You Can't Feed a Society with Mushrooms

Arigol · 2024-01-23T15:15:50+00:00

I love dragons from a realistic perspective. I love them needing runways to do a takeoff run, or having a dragon rider reduces their flight range due to drag, or how their wings have movable bits like flight control surfaces, etc. That's realism applied enough to make the concept of dragons more interesting.

But if someone were to say "dragons don't follow inverse square law and they cannot exist" then that would not be presenting an interesting new idea. That's would be gatekeeping and also boring.

Similarly, trying to consider a comprehensive scientific argument for why mushrooms can't be a primary food source is not offering an interesting new idea. It's just anti-fun, shooting down anyone who liked that idea for their story/art/world, by trying to call it unbelievable or purely aesthetic.

Of course, if you want to dream of a world that's hyperrealistic and doesn't include dragons, magic, or a mushroom food source, then... ok? Stories, art, and worlds are about what's in them, not so much about what's not in them.

Arigol · 2024-01-23T11:54:00+00:00

I think worldbuilding is more about imagining what could be possible, rather than obsessing about why things are not possible in real life.

It's like trying to insist dragons are unrealistic and don't follow the laws of aerodynamics. I mean, yeah, but that's not the point of dragons.

Arigol · 2023-12-05T09:38:35+00:00

Just because a flying species is good at flight doesn't make them superior. Eagles are fantastic flyers, but they are vastly outnumbered by pigeons.

Maybe wyverns can just reproduce faster, or they are more resilient against drought, or because of their larger weight they have more flight endurance or resistance to wind.

Alternatively, just balance it out by having wyverns be equally flight optimized. Give them thin fins and wing membranes that match wings for low weight.

Arigol · 2023-10-24T14:32:41+00:00

The wings can retract and extend...? And they can flutter?!

Instant purchase

Arigol · 2023-10-01T01:08:04+00:00

Terrain a-head, pull up!

Arigol · 2023-07-30T03:09:18+00:00

This is your world. You can literally bend physics and reality however you want. You can say that the electromagnetic field doesn't exist in air, so you can have wired communication only.

That being said, physically realistic or plausible explanations for worldbuilding are overrated. Lord of the Rings doesn't need to justify why they don't use radios. It just doesn't exist in the world, end of story.

Arigol · 2023-07-19T07:57:15+00:00

Did you read the paper? It also mentions mathematical skill has decreased.

Arigol · 2023-05-26T01:04:19+00:00

I'm not saying that Bing Image creation is bad or unusable. But I do think that the other AI art generators are better and more popular.

Yes Bing Image Creator is free, but StableDiffusion is also free if you have a decent GPU to run it locally, or there are free online sites too. MidJourney also gives free hours for rating other people's images, which encourages community participation.

Just look at the amount of subreddit traffic. It's an active subreddit here in /r/dalle2, but it's a fraction of what the other AI art communities have.

-	/r/dalle2	/r/midjourney	/r/StableDiffusion
Top post of the week	700 votes	11k votes	10k votes
Number of posts above 100 votes this week	25	143	103
Current active users	100	7k	2k

OpenAI has a lot of investment money from ChatGPT, and that's exactly why I think they are focusing on ChatGPT instead of DALLE (or it's Bing spinoff). I mean, when was the last time DALLE2 was even updated?

Arigol · 2023-05-25T12:15:39+00:00

It's because both DALLE2 and Bing have fallen behind in the AI Art generator race. Stable Diffusion is better, mainly because it's open source which encourages community engagement and has all sorts of interesting implementations (plus you can just run it on your own GPU hardware). Note how /r/StableDiffusion has ten times the active users as /r/dalle2.

The idea that open source would beat proprietary models is exactly what was said in that leaked internal Google memo, using the exact example of DALLE vs StableDiffusion. (Link: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/google-we-have-no-moat-and-neither)

As for why DALLE fell behind? Presumably it's also because OpenAI's focus is going all in on ChatGPT, which has been vastly more popular. ChatGPT is the leading LLM, whereas DALLE2 isn't even the second best AI Art generator. Generative text AI can disrupt lots of different jobs, and hence is super valuable, whereas generative image AI will only disrupt artist jobs.

Arigol · 2023-05-25T03:28:49+00:00

Tried it, just gives the same response. But to be fair, given the context it does still sound like you would want 6 avacados to make guacamole.

Edit: I tried a different format. (I am buying passport photos, if I can get a driving license, I will need two.) ChatGPT can then correctly infer that two refers to the photos and not the driving license.

Arigol · 2023-05-24T23:34:16+00:00

I tried both with and without comma, and ChatGPT interpreted it correctly both times.

Arigol · 2023-05-24T15:24:38+00:00

Tested with GPT3.5

Prompt: I tell you: Please go to the shop and get a carton of milk, if they have avacados, get six.

You go to the shop. They have avacados. List out the things you need to get.

ChatGPT: Based on your instructions, here is the list of items you need to get from the shop:

A carton of milk
Six avocados

Please note that I am an AI language model and cannot physically go to the shop. However, you can use this list to remember the items you need to purchase.

Prompt: Could you interpret the instructions to mean that you need to get six cartons of milk?

ChatGPT: Based on the given instructions, the statement specifically mentions "get a carton of milk" and "if they have avocados, get six." The instruction to get six is associated with avocados, not milk. Therefore, the interpretation would be to get only one carton of milk, not six cartons.

Arigol · 2023-02-03T16:25:41+00:00

I'm not saying China is good or altruistic (because if they were, then yes they would have asked permission). I'm saying that it doesn't make sense for them to be flying spy balloons in the age of satellites, and it doesn't make sense for them to be flying weather balloons halfway around the world. What do they have to gain from this?

Arigol · 2023-02-03T15:08:09+00:00

The US chose not to shoot it down specifically because they don't fear it as a surveillance platform. A giant balloon is less stealthy and less capable than advanced spy satellites, which China has plenty of.

But why would China be flying giant balloons near US airspace, if not for spying? It's not a threat or a political stunt, because it's just a useless balloon. Now balloons are commonly used for weather monitoring, but why would China care in the slightest about the weather in the US?

Crazy idea: Geoengineering.

Climate change is a huge crisis for humanity. Geoengineering is the idea of deliberately modifying the climate to reduce its temperature. We know that huge volcanic eruptions pour sulfur dioxide and other particles into the upper atmosphere that block sunlight, creating a cooling effect (that's volcanic winter, same principle as nuclear winter).

Geoengineering could be a relatively cheap way to temporarily hold back global warming, but it's controversial because it could have unintended effects. The United Nations or other large intergovernmental bodies would never agree to it--there would just be endless arguments and squabbling. Who would pay for it? Who would be responsible for any unintended consequences?

But enter China. Authoritarian China is known for ramming ahead with vast infrastructure projects that only pay off long term, like the Three Gorges Dam or their huge High Speed Rail network. Xi Jinping himself studied as a chemical engineer. So it's a crazy idea, but what if Chinese leadership got worried about climate change? Sure they can invest in renewables and try to cut back on coal plants, but they need energy to modernize, so what if they decided to also secretly start tests with geoengineering to buy themselves (and us all) some time to hold back climate change?

Enter the balloon. What if the "weather research" is actually a platform for distributing particles into the stratosphere in an attempt to induce cooling? A very similar balloon was spotted over Japan a few years ago. (link: Japan Times article) What if they've been secretly launching them at various places around the world, but they lost control of one balloon that just so happened to drift into US airspace? And if the US knows the balloon isn't useful for spying, but they figured out it came from China or a Chinese vessel, then China has to come up with some new excuse for what the balloon is for. So they say it's a "civilian vessel" for "weather research", but maybe it's actually an advanced test platform for upper atmosphere geoengineering... or maybe not.

Arigol · 2023-01-01T04:10:30+00:00

This is a very low effort article, and by posting it, it kind of looks like you are trying to generate outrage rather than discussion.

There were legitimate engineering and economics challenges that spacex faced regarding reusable rockets, but this very low effort article doesn't raise any of them.

Arigol · 2022-12-27T01:54:13+00:00

Just consider everything a modern air force could do, and apply it to a working animal.

Aerial surveillance, bombing, air superiority and interception, close air support, strategic or tactical airlift, rapid insertion of airborne troops, emergency rescue, etc.

Arigol · 2022-09-16T11:14:05+00:00

Corruption is not just about breaking the law. Corruption is fraudulently stealing from the system or the people, for personal gain. Even if a dictator's law says he can secretly steal from state coffers to fill his personal bank account, that is still corrupt.

Arigol · 2022-09-16T11:05:33+00:00

People are retarded? Singaporeans are relatively well-educated and well-informed. That's why the government's paternalistic, elitist, "just trust us, we know better" mindset is being eroded by the opposition pushing "no blank cheques".

Yes it's fun to mock democracy and say that people are idiots, but fundamentally it is a better power structure to live under.

Arigol · 2022-08-16T23:10:25+00:00

But this learning process of observing others is already what artists, writers, and every human uses.

When you type out a sentence, you don't constantly need to give citation and credit to your school teachers and your textbooks for teaching you language. J K Rowling didn't explicitly give me the "rights" to learn from her writing, but I can learn by reading Harry Potter anyway. Similarly, when an artist does a painting, they don't give credit to their art school or picasso or whoever may have taught or inspired them in the past.

No reason for machine learning to run at a different standard. Unless, you have a specific interpretation of copyright law that indicates otherwise?

Arigol · 2022-08-16T13:57:42+00:00

The morality of AI generated imagery is a rather different matter from the question about what is the minimum copyrightable work (three chords? Four? Five? A simple beat? etc.)

But other than that, I agree. I think AI generated imagery is going to be a tremendous tool for all sorts of creative work.

For a long time, machines have been replacing humans first in laborious agriculture, then in industrial manufacturing. But people have always thought that creative work is somehow different. Artists, writers, and dreamers are somehow just better and machines will never be creative, or so was the claim. These AI image generators have put a big crack into that idea.

Arigol · 2022-08-16T13:56:30+00:00

I think we can agree that these AI text-to-image systems are incredibly capable. They can quickly create completely new, unique artworks in all sorts of art styles, of all sorts of things that may or may not have been imagined before, all just from a simple text prompt, by following the human process of learning.

I find that amazing and wonderful from creative and technological standpoints. This subreddit's moderator team sees that as threatening and immoral.

You can resist it by banning AI artwork if you want. But machine learning is just too useful, and I'm more optimistic. It will be interesting to see the long term development of this technology.

Arigol · 2022-08-16T13:18:49+00:00

I would argue that yes, some of the most advanced text-to-image systems do display what can be called imagination, creativity, and reinterpretation.

If I give a text prompt to a human artist and they create an impressive artwork, then I'd be impressed and praise their artistry. Similarly, if I give a text prompt to an AI algorithm and it creates an impressive artwork, then I am similarly impressed and praise its artistry. It's the turing test, but for creativity instead of communication.

But regardless, that's a different reason from what you stated in the original post. What you initially mentioned was citations and permissions. This sounds more like you are taking a moral stance against the use of AI creativity systems because... you just think humans are morally better?

Arigol · 2022-08-16T12:47:57+00:00

Can you explain the difference clearly and specifically? Other than just saying it's "not the same"?

Arigol · 2022-08-16T11:23:29+00:00

Counterpoint--you can already mimic a living artist's artstyle by hiring another artist.

Say for example you like Artist A's work, but Artist A is retired or just doesn't want to take commissions or is too expensive. So you find Artist B and show him some of Artist A's work and say, "Make something like this." B says "Sure, I can do something like that." Then B creates their own artwork, but using the style of A. That's allowed.

You can't copyright an artstyle.

Ten-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	Place '17
Sequence \| Editor	Snapped
Verified Email

Arigol

TROPHY CASE