@Two9A I read that one during covid lockdown. thanks.

i'm not going to do anything; I have no actual active drive. but i dearly wish that i had gotten out before the carnival of horrors that is the 2020s got started.

within a couple of years at most (and that's probably extremely optimistic), everything i can do will be worthless. since i basically have nothing else in life than work and easily-automated creativity, i strongly feel that my life has come to be net-negative.

@datarama These are indeed Interesting Times, in the cursed sense.

If you're looking for a somewhat contrary opinion, the fact that creativity can be automated doesn't have to be disabling to one's own creative output. I've been posting some old mashups of mine of late, and I know for a fact that the models can do better mashups, but they wouldn't be _my_ work.

"Comparison is the thief of joy": if I compared my blog posts to the output of the day's feted model, I'd come up short, but I write anyway. I expect this is something of which you're already aware, but these things prey on insecurity.

@datarama To paraphrase Shcherbina from the Chernobyl miniseries: "See, there you made a mistake: I may not know much about philosophy, but I know a lot about contributing nothing."

We all of us consume resources and produce waste; I'd like to think I've occasionally made a contribution, but the vast majority of the time I exist without actively propagating the sum of human knowledge, and I expect everyone falls under that definition.

The feeling good about it is the thing we can change, and letting the models undermine that is where trouble creeps in.

I won't press further, feel free to ignore me, but at least let the thought percolate that there is continued use to be had out of the skills you've gathered.

@datarama @Two9A I put a high value to our human interactions. I share your same concern about our productivity in the coming times, but I would request you put into your accounting how much we enjoy reading your posts and talking to you.

(In some sense, is being highly "economically productive" valuable by itself without human connection? In my opinion, no. This doesn't contradict what you're saying- it's an additional factor.)

@Two9A i can program (which i'm good at) and make art (which i'm not good at).

neither of those skills have any further use - in fact, if you reveal that you still apply them with effort, you are mocked and laughed at.

@datarama @Two9A The introduction of the camera introduced a crisis in the visual arts: why depict images in paint when a machine can do it perfectly in seconds? But far from killing off the visual arts, cameras ushered in a whole new era of creativity: Impressionism, abstract art, all sorts of ways of drawing and painting that explored avenues other than "render a scene as accurately as you can". Likewise, the popularity of AI slop will, I have no doubt, only stimulate the desire for code and art that actually expresses something deeply human that no LLM can match.

You are a better programmer than Claude and a better artist than Midjourney. And I am confident saying that even though I have no idea what your technical skill level is, because what makes someone a good programmer or artist isn't technical skill. How many fans does Neil "one note guitar solo" Young have vs. Yngwe "the only people who listen to my music are Berklee guitar students" Malmsteen?

Sure, right now the software industry thinks that programming isn't a skill worth paying for because the managerial class has no idea what makes software good or bad. But that is an untenable situation, especially as LLM-mongers keep raising token prices in a desperate attempt to cut their losses. And art has never really been a money-making endeavor for most people; that's not why you do it.

@cholling @Two9A as i said, my personal experience is that if you even reveal that you do those things "by hand" anymore, you are just laughed at. far from being valued, application of creative skill is ridiculed.

@cholling @Two9A i've given up on programming on my own things, because i'm too depressed and panicked to focus on anything more demanding than - heh - uselessly tweaking and configuring programming tools i'll probably never use again.

i gave up on pixel art precisely *because* the ridicule got to me more than i thought it would. but here, at any rate, is a butterfly.

@datarama @Two9A Laughed at by whom?

@cholling @Two9A speaking only for myself: family members, coworkers, people from the local hackerspace/Claude Fanclub, and a few people here I blocked.