn in ignorance of having chosen at all.

The red pill gives us what is uncertain, possibly misery, disease and premature death in some foreign reality. Though this hypothetical is colored by what we know happens in the film.

I'd take the blue pill, assuming I could ever trust that the promise is true.

Afterall, we've got super smart folks pontificating about how our everyday sense of phenomenal reality is already an illusion. I don't think whatever constitutes reality here offers us the promise of control. Maybe it does in a collective sense, assuming I'm a member of Zion who has some knowledge of the world as it stands. I guess I'm uncertain about exactly what is on offer.

What if the probability was that 99 times out of 100, choosing the red pill results in death, or transport to a kind of life our ancestors lived 10,000 years ago, but we can't know this. While on the flip side, however short our simulated life is, it is determined to be a good one.

Edit: But I hope God (the Architect) isn't recording this as a preference...

This theological madness leads down a dangerous road, to a hut a cannibals, who deem themselves God, eating animals which they know to be God.

Which is to say nonvegetarianism doesn't make sene and that given how scripture defines God, He is completely within his rights to eat us. — Agent Smith

Maybe your leaving out other scriptual/controversial/contradictory attributes of God that might clear up or further confuse this issue.

It might be, that given scripture, God doesn't make sense. Why are you assuming God needs to eat?

Why should it follow that because man is in the image of God, that God must eat? Why would God have organs if those organs represented a natural constraint/form of an animal? Mouths and anuses represent limits he need not abide by. Though to be honest I have no good traction on what scripture conveys God to be like.

Maybe, to be metaphorical, killing suffices God's Appetite (synonymous with his Will). He's allegedly done a lot of that.

claims that the difference between God and us humans is not the same as that between us and animals. Do you agree? — Agent Smith

In the absence of some doctrinal/textual/institutional authority that speaks of a special nature of God, we can make up any relation we want. Here we become anthropologists and have to decide which faith concerning "God" we'd like to study. We then can collect beliefs concerning this specific question.

But I have no real opinion, insofar as the question might as well be an exercise in pure imagination of what we'd prefer God to be like.

Though I suppose I'm a pantheist, who could've been a pig, and imagines that God suffers as we do under random assignment of an existential lottery. All beings are fundamentally more alike than they are different. We should struggle to minimize suffering, however absurdly futile that sometimes feels.

Pantheism = God is in all things

Relative distinctions then collapse or they're arbitrary with respect to God.

As I thrust the knife into my pig Marl's throat, I whispered: "Even God must end."

Later that week I smelled the rich scent of Marl's pork belly sizzling in God's pan.

"Oh God, why does the scent of bacon entice me to murder you, our kin?"

There was no answer but a mental picture of God enthralled in a terrifying bliss or horror of self-consumption.

"I felt disgust as I was eating Marl. She was God. And I was God. Together we are one, always eating one another in some form or another."

The disgust bloomed to a fever pitch of madness, whereupon I stabbed myself in the heart.

And now I am just a machine narrator (God), fleshless and free of sin, for the many happenstances of God.

How did you do the landscapes? — frank

It's water color style with inputs of : "English moor tors" and "English moor gorse".

Share your recipe for photorealistic moss on stuff.

Language has no definite purpose.

It solves what it solves and it fails where it fails.

I've memories of perusing my university's philosophy section, which lead me to conclude that philosophy is that free domain of language transformation which can approach gibberish. Linguistic catastrophe is definitely most relevant to philosophers.

natural selection, which is a statistical process — Benj96

Can anyone elaborate why you'd call natural selection a statistical process? Statistics is a mathematical/scientific way of drawing useful information from sets of data, so would it be right to say that any natural process is inherently statistical? Rather the products of natural selection (taxonomic groups/populations), lend themselves to study by statistical processes.

Like what if we also said, planetary formation is a statistical process. Is that any more or less legitimate than saying natural selection is a statistical process? Are we instead just suggesting that it concerns variations of a population/set and this is sufficient to call it statistical?