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AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

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201–210 of 217 posts

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not being “obtuse” for me to not see the “three dimensional” aspect as important as you. I doubt I’m alone in that either. Art is “superficial” by definition so that’s not really the own that you seem to think it is. Eta: Sorry, just a bit confused, isn’t focusing on an artifact of the painting, namely the three dimensionality of it, a superficial detail?

The obtuse thing is you were talking about washing dishes and boston dynamics robots and then when I asked about painting, your response was that doesn't matter because of pixel art. >Sorry, just a bit confused, isn’t focusing on an artifact of the painting, namely the three dimensionality of it, a superficial detail? Artifact of the painting? Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kind…

I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state and then you acted like a douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#202
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're referring to Joel Schumacher's kitschy drivel, and not to Tim Burton's masterpieces (both of which are IMO vastly superior to Nolan's take on the subject).

It would be nice if people actually stated why is x better than y rather than expecting everyone to hold the same opinion as them. Makes for better conversations. I don't get why people having this narrowminded view of literature/movies, you don't see it that much in culinary conversations

In a culinary conversation nobody is trying to make the case that the chicken mcnugget is objectively superior to fresh pasta in a handmade pesto sauce. So you don't need to tell people "please just go away with this mcnugget nonsense". You wouldn't be expected to explain why one is better than the other. Most people that taste food understand immediately what you mean.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obtuse thing is you were talking about washing dishes and boston dynamics robots and then when I asked about painting, your response was that doesn't matter because of pixel art. >Sorry, just a bit confused, isn’t focusing on an artifact of the painting, namely the three dimensionality of it, a superficial detail? Artifact of the painting? Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kind…

I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state and then you acted like a douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand.

>I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state

I guess you still don't see the irony of this?

> douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand

I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others.

It's readily apparent if you view paintings that they are not "flat."

If you want to be happy with your pixel art approximation, don't let me stop you. It was you who suggested it was an end run around an actual problem and all I did was point out how that's apparently not true.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#204
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely do care for it, it's very nice! Thanks for sharing. I am not sure if I understand exactly how you got it to pump that out, as your blog is a bit hard to locate oneself in and read around in. Like, it's fun and trippy but a tad disorienting. I went off and had a nice re-read about tiddlywiki though - I had learned of it at one stage and thought it looked very interesting, and your blog certainly is tantal…

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it! =D. I briefly outline the procedure (also in case anyone else wanted to do so) in the page. I export the entire document into a json (~19k entries) and break that up into 20 different json files (so that my work will fit into the space ClosedAI provides for RAGs). The exact prompt sequence is provided on the page (I wrote two one-liners). Almost all of my work in achieving that collab…

I wrote that in one go with no revisions or corrections the other day as quick as I could:

https://jbc.mataroa.blog/blog/parrot/

I was meant to write a line or two of "test test test", you know, but then the feeling of banging away on the keys was enjoyable, so I did an "elaborate" test post, as a sort of joke. It's a bit "adult", and a bit ridiculous, but it's a thing.

I will read more of your stuff! It looked ripe for investigation, I did click around and throw my eyes here and there. I'll go again. And I have seriously noted that if I did make a tiddlywiki, I'd have at least one reader. That's pretty cool, I must say.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state and then you acted like a douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand.

>I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state I guess you still don't see the irony of this? > douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others. It's readily apparent if you view paintings that they are n…

> Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about.

I don't really think you're "asking" a question here, just kind of asserting that you don't think I appreciate paintings. That's fine, albeit a pretty dishonest way to speak, and perhaps my feeble brain isn't smart enough to appreciate paintings in the same way that your brain does. I have been to the Met a bunch of times and looked at the classic paintings and enjoy them, I guess not to your satisfaction though.

I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important.

> I'm not sure how the texture or three-dimensionality of a painting is 'superficial.' Besides the fact that it literally isn't, it's an actual facet of the painting that is objectively there

I think we're using slightly different definitions here.

If someone told me that he only liked his girlfriend because she has DDD breasts, I might say he's really focusing on a superficial detail. The woman having DDD breasts might still be objectively true, but I would still call that focusing on the superficial.

Modern art generation programs can actually generate things like brush strokes and whatnot, but obviously it will be flat when represented on a monitor, so sure if you feel like you can see the depth associated with that then more power to you.

> I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others.

Again, you're speaking dishonestly. You didn't say the word "true", but you did suggest that if I had seen a painting in a museum then I'd appreciate them better. Specifically, you said "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"

Now obviously I don't have the same giant brain that you do, so maybe I can't "appreciate" your writing style correctly because I "have a gold medal in being obtuse", but that sure seems like passive aggressive dismissal to a dumbass like me.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state I guess you still don't see the irony of this? > douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others. It's readily apparent if you view paintings that they are n…

> Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about. I don't really think you're "asking" a question here, just kind of asserting that you don't think I appreciate paintings. That's fine, albeit a pretty dishonest way to speak, and perhaps my feeble…

>I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important.

Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic elements to it and one would expect that anyone experienced with wine tasting would have some understanding of those basic elements. Here in painting, the texture of a painting is a basic element of what a painting is.

>If someone told me that he only liked his girlfriend because she has DDD breasts, I might say he's really focusing on a superficial detail. The woman having DDD breasts might still be objectively true, but I would still call that focusing on the superficial.

This isn't an issue of the definition of "superficiality" but what it means to focus. You saying it'd be superficial to emphasize body parts a certain ways. Not that body parts are inherently superficial.

>Modern art generation programs can actually generate things like brush strokes and whatnot, but obviously it will be flat when represented on a monitor, so sure if you feel like you can see the depth associated with that then more power to you.

Yeah, and they'll be flat when printed too. But if you go to a museum and look at some old or new paintings, which is why I asked if you did that, you will immediately see that paintings aren't even remotely flat.

>Again, you're speaking dishonestly. You didn't say the word "true", but you did suggest that if I had seen a painting in a museum then I'd appreciate them better. Specifically, you said "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"

No, I suggested that if you had been to a museum you'd have observed basic facets of paintings. You keep putting this value judgment into it (ironic considering your accusations against me) that I'm not. Sure, I might be acting like a bit of a jerk but that's because I found your "Oh yeah, sure I was talking about robots but that doesn't matter with painting because of pixel art" which is fundamentally disingenuous as we were discussing the capabilities of robots' "hands".

> "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"

Good old paintings are dense with layers of texture and paint that come off the canvas, and it'd be readily observable to anyone seeing them in person, regardless of whether they had taste or a "giant brain."

> Now obviously I don't have the same giant brain that you do,

Excuse me for being rude, but, fuck off already.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about. I don't really think you're "asking" a question here, just kind of asserting that you don't think I appreciate paintings. That's fine, albeit a pretty dishonest way to speak, and perhaps my feeble…

>I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important. Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic…

> Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic elements to it and one would expect that anyone experienced with wine tasting would have some understanding of those basic elements. Here in painting, the texture of a painting is a basic element of what a painting is.

This doesn't actually dispute what I said. You're making an assertion that I'm not appreciating a "basic" element of art. You keep saying I'm exposing some insecurity, but this is exactly what some holier-than-thou sanctimonious asswipe who thinks that they truly "get it" would say.

Also interesting that you bring up wine tasting: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-ta...

> You saying it'd be superficial to emphasize body parts a certain ways. Not that body parts are inherently superficial.

I'm arguing that emphasizing the 3-dimensionality of this is a superficial decision. I'd argue less-superficial stuff would be something like "what is the intended meaning of this painting".

> "Oh yeah, sure I was talking about robots but that doesn't matter with painting because of pixel art"

I didn't really say that. I said, and this is I believe the third or fourth time I've repeated myself, with AI art I was suggesting we have a workaround to avoid a lot of robotics by fast-forwarding to an end state. You call it "pixel art" to dismiss it and that's fine but it's also pretty stupid.

As I said in my first response (which you very dismissively responded to because fundamentally you don't have much to go on outside of being self-righteous about your superior "appreciation" of art apparently) if you want to be literal of course a PAINTing would require paint. And if the texture of it is really important to you then fan-fucking-tastic, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E isn't going to replace that any time soon. You win I guess? I never disputed this fact.

I used the term "painting" in a less literal sense, and it's actually not in any way weird for me to do so. There are digital art programs like "Corel Painter" and "Paint Shop Pro" and "PaintStorm", which as far as I am aware do not actually involve any real paint. They use the computer display as a metaphor for the canvas, and these things give some facsimile of something like "painting".

You're then of course free to say "well real artist appreciators like me don't consider that painting", and that's fine, but I'd like to point out that you are on Hacker News, so a person using the term "Painting" to mean something like CorelPainter isn't really weird at all, and getting annoyed by that really comes off as pedantic.

> Good old paintings are dense with layers of texture and paint that come off the canvas, and it'd be readily observable to anyone seeing them in person,

I've seen plenty of paintings in person. Clearly it's not as important to me as it is to you. That's fine.

ETA:

Wait, how exactly is it "fundamentally disingenuous" to say we have a workaround for AI art that doesn't involve hands? It's not "disingenuous", I didn't really know what specific aspect of painting you were fucking talking about, so I mentioned we can work at a pixel level. I didn't know that you were going to be a fucking pedantic douche and just say LOL THAT'S NOT PAINTING AND YOU'RE INSECURE AHAHAHHA FUCK OFF!

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like watching a pair of frogs not named Euripides nor Aeschylus farting bubbles in a pond. Βάτραχοι ? ( Also not cultured )

No, that's like watching you and the other guy trying to troll me and that's not making you look as cool as you think.

That's clearly your opinion; I can't speak to the motivations of whom you refer to as "the other guy" but I have zero interest in either attempting to troll you or in looking cool.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#209
post #162

Important correction: "English poetry". It is massively different from the most Indo-European poetry which adds very strict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrical_foot rules. In Russian poetry, for example, even a single missed metrical foot violation is considered as a severe mistake and would be noticed by every reader. Also all good poets avoid use common rhymes (also verb rhymes) as cliché (which is considered as…

I think the concept you are describing is called accentual-syllabic verse. And it definitely exists in English too, it just became much less popular for some historical reason.

I am much more familiar with Russian poetry compared to the English (and I still like it more), but I wouldn’t call violating metrical foot format a mistake in general there. It’s an instrument like any other, which can be used well. Moreover, due to generally having longer words compared to English, you can often see unstressed syllables where a stressed one would be expected by the strict interpretation of the metrical foot, otherwise you couldn’t ever use words with four or more syllables in poetry. I am not an expert but I’ve heard arguments that you shouldn’t use the concept of metrical feet for Russian poetry in general because of that.

You don’t have to look at futurism and other avant-garde movements to see experimentation with the strictness of verses. There was plenty of interesting variations in the Silver age of Russian poetry, and even earlier — you can find quite a few examples of different metrical foot variations and violations in Pushkin’s poems, and even Lomonosov, while preferring highly regular structure, was not above varying it when appropriate.

I do agree with your overall point of AI mostly failing to produce interesting poetry, though admittedly I haven’t experimented much with that. But Russian poetry is much less regular than you describe it.

Re: AI poetry is indistinguishable from human poetry and is rated more favorably

#210
post #169
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, that sounds a little like claiming that AI can draw pictures just as well as humans because they look realistic at a first glance. But not if you check whether the text, repetitive elements, and partially-occluded objects in the background look correct.

To me, it sounds more like claiming that AI writes better code than Linus Torvalds because a group of random non-programmers preferred reading simple AI-generated Python over Linux kernel C code.

Not sure that I agree with this metaphor, as the utility of code is both subjective (readability) and objective (performance). There are objective ways in which C code simply can’t be matched by a Python implementation. If they were equivalent in terms of performance, I think use of C would crater.

With poetry, the “utility” is entirely the subjective experience of the reader. There is no objective component.

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