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Knitting bullshit

katedaviesdesigns.com

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Re: Knitting bullshit

#121

Post by drowntoge »

ipsento606 wrote: post #93

Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does…

It feels like I will forever mourn the totally self-inflicted loss of the Internet. I feel like I will never get over it, so much so that I wish I had never experienced its (brief) moment of brilliance. I feel sorry for my younger self for thinking it was here to stay.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#122

Post by surgical_fire »

chromacity wrote: post #84
quibono wrote: post #11

Am I to believe that those 700K+ downloads are organic traffic? Who's listening to all this stuff?

HN sends tens of thousands of views to AI-farmed articles about why AI is good or why AI is bad. These articles get upvoted to the front page literally every day. They don't say anything interesting, but many of us just like having our existing beliefs recited back to us. So to answer your question, I think we all do, it's just that different audiences have different sets of topics for which they let their guard down…

How is a listen to a podcast counted?

If someone listens to a couple of minutes of a 30 minute slopfest and nopes away, is that counted as a listen?

Your example of HN sending views to shit is interesting, because I presume a lot of people sometimes click on a link expecting something insightful and is greeted by bullshit. A view is counted, but no meaningful interaction happened.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#123

Post by duxup »

The summary but no content thing is interesting. I’ve seen it in many forms and I’m not sure why it plays out that way. Maybe the summary is tied to the prompt tightly? The rest not?

I saw some bots on Reddit that were very odd in that if anyone asked a question in relation to something like an news article some account would respond with a non answer but sorta summarized bit of the article. If you responded “that’s not really what I asked” you got an even odder response.

This isn’t that strange as people will do that in a way… but i noted it because I saw a flurry of those accounts in Reddit and then they vanished.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#124

Post by biscuits1 »

ipsento606 wrote: post #93

Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does…

"The growth of AI feels . . . like losing a limb"

Indeed. Figuratively, generatively, and of course, generationally.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#125

Post by dontwannahearit »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #117
dontwannahearit wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I’m so intensely sick of this attitude. We are losing things with technology. Important things. Human things. Looking under a microscope at one specific instance and saying “eh it’s not that bad, you’re overreacting” is disingenuous or at least putting your head in the sand.

You want human things? Put down the technology and go and connect with some humans.

But yes, the original poster with their allusions to lost limbs and "pointless swinging in a vast, unquantifiable emptiness.." is overreacting, depressed or both.

The slop will continue until it is no longer profit-making for someone.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#126

Post by MarkusQ »

ipsento606 wrote: post #93

Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does…

> The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb

Or gaining a new, oddly misshapen and inexplicably placed limb of no apparent purpose or utility.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#127

Post by surgical_fire »

roxolotl wrote: post #62

Wow I’d never have expected Kate Davies to show up on Hacker News. I think it’s important to understand her background a bit when she talks about knitting as a matter of life and death. She was a scholar of 18th century literature before she suffered a stroke young[0]. She focused on knitting as a means of recovery and never looked back. She built a business and a community and attributes a lot of her physical and me…

> Not their job; their whole personhood

I hate so much that while I read your reply this particularly phrasing was grating to me.

There's nothing wrong with it, and I have no doubts you, whoever you are, wrote it.

What annoys me to death is that a perfectly fine language construct is tarnished to a point that a mere glance reflexively caused me to wince, and I had to actively interpret it as fine.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#128

Post by surgical_fire »

frereubu wrote: post #13

I wonder if (or, more accurately hope that) this kind of slop will eventually die out as people realise how little care is put into it. I am more and more convinced that if the devil existed he'd take care of the bigger stuff, but have an army of little devils that encourage people to do things like make unsupervised automated podcasts about knitting, relentlessly chipping away at the messy joys of living.

Unfortunately, I think it is here to stay. But humans are very adaptable; I think things may play out fine.

See, I have some hobbies. You probably have yours too. The thing about hobbies, is that in many ways they are niche.

Of course, a lot of people enjoy running, but very few enjoy taking it seriously, delving into it beyond an occasional thing, to use it as an example. Replace running with any activity that may be approached as a hobby and that can be slopified.

And as any niche thing, there will be a separation of masses that consume it as slop, and those that engage with the real thing. They don't cancel each other out, just coexist as different things entirely.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#129

Post by BobaFloutist »

MarkusQ wrote: post #126
ipsento606 wrote: post #93

Increasingly, my reaction to AI-generated content of basically all types is simply a deep, resonant sadness. The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb - there is an initial shock of sadness, an initial dose of loss, an initial sense of what has been taken away. But then for months and years afterwards, the daily occurrence of some other little humdrum experience, and only at the moment of the encounter does…

> The growth of AI feels a little like losing a limb Or gaining a new, oddly misshapen and inexplicably placed limb of no apparent purpose or utility.

That will randomly and unpredictably try to take over tasks from your other limbs, hijacking your somatosensory system so you can't tell when it's doing so without actively looking at what you're doing.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#130

Post by catapart »

surgical_fire wrote: post #120
Carp wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? Headcount went from 300 to 8, number of podcast per day went up and apparently listenership went up.

This only works if there are people willingly listening to crap. Perhaps there are.

the bitch of it, though, is that it doesn't only work if people listen to it. it also works if a bunch of AI bots can convincingly fake people listening to it. and, of course, those types of bots exist and have financial incentive to continue faking it, too.

at some point, these two competing interests are going to find out that they're paying each other to stare at each other's dwindling profits, but my bet is that it's going to be a while yet before that wake up call. and it will be an even longer churn into something else because no one is going to admit that they were funneling money into nonsense for years. they're going to "adjust strategies" to "modernize against changing markets" for "new potential growth". all shit that takes a long time to do because it's a half measure aimed at saving face to investors. so it'll work for a long time just based on the momentum of bullshit. =/

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