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Knitting bullshit

katedaviesdesigns.com

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Re: Knitting bullshit

#61

Post by kombookcha »

augment_me wrote: post #38
pjc50 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So .. I think we need to ask a deceptively simple question here, which is: is knitting real? I'll add in an aside to this, which is not only are there fake knitting podcasts there are fake knitting and crochet patterns , which is a problem because people get a substantial way through making them only to discover that they don't work. In some cases the giveaway is that the supposed final image isn't physically possibl…

I am with you until you make this assumption: > But ultimately all these pleasant sensations aren't backed by a connection to the real. If you're going to talk about the history of knitting, shouldn't it be the real, evidenced history? As done by real (usually) women? Otherwise you're just knitting a pleasant fantasy for yourself. If the real is the feeling you get from listening to the podcast or identifying with a…

If you genuinely believe this, there is no point to doing anything at all except heroin. Every moment that you aren't dedicating to being on heroin or getting more heroin, to heroinmaxx if you will, is a net loss.

'But what if I run out though' I hear you ask? Simply finish off on a truly heroic dose and sail into oblivion on a wave of bliss that's much better than all your relationships and hopes and dreams. It's real for you, right? If it makes your friends sad, they could just do some heroin about it. More real than real!

Do not willingly become a lotus eater.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#62

Post by roxolotl »

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 mental health to knitting.

So while this post hopefully hits a chord for anyone in a creative field she embodies a particular type of person for whom slop is a genuine risk to their being. Not their job; their whole personhood. In a world where slop has chased out the humanity of things and the bullshit machines fill all content what are the chances someone like her could build a second life better than her first?

0: https://katedaviesdesigns.com/2015/01/28/five-years-on-part-...

Re: Knitting bullshit

#63

Post by ratmice »

pjc50 wrote: post #33
augment_me wrote: post #25

I like the blog but the premise of the blog is an engineering/epistemological perspective on the craft. The writer clearly cares more about the process, technique and history more than the feeling and validation. It could be, that a big part of the the future of hobby's and entertainment in this way is the feeling and validation over the actual performance. Or it can be that a massive amount of people find their valu…

So .. I think we need to ask a deceptively simple question here, which is: is knitting real? I'll add in an aside to this, which is not only are there fake knitting podcasts there are fake knitting and crochet patterns , which is a problem because people get a substantial way through making them only to discover that they don't work. In some cases the giveaway is that the supposed final image isn't physically possibl…

I'd also say a few things, if knitting takes a long time consider how long it takes to make a good clear pattern so that others can replicate it.

People who make patterns are already dealing with a saturated market. This includes historical/vintage patterns, which for many years patterns were primarily given away freely to incentivize yarn sales, or dominated by publishers. It wasn't until recently (internet, etsy, ravelry) when designers actually had the means to sell directly to consumers. People making an effort to produce usable patterns are now being dwarfed by AI nonsense in the speed of their output. It was already a difficult market. That everybodys images of real objects (along with AI generated ones) are being used to peddle and market patterns that will never work can be really demotivating.

One last thing is how many of the 8 people in this podcast company are actually generating slop and how many are actually just doing marketing?

Re: Knitting bullshit

#64

Post by kombookcha »

latexr wrote: post #60
kombookcha wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been years, but I seem to recall that Crowley specifically is very proud about making sure some motorway project got botched, because the continual drip of suffering from the accumulated jams and road rage makes him look really good in the spreadsheets even though he's not much for the classical showy stuff. Millions of little instances of suffering adding up year on year, instead of a handful of incidents of re…

Yes, I think you’re right. And if I recall correctly, near the end he’s trying to get somewhere but gets stuck in traffic by the same problem he caused.

Ha, that's right! I forgot about that bit.

Man. I do miss Terry Pratchett.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#66

Post by MITSardine »

Great article, thanks for sharing.

I didn't know (but should have assumed) AI-generated podcasts existed. That's depressing.

I imagined if mankind had the ideal machine, that could automate anything, we would get rid of dull office work and back breaking physical labor, but not the things that are actually enjoyable: sharing with each other, entertaining each other, making art. I imagined a lively world of live performance and creation, since all subsistence work had been taken care of. Instead we might end up in the world of fifteen million merits.

It seems people don't mind letting their minds be hacked by machines that can create the form of what they find enjoyable, if not the substance. But I guess there's always been slop and the public for it. To imagine actual people wasting their limited time on Earth listening to these GPT logorrhea podcasts is truly depressing. The unchemical soma.

What are we even supposed to spend our days doing in this bright future of the AI champions'? Stop automating away the things that give people purpose, tackle real problems instead.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#67

Post by like_any_other »

augment_me wrote: post #56
like_any_other wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But how does the collapse of truth and meaning in society affect you personally?" https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2565163-smugjak-but-how-does...

Your meaning and your truth, not necessarily other peoples who find their meaning and truth in other things. Go to China, or Congo and you will find that the public might hold a different version of some truths than you do. We had religions dominating the world order for thousands of years, which projected their versions of the truth onto their societies. If we would extrapolate that to today and to your opinion, it…

> Your meaning and your truth, not necessarily other peoples who find their meaning and truth in other things.

The makers of those AI podcasts explicitly stated they were unconcerned with whether their content was factual, so this is not comparable to people that actually thought they were right. But if you're arguing that listeners of those podcasts will believe that made-up slop is truth, that that's the "their truth" you're talking about, then yes, that is exactly what I meant by "collapse of truth".

Re: Knitting bullshit

#68

Post by api »

quibono wrote: post #11

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

I listened to a podcast a while back (human authored I'm pretty sure) about low-quality gutter level streamer content and how popular it is, speaking of personalities like asmongold and a vast number of even worse imitators.

This content is made by humans but is pointless grindingly stupid filler spiced with a dash of obviously performative offensiveness. You're basically listening to a complete loser (or someone LARPing as one) telling you about their boogers and then being racist and then playing video games for 6 hours.

But it's wildly popular. Millions of people stream this kind of shit for hours every day.

There's a lot of people out there who just want to numb their brains, and there seems to be no floor. You can just keep making it dumber. The stuff people stream (and doom scroll) on the Internet makes 1980s daytime soaps look like high art from a lost golden age.

So it's not at all surprising that millions of people listen to low-quality un-curated AI slop podcasts.

I actually unsubbed from the podcast I heard. Meta discussion of crap like this isn't much better than the content itself. Keep driving. Do not look at the car accident.

I had kind of an epiphany like that in the last year. The Information Age means information is free. It costs $0 and is produced to infinity. That means you are not missing anything. Your attention is actually 100% yours, and if you choose to ignore the car wreck that's fine. There are infinity car wrecks. There are infinity everything. Keep driving.

Re: Knitting bullshit

#70

Post by augment_me »

kombookcha wrote: post #61
augment_me wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you until you make this assumption: > But ultimately all these pleasant sensations aren't backed by a connection to the real. If you're going to talk about the history of knitting, shouldn't it be the real, evidenced history? As done by real (usually) women? Otherwise you're just knitting a pleasant fantasy for yourself. If the real is the feeling you get from listening to the podcast or identifying with a…

If you genuinely believe this, there is no point to doing anything at all except heroin. Every moment that you aren't dedicating to being on heroin or getting more heroin, to heroinmaxx if you will, is a net loss. 'But what if I run out though' I hear you ask? Simply finish off on a truly heroic dose and sail into oblivion on a wave of bliss that's much better than all your relationships and hopes and dreams. It's re…

Look, I get your comparison and while extreme, it's funny. I just have very little faith in that the average person cares this deeply about the physically grounded reality. It's kind of a luxury of the well-off to be able to sit and think about what content to engage with when you just want to relax after a 8 hour shift followed by picking up kids, getting groceries, etc. If someone sees an AI-video that makes them happy or laugh, they send it to their friend who also laughs about it, that's their reality.

We happen to have time to argue about the philosophy about direction of the ontology of information at the downvoted bottom of a HN thread today, most people dont.

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