Just having visited the Rijksmuseum with it's unfortunately sold-out Vermeer exhibition, I had to settle for the permanent collection. It arcs through centuries of medieval religious art with really weird and janky perspective all the way to super high skillcap renaissance vanishing-point style stuff. You can feel hundreds of years of painters meticulously honing skill at perspective, light and shadow. Amazing.
Meanwhile, in the side of the museum that I couldn't get a ticket to, Vermeer just used a camera obscura to mechanically plot out perspective - bypassing all of that - investing his skill points differently. It must have been infuriating to all the others.
I wanna say, right now anyway, that I feel like AI is different from crypto at it’s base - mostly because “making things that evoke an aesthetic response” is different from “avoid what third parties want when making agreements”. My impulse is that one is generally good but could have bad externalities (people like to enjoy art and learn about trees, it’s a bummer if the art starves out better art or there are lies in the paragraph about trees) and one is generally bad but maybe occasionally good (in general I *should* recognize through taxation and regulation and common law that my agreements are part of a common social mesh, but it’s nice to evade social orders we need to duck under if we’re fleeing persecution). I feel like AI is just more like video streaming and HyperCard, another (possible) mind bicycle. This is super subjective and in no way career advice, but it just seems a little better in its promise, however and whatever it eventually delivers.
Oh I 100% believe cryptocurrencies and AI are different in all the ways you say. Hopefully my little essay didn't imply that cryptocurrency was the main thing I was comparing AI to. The comparison was more about all other technology: phonographs, cameras, samplers, etc.
But yeah, I still find blockchain semi-compelling, I just never saw any use or business model that did anything other than let people gamble.
Just having visited the Rijksmuseum with it's unfortunately sold-out Vermeer exhibition, I had to settle for the permanent collection. It arcs through centuries of medieval religious art with really weird and janky perspective all the way to super high skillcap renaissance vanishing-point style stuff. You can feel hundreds of years of painters meticulously honing skill at perspective, light and shadow. Amazing.
Meanwhile, in the side of the museum that I couldn't get a ticket to, Vermeer just used a camera obscura to mechanically plot out perspective - bypassing all of that - investing his skill points differently. It must have been infuriating to all the others.
I wanna say, right now anyway, that I feel like AI is different from crypto at it’s base - mostly because “making things that evoke an aesthetic response” is different from “avoid what third parties want when making agreements”. My impulse is that one is generally good but could have bad externalities (people like to enjoy art and learn about trees, it’s a bummer if the art starves out better art or there are lies in the paragraph about trees) and one is generally bad but maybe occasionally good (in general I *should* recognize through taxation and regulation and common law that my agreements are part of a common social mesh, but it’s nice to evade social orders we need to duck under if we’re fleeing persecution). I feel like AI is just more like video streaming and HyperCard, another (possible) mind bicycle. This is super subjective and in no way career advice, but it just seems a little better in its promise, however and whatever it eventually delivers.
Oh I 100% believe cryptocurrencies and AI are different in all the ways you say. Hopefully my little essay didn't imply that cryptocurrency was the main thing I was comparing AI to. The comparison was more about all other technology: phonographs, cameras, samplers, etc.
But yeah, I still find blockchain semi-compelling, I just never saw any use or business model that did anything other than let people gamble.
Great post, Kyle! Man, Jodorowsky's Tron is so good, thanks for sharing.
Yes but it's ok. Everything is different. 😐
The short answer is no. Critical thought immunizes against deception. 😐