The Merge • Hacker News Board

Re: The Merge

#181

Post by kranke155 » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 11:59 AM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #180

kranke155 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your arguments are so weird I don't know how to answer them. People buying and selling something constitutes a market in general definition but you seem to make the effort to redefine it - in any way that makes it so NFTs will never count. It's either wash trading, or a scam, or something. I don't understand why you're jumping through all these hoops to convince yourself that this isn't real when I am presenting you…

Sure, it's a market if somebody is buying and selling. My views aren't particularly weird and complicated. Let's see, resuming: * Crypto has very limited applications if any outside of the financial area, and limited even there. We won't be doing general computing on blockchains, we'll be doing extremely limited subset of financial problems, if anything. * NFTs are a mostly stupid idea. * NFTs are not about art. They…

* Crypto has very limited applications if any outside of the financial area, and limited even there. We won't be doing general computing on blockchains, we'll be doing extremely limited subset of financial problems, if anything.

- I agree it will be used on a subset of problems, but I think the digital world will move in that direction. I don't agree that it will only be financial problems, NFTs proved that.

* NFTs are a mostly stupid idea.

Opinion.

* NFTs are not about art. They're about money. Art is an excuse and the art attached to a NFT has very little importance.

Opinion.

* NFTs are falling in popularity.

True, but only because a significant subset (perhaps the majority) of users are only in it for the money (I agree with you there). The ones who are in it to buy art have not left.

* Crypto and NFT markets are chaotic, full of scams, money laundering and wash trading and in general not worth getting into.

This is true.

* Pretty much nobody buys NFTs for the art value.

Not my experience.

That's about all I can say. I hope one day you change your mind. Perhaps when one of your favourite artists drops an NFT? Anyway, glad to have had a civil conversation.

Re: The Merge

#182

Post by dale_glass » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 11:11 PM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #181

dale_glass wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's a market if somebody is buying and selling. My views aren't particularly weird and complicated. Let's see, resuming: * Crypto has very limited applications if any outside of the financial area, and limited even there. We won't be doing general computing on blockchains, we'll be doing extremely limited subset of financial problems, if anything. * NFTs are a mostly stupid idea. * NFTs are not about art. They…

* Crypto has very limited applications if any outside of the financial area, and limited even there. We won't be doing general computing on blockchains, we'll be doing extremely limited subset of financial problems, if anything. - I agree it will be used on a subset of problems, but I think the digital world will move in that direction. I don't agree that it will only be financial problems, NFTs proved that. * NFTs a…

> Opinion.

Well, of course it's an opinion. But on the art part there are good reasons to believe I'm right. Do you really think Gasparian's blobs are worth paying for? Why would it even matter who owns which? They all look about the same. I think it's plausible that they're too simplistic to be copyrighted, even.

> That's about all I can say. I hope one day you change your mind.

Why? Why would my opinion matter at all? If the important bit is giving artists recognition and money, why would it matter how I do it?

Now if the important bit is propping up the crypto system, then that makes sense, but then it has nothing to do with the art.

> Perhaps when one of your favourite artists drops an NFT? Anyway, glad to have had a civil conversation.

Why would I buy a NFT from an artist? What does that get me?

If I simply want to view the work, it's already out there. What do I care who it supposedly belongs to?

If it's about giving the artist money, I'd much rather buy a commission, which is far more personal, or just contribute money directly.

If I want the rights to use their work, then I'm much better off doing it the old fashioned legal way. Because that way there's no doubt about what I bought, and I can't lose it if somebody scams or hacks me.

Re: The Merge

#183

Post by kranke155 » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 1:07 AM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #182

kranke155 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Crypto has very limited applications if any outside of the financial area, and limited even there. We won't be doing general computing on blockchains, we'll be doing extremely limited subset of financial problems, if anything. - I agree it will be used on a subset of problems, but I think the digital world will move in that direction. I don't agree that it will only be financial problems, NFTs proved that. * NFTs a…

> Opinion. Well, of course it's an opinion. But on the art part there are good reasons to believe I'm right. Do you really think Gasparian's blobs are worth paying for? Why would it even matter who owns which? They all look about the same. I think it's plausible that they're too simplistic to be copyrighted, even. > That's about all I can say. I hope one day you change your mind. Why? Why would my opinion matter at a…

Ok yeah I get all your points.

On the topic of Gasparian’s “blobs” the whole point of FXhash is that it’s a generative market - the actual artwork is code, and it generates the blobs according to some rules + some randomness function that’s part of the code - some “blobs” are rarer, some are more common. He’s made them into a limited edition of 200, so there are some rarer than others. But the artwork is not “blobs” but the result of generative code that outputs a result every time you mint an NFT. For generative artists, it’s sort of a way new avenue to explore. I find it really interesting.

This is Gasparian’s work but there are a lot of really interesting examples - generative cityscapes, canyons. I like Gasparian’s work so I bought as many “blobs” as I could. It didn’t cost me much, and yes I think he deserves the money and recognition. I find his work beautiful.

Outside of that I can’t say much!

Re: The Merge

#184

Post by dale_glass » Thu, Aug 25, 2022, 7:37 AM UTC

kranke155 wrote: post #183

dale_glass wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Opinion. Well, of course it's an opinion. But on the art part there are good reasons to believe I'm right. Do you really think Gasparian's blobs are worth paying for? Why would it even matter who owns which? They all look about the same. I think it's plausible that they're too simplistic to be copyrighted, even. > That's about all I can say. I hope one day you change your mind. Why? Why would my opinion matter at a…

Ok yeah I get all your points. On the topic of Gasparian’s “blobs” the whole point of FXhash is that it’s a generative market - the actual artwork is code, and it generates the blobs according to some rules + some randomness function that’s part of the code - some “blobs” are rarer, some are more common. He’s made them into a limited edition of 200, so there are some rarer than others. But the artwork is not “blobs”…

In that case it's very plausible that none of that is copyrightable in the first place, because copyright requires human activity.

That's what caused the monkey picture hubbub. Since apparently the monkey made its own picture, nobody has the copyright of that, and it's in the public domain. This was even though the artist tried to make the case that they engineered the situation itself by placing camera equipment such that a selfie was likely to happen.

It's also well established that collection of facts and works devoid of human creativity are not copyrightable. So for instance an alphabetical list of businesses in a given city, or feeding a classical painting through a scanner are not copyrightable.

So there's a very plausible argument to be made that unless a human is heavily involved in generating the specific artwork, it's just in the public domain. The actual code would be protected, but the randomly generated results are extremely likely to be in the public domain.

Now this is still an area in doubt and I think it's plausible that some of them are copyrightable. If you spent 3 hours trying to get Dalle2 to spit out the exact thing you want, and tweaked stuff a hundred times, that might be enough human input and you might own the copyright of that. But that's just a guess, and so far nobody knows how it will go, and what requirements a court dealing with this issue will devise.

So IMO for the time being artists shouldn't put rely too much on selling generative artwork, because it could well turn out that it'd be completely legal for me to use all the images on FXhash for any purpose I wish without paying a cent for it.