I get bored in everyday life, but it's mostly due to not having the time and resources required to do something more "fun", so I often default to my cheaper or more accessible hobbies. Working hard in this life seems like such a waste because we have such limited time to actually make use of the rewards.

But if I had an indefinite amount of time, then that work investment makes a lot more sense. And I could go at my own pace...I think that's the worst part of the rat race, that everything's so time-pressured. Living centuries, I could slowly and more safely invest. And with the advent of AI, much of modern work can be automated, so I doubt people are going to be as work-happy as our forebears.

As for memory--you don't remember 80% of your life right now. Think about it--you don't remember what you had for lunch two weeks ago. Does that mean life's not worth living?

>Every single experience is like a drug and the more you do the less its fun. The first time you do something the better it is.

That's true for some things but not others. Gaining mastery over a discipline takes time. Things like playing an instrument get way more fun once you get good at it. And for physical activities...those only get worse with age because of the aging.

Oh yeah, no doubt I would consider that "art" (very nice, too! :)). I think there may be a line in the amount of effort it takes. The AI art I'm talking about is the stuff that's done in a few seconds from a single prompt. But I understand that some artists are going through tons of iterations before getting to a 'look' that they want.

I can kind of make myself believe in it more if I think of it through the lens of fashion. To be fashionable, to express yourself through clothing, doesn't require you to make the clothes yourself. What we put together, what we "create" is the outfit, the ensemble.

I'm not an artist myself, but yeah I don't really think people using AI to generate art from only keywords are the actual "creators" of that work, more like "art curators" (since they do choose what outputs to keep).

My father does abstract art as a hobby. Not trying to plug him, but here's his instagram, just for reference. None of his work is AI-generated, but it looks like it could be.

It's a difficult line to define, though, with how powerful photoshop-style programs are these days. Filters and transforms can do a lot of the work for you, compared to traditional hand-to-canvass artwork. Still, he spends hours on each artwork he makes. Also, he has motor disability due to an illness, can barely use his hands, so if he didn't have those tools, he couldn't create what he does.

I guess I'm of the broad frame of mind that says, "Art is Art is Art". But I think of AI art as pretty firmly in the category of "found" art, in relation to the human posting it. It's more like having really good google-fu and a good artistic sensibility, to be able to recognize which outputs look the closest to what you want.

Thanks...your reply speaks to me, too. Gives me a little hope, for the long path we travelers often take.

I, um, have seen you on another sub that I (very occasionally) lurk in, but is it okay if I talk to you about that in PM? I totally consider you "my people", no worries :)

I feel this way a lot these days. My own specific case is, I'm what you might call a "forever" lover. By which I mean, when I fall in love with someone, it basically lasts forever. I can't just "turn it off", the way that other people seem to be able to. I know that there's got to be something neurologically different about me, and others like me. But I've had to destroy certain parts of myself, because the common perception is that if someone stops loving you, you're expected to stop loving them and "get over it" eventually.

I've been forced to basically "cut out" certain parts of myself, emotionally, because my manner of loving is deemed pathological to most people. And, to me, they were some of my best aspects, my biggest strengths. It felt like killing a major part of myself. Like having to take your dog in to be put down. Except I've been through it multiple times over.

I think about this strongly in the domain of LGBTQ+ acceptance. Decades ago, homosexuality was seen as a "mental illness" by psychologists, and conversion therapy was the norm. Anything that didn't fall under cis/het rules was deemed a problem to get rid of.

The minority group wasn't seen as a group deserving its own validation, but a collection of sick (or "evil") people.

For me, well, we all know that people routinely say such things to their partner such as, "I'll love you forever, no matter what"--and while it's nice to hope for the best, in reality, when the vast majority of people say those things, they're being hopeful, romantic, and/or metaphoric.

And those people, in the majority, think that that's the case for all others as well. They're not aware that there's a smaller group of people who literally can say "I'll love you forever, no matter what" and have that be a factual statement, not just wishful thinking.

So, the people who are more "mood-based" or conditional lovers end up screwing over the lives of people who are "forever" lovers. And people do die as a result--it's one of the bigger reasons for suicides. (edit: and depression, which can cut years off of life expectancy, same with drugs.)

I guess it might not tie in that strongly to this thought experiment. But we do ask people to injure certain parts of themselves simply because "that's what works for most people". But most people aren't all people. Certain "medicines" are poisonous, or even deadly to us.

And the people in my life, like the Healer, really do want the best for me. That's definitely part of what makes it so frustrating, even maddening. It's just like being gay in a conservative community that doesn't tolerate it, and feeling like there is something wrong with you for not being "normal". Even your loved ones can't understand, and want you to change.

If this makes perfect sense to anyone, I consider you "my people". :)

Yup, soon we'll get AI web design, too, there's already preliminary tools for that. And AI can write decent-sounding articles; it's only going to get better at that.

What's it going to look like when the majority of the content on the internet is actually created by AI? It's not that humans will stop producing content altogether, but that AI can produce more content by tenfold or more. And we've already got bots steering conversations on social media.

I haven't personally, but I'm subbed to r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/ , there are a lot of stories.

A few years I guess? I started becoming interested in singularity ideas from reading the LessWrong forums back in the 2010's.

I was more optimistic ten years ago, but I'm more sure of it happening than before. Just that it seems to be much "messier" than I hoped.

I also never seriously considered the possibility that aliens might be the harbingers of it, before a couple years ago. But there's still AI, and institutional collapse to worry about.