Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, I don't quite follow, can you elaborate?
Are you certain you'll hold any particular opinion for the rest or your life?
Good point, one cannot be.
Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
331–340 of 352 posts
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The people in charge get voted in by a minority of the people who go to vote Except for a couple examples in the US, I'm not aware of democratic countries where this has actually occurred. And in the US, it's not a common occurrence.
Surely you've heard of Australia? This paper discusses minority governments in Australia between 1989 and 2009, a period of two decades in which there have been at least ten examples of this political phenomenon in the Australian States and Territories. https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Pages/minor... If I was paying any attention at all recently it was on the fact that we've had at least a few minorit…
[deleted]
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies are not people. The CEO might have principles, but he cannot apply his own principles to the company. The only principle for a company is to maximise profit within the legal restrictions.
This comment sounds clever but makes no sense. The CEO can and must apply his principles to the company if he wants to consider himself moral under his own code. Just think it through; is he morally bound to actively pump out lies and propaganda if that increases profits?
> is he morally bound to actively pump out lies and propaganda if that increases profits?
That's why I said "within legal restrictions". Ethics is not something defined for companies, even though we are led to believe that it is. It's for people.
He could resign on his personal beliefs, or get fired if he can't sustain the growth, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that the next CEO will probably do it.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#334Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…
So, prompting Xi is blocked. That’s all there is to it.
What's with the dreamer hippie dork façade, then?
Other than as a foil, of course.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're barking up the wrong tree. Stable Diffusion allows for just about everything, including pornographic images and parodies of Xi Jingping. MidJourney is a more controlled platform that doesn't allow for those things. And, because it's so tightly controlled, it hasn't degenerated into a mere parade of sexualized anime characters -- and it minimizes the political risk to its platform. MidJourney actually seems com…
Yes exactly. You or I may not like where MidJourney draws the line on allowable content, but if they want to run a service buisness they must draw a line somewhere.
They could also just not operate in China and not submit the rest of the world to Chinese law no?
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference between the king of Thailand and Xi Jinping is that the former is basically a cultural institution, while the latter is a political figure who uses repression and censorship to consolidate power. Xi's power grab is not part of some Chinese cherished cultural tradition - it's just a power grab, and probably viewed as such even within the party.
I'm aware of the differences. I just wanted to provide an example of censorship that is more aligned with cultural values to provide a counter-example to the thread that violating such laws can never be exclusionary. There are are similar laws that involve depictions of The Buddha, monks etc here that would fall into the same category. I imagine this is less contentious for Western observers because religion is often…
> I just feel this sort of nuance is lost on primarily American audiences. The world isn't homogenous and at least here in Thailand values are significantly different for better or worse.
So why not reduce functionality in the foreign versions and allow the rest of the world to have this functionality?
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#337Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…
Lol. I clicked on the link, thinking "Oh come on, it can't be THAT bad", and was presented with a literal endless gallery of slightly Manga-ish women with unfathomably huge boobs. Maybe, instead of turning the whole world into paperclips, the AI apocalypse will consist of the filling of every last speck of hard disk storage space with a trillion boringly similar synthetic jpegs of such charming ladies.
Same here.
Although you say "slightly Manga-ish" women - I saw some quite realistic photos.
Your comment was posted 22 hours ago though. It's possible that the models (pun unintended) have gotten even better since you last looked.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#338Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…
Expedience&censorship and accommodating dictatorships are slippery slopes.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
It rather depends though doesn't it. It's very clear in Islam that images of the prophet are forbidden, they find it offensive. So out of respect it would seem reasonable to disable that. It's not then reasonable to disable generating images of jesus or the pope. Why? Because christians don't object to images of the pope or jesus. If there were specific things that christians found offensive, I think it's reasonable…
I think you are ignoring the elephent in the room: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo_shooting I think the concern is more that someone will show up and murder everyone in your office for allowing drawings of the prophet Mohammed than concern it is "offensive" per se. I'm not blaming a company for making the decision to not put their employees lives in jeopardy, but let's not pretend this is some benign ju…
You can say you wouldn't mock the prophet Mohammed because you fear some Islamic terrorists might come after you. I understand that. But you can't say that's why someone else is choosing not to, as I explained - I wouldn't depict the prophet simply because I think it's disrespectful to Muslims. You shouldn't impose your reasons on someone else. Personally, I don't think you can point to 1 terrorist incident almost a decade ago and say that somehow that's changed everyone's behavior. If it has, that would be weird - we don't avoid criticizing Mohammed bin Salman or Vladmir Putin despite knowing for a fact that they've both ordered the assassination of their critics/enemies.
Re: Midjourney CEO Silencing Satire About Xi Jinping
#340Everyone is crying Corporate Greed in here. And, I can understand why. But, here’s another perspective based on listening to David Holz answer all kinds of questions from random users for four hours a week for over a year during Midjourney’s “Office Hours”. AFAICT, Midjourney has no shareholders and David Holz is the farthest thing from a slick CEO. He’s a big dreamer hippie dork. He made all the money he cares to ha…
Can you guess why "horny teenage boys" aren't as common in Midjourney's space as they are in Stable Diffusion's?