41

Technology & Information / Re: machine-generated art (DALL-E, Imagen, Midjourney, etc.)

« on: August 26, 2022, 10:54:36 AM »

What I've learned from observing the latest in machine-generated music is that a machine can only (fail to) reproduce what already exists, it can't truly create anything new in the way that a human being can. What I've seen of DALL-E and other visual arts AIs is much the same, it can be prompted to create an amalgamation of known things, but it can't produce something unknown. Granted we live in an era in the arts where we are "out in the ocean", and there is no identifiable progress* as such other than technological. Perhaps progress in art is now, rather than new material, new efficiency in reproduction of old material, but nonetheless personal style remains unquantifiable.

The very concept of art being "new" is a human abstraction, and has to do with the expression of ideas rather than any concrete definition. All art is, after all, a combination of existing colours and shapes in some way. I don't think it makes any sense to say that an algorithm can't create new things because a computer simply isn't aware of that distinction.

What is probably going on is that, given that the vast majority of art in general is highly derivative, you are experiencing sampling bias due to the relatively small quantity of AI-generated art, and the fact that most people using it are just noodling around and not really trying to create anything groundbreaking.

42

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: We are saved by faith alone, and the evidence of faith is works.

« on: August 26, 2022, 10:24:57 AM »

“[incomprehensible gibberish]” (James 2:14-26)

Or, for those of you who speak English:

"My brothers and sisters, what good is it for people to say that they have faith if their actions do not prove it? Can that faith save them? Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!” — if you don't give them the necessities of life? So it is with faith: if it is alone and includes no actions, then it is dead.

"But someone will say, “One person has faith, another has actions.” My answer is, “Show me how anyone can have faith without actions. I will show you my faith by my actions.” Do you believe that there is only one God? Good! The demons also believe — and tremble with fear. You fool! Do you want to be shown that faith without actions is useless? How was our ancestor Abraham put right with God? It was through his actions, when he offered his son Isaac on the altar. Can't you see? His faith and his actions worked together; his faith was made perfect through his actions.

"And the scripture came true that said, “Abraham believed God, and because of his faith God accepted him as righteous.” And so Abraham was called God's friend. You see, then, that it is by people's actions that they are put right with God, and not by their faith alone.

"It was the same with the prostitute Rahab. She was put right with God through her actions, by welcoming the Israelite spies and helping them to escape by a different road.

"So then, as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without actions is dead."

43

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans

« on: August 25, 2022, 03:35:34 PM »

Who exactly wants to regulate them in America? If I vote for the Democrats, they give universities what amounts to free infinite money. If I vote for Republicans, they do literally nothing. Seems like two very bad options to me.

The fact that your current political system is too crippled to do anything useful does not prevent us from discussing what a good solution might look like.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Biden is using American taxpayer money to pay off my loans

« on: August 25, 2022, 02:45:29 PM »

I generally approve of the policy, but the cut off is ludicrously high.

Or save the administrative costs of checking whether people qualify and eliminate the cutoff entirely at that point.

45

Technology & Information / Re: machine-generated art (DALL-E, Imagen, Midjourney, etc.)

« on: August 17, 2022, 09:23:13 PM »

And with automation already taking away non-artistic jobs, then what will be left in the future?

Maybe automation taking away all our jobs is the sign we need to stop having a job being the basis of our entire civilisation.

46

Technology & Information / Re: machine-generated art (DALL-E, Imagen, Midjourney, etc.)

« on: August 17, 2022, 05:56:53 PM »

given that these models are trained on art from living artists, is it fucked up for people to use them to generate art for commercial purposes?

Human art has always been influenced and taken form based on art made by someone else (or nature itself). I think it's fine for an AI to be influenced by human art since we're fine with humans being influenced by human art.

According to copyright law, inspiration is acceptable, but blatant copying is unacceptable. The distinction between inspiration and copying is a human one with no strict definition, which raises the question of whether it is possible for a computer to understand the difference, let alone apply it in practice.

So, should an AI that is capable of copying existing art itself be considered a copyright violation? Is only some of its output a copyright violation, while other output isn't? Who is civilly and criminally liable in case of a violation, the creator of the AI or the user who provided the input?

You can't pretend that established precedent can answer these questions because they are questions nobody has ever had to answer before. Copyright law as it exists today is not some moral absolute, it is a solution to problems that existed in the past, and it does not adequately cover the technology of today.

47

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 10, 2022, 09:53:53 PM »

Here is how I was explained Prayer:
If enough people pray for something, and God is ok on changing his mind on that thing, he will. 

Like: if little Jimmy is dying of cancer and enough people pray hard enough, God might allow Jimmy to live instead of killing him.  But you can't know how many people is needed or if God is willing to change his mind.  So its a crap shoot.

Isn't God supposed to know what everyone is going to do before they do it? In which case he should already know whether they would pray and make the situation different from the start so they don't need to.

48

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 10, 2022, 09:27:19 PM »

Carney's organisation works with an evangelical law firm called ADF International whose London spokesperson Lois McLatchie has been interviewed by Scottish media saying the buffer zones "ban legitimate offers of help and silent prayer."

"Women have the right to hear about these options at the point of need and it is patronising of the government saying women don't want to hear this," McLatchie told BBC Scotland in a recent interview.

Excuse me, what? "Legitimate offers of help and silent prayer"? How exactly are these protests "helping" women?

49

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Old Politicians

« on: August 04, 2022, 05:01:57 AM »

The nature of population growth means there's (almost) always more young people than old

The developed world has had net population decline (if you discount immigration) for about half a century. The global population is growing due to high birth rates in developing countries, but they don't get to vote in the USA.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 03, 2022, 04:21:15 PM »

I think the point is that a very Red state doesn't appear to be entirely aligned with the GOP platform.

Indeed — in a two-party system, it only needs to find the GOP's platform very slightly less abhorrent than the Democrats'.

51

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Automatic Logout while submitting a post

« on: August 03, 2022, 03:57:54 PM »

I do that to.  It also helps with spell check, which I don't think Is a feature here? 

Why would it need to be? Your browser can already spell-check text input fields.

52

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: August 03, 2022, 03:56:16 PM »

I never would have guessed Kansas would vote No considering how red the state is...It's like the inverse of 2020...

It's almost like a two-candidate election is an atrocious way to represent nuance in political beliefs.

53

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked..

« on: August 02, 2022, 09:37:56 AM »

The thing is that anyone can pick up any version of any Bible and interpret it in any way they choose. What they get from the Bible is a reflection on them and not a reflection on the Bible.
They say that God created Man In His Image but people grab the Bible and create a God in their image.

A racist, Trumpian shithead will read the Bible and find a racist, Trumpian shithead God.

And I have no problem with that. My problem is when they indoctrinate children with their garbage ideas using the Bible as justification.

54

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked..

« on: August 01, 2022, 08:54:17 PM »

Interesting point of view.  My perspective is a little different.  I was educated in a fundamentalist Christian school up until high school.  Obviously the indoctrination didn't stick but I believed it at the time.  So when it comes to stories like the Binding of Isaac my opinions on them are pretty intense.

You may read a story like that the same way you might watch an episode of Evangelion.

Sort of. My view of the Binding of Isaac is that it must be read in the context in which it was written — that is, the ancient Near East at a time when it was dominated by polytheistic cultures that routinely performed ritual sacrifice. In that context, the story makes perfect sense as a way of differentiating Yahweh from the other gods of the time. This isn't even a great leap of faith, as the Pentateuch makes frequent explicit references to the polytheistic cultures of the time and the fact that their practices were viewed as wicked by Yahweh. That is what the Bible says its context is.

Once you read it in that context, it follows that it has absolutely no moral value in the modern world. I don't think that contradicts belief in God at all; it merely requires acknowledging that Genesis, as a legitimate account of God's early interaction with humans, was authored by humans in a specific time and place and cannot be removed from that context or the embellishments that go with it.

I read a story like that with the understanding that it's taught at every Christian Sunday school in a very uncritical way.  In a Christian school the moral of that story is if God tells you to commit an atrocity then you must commit an atrocity.

And that, to me, is a problem. Not the story itself, which is perfectly harmless if viewed in the proper context, but the insistence that there is one correct interpretation. Supposedly God gave us free will, so why not let children use it when learning about him?

55

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked..

« on: August 01, 2022, 06:56:54 AM »

You must have had a different religious education than I did.

I have had almost no religious education at all. I am discovering the Bible as an adult, having lived almost all of my life as an atheist. My reflections on the Bible are thus entirely my own and have little to do with conventional Christian interpretation.

In my religious education, The Moral of Job is that if life give you a complete beat down then just take it with a smile. Because it's God's will.  I doesn't matter that it was just to prove a point to Satan.  As a human our place in the world is to withstand any suffering and explain it away as God's plan.

Something similar to how a human trafficker should not only be obeyed but revered.  Because the human trafficker can inflict great violence and pain upon the trafficked.  And this ability to make your final moments horrible and snuff out your life at a whim is indistinguishable from God.

This is what I mean by Christians not reading the Bible critically. Sure, that is a valid interpretation (albeit a morbid one), but in a supposedly enlightened society, students of the Bible should be encouraged to reflect on the story of Job for themselves and not simply accept what somebody else tells them it means.

56

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked..

« on: July 31, 2022, 10:09:45 PM »

It's difficult to interpret the book of Job charitably.

On the contrary, it is one of the few books of the Bible that is openly critical of God, even if it does backflip in the last couple of chapters, and as such is very thought-provoking. Unlike most books, which merely expound on God's love and generosity and his punishment of human wickedness, a critical reading of Job encourages the reader to consider whether Job's arguments against God are reasonable, and perhaps relate them to suffering in the reader's own life. It is just a pity that so many Christians do not read the Bible critically.

57

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Automatic Logout while submitting a post

« on: July 31, 2022, 08:53:37 PM »

When logging in, you can tick the box "always stay logged in" if you don't want the forum to log you out. As for restoring your draft, you can log back in in another tab, and then use your browser's back button in the original tab to go back to the new post page — most web browsers these days will save the content of the text fields.

58

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked..

« on: July 31, 2022, 08:48:12 PM »

They're the words of a human character who is shown to be mistaken by the end of the story.

Actually, he isn't shown to be mistaken. God simply says "I'm right and you're wrong" and Job responds with "yes sir, I'm sorry sir". No actual refutation is given to anything he said.

59

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked..

« on: July 31, 2022, 02:49:02 AM »

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked

No, only in the death of the innocent.

"If the scourge slay suddenly, He will laugh at the trial of the innocent." — Job 9:23

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Correlation between FEers and belief that the 2020 election was stolen?

« on: July 26, 2022, 07:39:43 PM »

Which 2020 election?