We didn't get worse at judging art. We just got better at doubting everything.
I think that might be most insightful comment here (even including mine!)
Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#12I love how people hallucinate all sorts of bs when given the right prompt.
[dead]
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#13[dead]
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Art isn't special, as far as I can tell, it's just a shared cultural perception. This social experiment is a double edge sword. Both the critics of AI art and AI art enthusiasts are playing a primarily cultural game that can't be satisified by mere inspection of the work itself. The same way the "white supremacists" aren't identifiable by their skin color.
>Art isn't special, as far as I can tell, it's just a shared cultural perception. This. The Mona Lisa didn't get famous until it got stolen. Famous paintings are just 3D NFTs for the wealthy elite, doesn't mean they're more beautiful than paintings made by noname authors.
The Mona Lisa was famous before the 20th C because da Vinci carried it around for 20 years saying “this is the greatest painting I have ever done”. That kept it famous for 500 years. It then gained modern new media celebrity by getting nicked (and because the person who stole it did not do it for cash but because he thought it was the greatest painting ever)
So it’s hard for people to judge brilliance themselves, but we can rely on other peoples judgement if enough people follow the crowd or put enough passion in. (Not saying that makes it right - science is not a democracy, but it’s a great heuristic for 8 billion people)
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#15But this is why we have “experts”. It’s like the guy playing a Stradivarius on the NYC subway. Most people can’t distinguish ok from brilliant, in a subject they don’t understand. Most humans cannot distinguish slop code from decent code but I assume most HNers can. However I can’t tell you why one electrical wiring job is better than another unless it looks untidy. Once you get passed a minimum level of decent we ha…
But why do we have to rely on experts to experience 'proper' art?
My naive thought was, that Art is not like a bridge, which would collapse if built by amateur's.
But perhaps art has effects on us which are beneficial and these would actually 'collapse'.
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#16But this is why we have “experts”. It’s like the guy playing a Stradivarius on the NYC subway. Most people can’t distinguish ok from brilliant, in a subject they don’t understand. Most humans cannot distinguish slop code from decent code but I assume most HNers can. However I can’t tell you why one electrical wiring job is better than another unless it looks untidy. Once you get passed a minimum level of decent we ha…
The wiring point is more subtle than that.
Consider the domestic power panel and wiring that is perfectly acceptable, but would 'splode outright if you moved it to an industrial setting and put it under an enterprise load.
Context matters.
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#17When judging art, like when judging wine, there is very little objectivity: people have some expectations and preconcepts about what is good and what is bad and they emit their judgement mostly based on their preconcepts. In this case they have been "primed" (this is a real psychology concept) that it was AI and they invented a lot of reasons to explain why that was bad AI slop, but that happened just because they where "primed" on AI. If the post was about a lost, wonderful Monet, found for the first time the comments would have been about how typical Monet it was and how beautiful the choice of colors and the water reflects or whatever.
This is also seen when blind-tasting wines when prestigious "grands crus" are classed as bad whereas humble, mostly unknown, wines gets great appreciations. When people say that a wine is "great" or "extraordinary" is mostly because they have been primed to think it must be extraordinary, because of the name, the presentation, the prestige etc.
This problem is always true in the domains like art and philosophy where there is no ground truth and everyone can say very much what they want and it can be never be proved wrong neither right. Actually, in philosophy, all the branches that developed to be grounded on facts and ground truth have been given a different name and separated from philosophy so what remains in philosophy is just the empty words.
People are much more humble when they are asked about an hard-science question or judgement.
I am also having fun about all the hate about AI that people express, this is almost comical. You can almost literally see their little ego that feels menaced by the AI and they react based on fear and anger. Of course this doesn't mean there aren't real problems about AI use but the way people react irrationally is just fun to observe.
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#18But this is why we have “experts”. It’s like the guy playing a Stradivarius on the NYC subway. Most people can’t distinguish ok from brilliant, in a subject they don’t understand. Most humans cannot distinguish slop code from decent code but I assume most HNers can. However I can’t tell you why one electrical wiring job is better than another unless it looks untidy. Once you get passed a minimum level of decent we ha…
But why do we have to rely on experts to experience 'proper' art? My naive thought was, that Art is not like a bridge, which would collapse if built by amateur's. But perhaps art has effects on us which are beneficial and these would actually 'collapse'.
Experts can help frame and understand an art piece. They can provide information regarding the craft, how the piece fits with other work from that time, what were the cultural influences, how the life of the artist influenced the work, etc. but you never had to rely on experts to experience or identify what proper art is. However at the end of the day art is a social concept, it’s something we negotiate between us, humans, and people are attracted to what they believe is considered good and important by others
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#19Are the comments real?
I guess this is kind of the recursive version of the purported phenomenon, but, are we sure all those comments aren't just bot generated outrage so people can have big engagement by feeling superiour or whatever?
Re: Someone Shared a Real Monet Painting as AI and Asked for Critiques
#20Rarely do people get the right takeaway from this effect. Take a normal bottle of red wine and some top tier, swap them around so the ordinary is in the expensive bottle and vice versa. Serve them. People prefer the ordinary wine in the expensive bottle.
Bad takeaway: taste is meaningless.
Good takeaway: qualia depends on many contextual cues beyond the obvious.
Part of the appreciation of Monet is the fact that it was made by Monet. The art pieces 4′33″ or Black Square are early examples of this within the are world. Many pieces will have you saying, my 8 year old could have done this, so why is this piece famous? Critiques and appreciation are often not literal because we cannot properly express these subconscious effects.