The impulse of "I want something like this [painting/film/novel/game] but different in specific ways" has always been a driving force leading to the acquisition of skills in that particular field. The problem you describe here with junk content seems to scratch that itch without inspiring any artistic endeavor or learning of how to make that content. Not everyone who feels that desire will become a great artist or writer or whatever, and they may just commission someone else to paint or write what they want, but there's real learning that goes on from that drive and it sounds like it's being short circuited by new tech that removes any friction from getting someone else to do it for you. I wonder how AI can be used as tool to help inspire skill acquisition and creativity (since it's not possible to put back in the box now) rather than, as you describe here, just providing enough of a high to numb an urge that could have been channeled productively.
3D printing seems like a similar technology in a way (down to some very scary applications in making ghost guns), but seems to have developed a reasonably healthy community of users--but in a way they're more like amateur programmers working on AI than like the consumer/end-user.
Ouch. My mind immediately thought that one could use generative AI systems not just to cheaply develop such digital heroin to order, but to tie that in to fast personal feedback loops, so that it's not just customised to what you think you want, but ever-more-closely optimised to what the system detects is sucking you in deeply. (Or is otherwise optimising the value you are prepared to supply.) The digital ad space has already made the paradigm-changing shift to rapid testing and targeted customisation so it's more a matter of joining up existing systems than inventing something wholly new.
Not sure I've posted this to you before, but with the BBC in mind I think about this blog post a lot, and share it with my colleagues. Yes the BBC is a big part of it, and sometimes people kick heroin.
Taking “this is what imagination is for” further, possibly “this *only* works when it’s your imagination”? What Joe Russo is describing is functionally “client-insert fanfic”, and some cursory googling suggests that’s not obviously A Thing. (“Reader-insert” seems to be A Thing, but that seems to just amount to second-person narrative, with the expectation that the reader is inhabiting someone else’s character.)
Naively, I’d assume that the primary value of self-insert fanfic is that the process of writing it sharpens the imaginative experience, and that the primary value of imagining the narrative is that it allows the writer to project and affirm (and develop!) their self-identity. Having someone (or something) else hand you the “finished product” based on their best guess of your self-identity seems likely to be negative net value, given that a) the “finished product” contains minimal value, and b) they’re almost certain to get *something* wrong about your self-identity, which is likely to be a very dissonant experience. It’s not clear on that basis that the product described will survive past the novelty stage.
(Big generalisations, I’m sure there are special cases that diverge from this assessment.)
Henry's discussion of the polycrisis triggered this comment about the intellectual history of which I am only dimly aware.
This discussion of the polycrisis reminded me of the Tinbergen rule (you need as many instruments as targets) and then of being taught control theory 50 years ago (about the time of Eno's visit). One of the things I was told was that control theory was just a more staid name for cybernetics, which was associated with Norbert Wiener (Beer was not mentioned). Is management cybernetics different from control theory?
I expect this is in the book, but the colonial structures of the book trade still apply even in the era of instant communications. I can't find an e-book version available in Australia
I'll have a word about the Australian ebook version ...
Your teachers were not wrong, in a sense; the basis of cybernetics is control theory in the same way that the basis of economics is optimisation and the basis of rocketry is Newton's Third Law and Boyle's Law. But management cybernetics took a different turn, because it dealt with the problem of heterogeneity in a completely different way. Rather than assuming a representative agent (and giving up on realism), it gave up on rigor and accepted that when you're dealing with "control" of a real-world system with dozens of components and combinatorially massive numbers of links between them, you have to accept that you're using terms like "bandwidth" metaphorically, rather than being able to wite down a system of equations
A vaguely related point I've always wanted to make. The organization of sports mean that most people who attend sporting matches see their team win most of the time. That's because of
(i) home ground advantage
(ii) the fact that winning teams get more followers
As far as I can tell (i) is tacitly encouraged by sporting leagues - no penalties for giving the visitors lousy facilities, for example. In most sports, but not (Association) football, draft systems are used to keep (ii) in check to some extent.
Research into (i) doesn't seem to find much evidence - or not in (association) football, anyway. Which is curious, as everyone knows it exists.
"Tacitly encouraged" - hmm, not sure about that.
(ii) Yes, teams being promoted 'tween divisions see increases in attendance. That increase actually continues (for about three seasons, I think) once the threat of relegation recedes. The reverse happens upon relegation.
Interesting; it looks like things have moved on a bit since I last took a look. Which would be twenty odd years ago.
Covid produced produced a natural experiment - a slug of the 2019/20 season was played behind closed doors, so any home crowd influence on referees should have vanished;
The Chicago Booth article makes some claims up front, but then focuses (naturally) upon US sports. The international cricket claim has a bit of an issue, in that the home groundsmen can prepare the wicket(s) to suit the attack of the home team - spin, or pace. Of course, the England selectors might be a bit crap.
DAR use a different methodology, and find the games during lockdown (after a significant break) show varying degrees of a reduction in home advantage. At least one issue could be the rule change increasing the number of substitutions from 3 to 5, giving a larger substitute effect. Another would be game scheduling, as from the restart, PL games were played every day, not batched into rounds each weekend.
It also turns out that home advantage varies over time. Hmm.
I suppose I'm going to have to read all this stuff now.
The impulse of "I want something like this [painting/film/novel/game] but different in specific ways" has always been a driving force leading to the acquisition of skills in that particular field. The problem you describe here with junk content seems to scratch that itch without inspiring any artistic endeavor or learning of how to make that content. Not everyone who feels that desire will become a great artist or writer or whatever, and they may just commission someone else to paint or write what they want, but there's real learning that goes on from that drive and it sounds like it's being short circuited by new tech that removes any friction from getting someone else to do it for you. I wonder how AI can be used as tool to help inspire skill acquisition and creativity (since it's not possible to put back in the box now) rather than, as you describe here, just providing enough of a high to numb an urge that could have been channeled productively.
3D printing seems like a similar technology in a way (down to some very scary applications in making ghost guns), but seems to have developed a reasonably healthy community of users--but in a way they're more like amateur programmers working on AI than like the consumer/end-user.
Re: football - isn't the scenario you outline Football Manager 2024 with the money cheat?
And yes I have tried it and it is therapeutic for a bit, but it does get boring.
Ouch. My mind immediately thought that one could use generative AI systems not just to cheaply develop such digital heroin to order, but to tie that in to fast personal feedback loops, so that it's not just customised to what you think you want, but ever-more-closely optimised to what the system detects is sucking you in deeply. (Or is otherwise optimising the value you are prepared to supply.) The digital ad space has already made the paradigm-changing shift to rapid testing and targeted customisation so it's more a matter of joining up existing systems than inventing something wholly new.
Not sure I've posted this to you before, but with the BBC in mind I think about this blog post a lot, and share it with my colleagues. Yes the BBC is a big part of it, and sometimes people kick heroin.
https://dirt.fyi/article/2023/03/the-taste-economy
I haven't seen that before and it's a really great article, thank you ever so much
Taking “this is what imagination is for” further, possibly “this *only* works when it’s your imagination”? What Joe Russo is describing is functionally “client-insert fanfic”, and some cursory googling suggests that’s not obviously A Thing. (“Reader-insert” seems to be A Thing, but that seems to just amount to second-person narrative, with the expectation that the reader is inhabiting someone else’s character.)
Naively, I’d assume that the primary value of self-insert fanfic is that the process of writing it sharpens the imaginative experience, and that the primary value of imagining the narrative is that it allows the writer to project and affirm (and develop!) their self-identity. Having someone (or something) else hand you the “finished product” based on their best guess of your self-identity seems likely to be negative net value, given that a) the “finished product” contains minimal value, and b) they’re almost certain to get *something* wrong about your self-identity, which is likely to be a very dissonant experience. It’s not clear on that basis that the product described will survive past the novelty stage.
(Big generalisations, I’m sure there are special cases that diverge from this assessment.)
Henry's discussion of the polycrisis triggered this comment about the intellectual history of which I am only dimly aware.
This discussion of the polycrisis reminded me of the Tinbergen rule (you need as many instruments as targets) and then of being taught control theory 50 years ago (about the time of Eno's visit). One of the things I was told was that control theory was just a more staid name for cybernetics, which was associated with Norbert Wiener (Beer was not mentioned). Is management cybernetics different from control theory?
I expect this is in the book, but the colonial structures of the book trade still apply even in the era of instant communications. I can't find an e-book version available in Australia
I'll have a word about the Australian ebook version ...
Your teachers were not wrong, in a sense; the basis of cybernetics is control theory in the same way that the basis of economics is optimisation and the basis of rocketry is Newton's Third Law and Boyle's Law. But management cybernetics took a different turn, because it dealt with the problem of heterogeneity in a completely different way. Rather than assuming a representative agent (and giving up on realism), it gave up on rigor and accepted that when you're dealing with "control" of a real-world system with dozens of components and combinatorially massive numbers of links between them, you have to accept that you're using terms like "bandwidth" metaphorically, rather than being able to wite down a system of equations
A vaguely related point I've always wanted to make. The organization of sports mean that most people who attend sporting matches see their team win most of the time. That's because of
(i) home ground advantage
(ii) the fact that winning teams get more followers
As far as I can tell (i) is tacitly encouraged by sporting leagues - no penalties for giving the visitors lousy facilities, for example. In most sports, but not (Association) football, draft systems are used to keep (ii) in check to some extent.
Research into (i) doesn't seem to find much evidence - or not in (association) football, anyway. Which is curious, as everyone knows it exists.
"Tacitly encouraged" - hmm, not sure about that.
(ii) Yes, teams being promoted 'tween divisions see increases in attendance. That increase actually continues (for about three seasons, I think) once the threat of relegation recedes. The reverse happens upon relegation.
This source actually says association football has the biggest home ground advantage. Finds that refereeing bias is the main contributor\
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/home-field-advantage-facts-and-fiction
Interesting; it looks like things have moved on a bit since I last took a look. Which would be twenty odd years ago.
Covid produced produced a natural experiment - a slug of the 2019/20 season was played behind closed doors, so any home crowd influence on referees should have vanished;
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00036846.2022.2074361
(Destefanis, Addesa & Rossi, or DAR)
The Chicago Booth article makes some claims up front, but then focuses (naturally) upon US sports. The international cricket claim has a bit of an issue, in that the home groundsmen can prepare the wicket(s) to suit the attack of the home team - spin, or pace. Of course, the England selectors might be a bit crap.
DAR use a different methodology, and find the games during lockdown (after a significant break) show varying degrees of a reduction in home advantage. At least one issue could be the rule change increasing the number of substitutions from 3 to 5, giving a larger substitute effect. Another would be game scheduling, as from the restart, PL games were played every day, not batched into rounds each weekend.
It also turns out that home advantage varies over time. Hmm.
I suppose I'm going to have to read all this stuff now.