shoo

Exhibit A

You could also look into community gardens. Not as convenient or simple as a home garden, but still pretty nice.

You clearly have an incredibly optimistic view and I commend you for that. The raw facts are on my side though.

The world, objectively, has been at an absolute high water mark for peace. The conflicts that happen are nowhere as sweeping or brutal as the historical norm. The headlines that cover our feed about tens or hundreds of thousands dying would be footnotes compared to the wars, atrocities, plagues and disasters of the past.

~~China~~ America for example has no interest in global domination, and nothing to gain from it, but also: Yes, and I want ~~America~~ Britain to have less power.

American hegemony began just like any other: you worry about your neighborhood until your control over it expands your concerns to the wider world. If you told someone in the late 1800s that the need to control Puerto Rico and Hawaii as naval bases would lead to needing 128 foreign military bases worldwide in a little over a century they wouldn't believe you.

The collapse of the British and French empires...

Only "nothing but good" if you think self determination infinitely outweighs the violent political turmoil and instability of the power vacuum. Not to mention many of those subjugated people came out the other side still under the thumb of the new American/Soviet influence.

less recently the Roman Empire...

Wait, are we talking about the same Western Roman collapse where basically all measures indicate a precipitous drop in quality of life for the average person in Europe? Where we famously lost a massive chunk of knowledge and some technology that still can't be reproduced today? Where stability was mainly found in the growth of other empires and the expansion of church influence?

the fucking thing about those, they can actually end

True, but that doesn't mean I want to chance living through them. We're also talking about an unexplored era of major conflicts with nuclear powers. Things might "end" a little more emphatically than we want.

Would you want to be subject to the whims of imperial rulers thousands of miles away?

Depends on the alternative. There are some plausible futures in the crystal ball where my answer would definitely be yes.

brit

frenchfryenjoyer

There are never "less imperialists". It's a function of the power difference between the haves and have not.

Go read any history book on what happens when an empire collapses. Here's a spoiler: it's not good for the vast majority of people.

More than ever, the world is a zero sum game. We know the resources, we know their limits and we know the trajectory of our pale blue dot. If you thought the Pax Americana was bad, wait till you see existential power struggles between peer states.

No you need to explain why one hegemony ending will magically end imperialism

The sales aren't quite apples to apples. Very few WNBA players have the same marketability as a decent NBA player. Clark is a generational talent and the face of the league, but adding up the revenue of a bottom tier NBA roster dwarfs her. For reference, she brings in about 26% (!!!) of all WNBA's $200M revenue, while the lowest revenue NBA team (the Pelicans) brings in $272M.

You are right that the compensation doesn't match up however. Clark's rookie contract is $80k/yr for her $52M contribution compared to (minimum) $1.1M/yr for those Pelicans players contributing $18M.

You: "I don't think the small team argument holds any water, [lists examples of popular minimalist indie games, argues for cutting scope and following their style]"

Me: "My project, at the modest scale I designed with my resource restrictions, was only possible by using Gen Ai to speed development of some assets"

You: "No you're wrong, that's not what I said, you're a shill, gaslighting, strawman, narrative framing, etc..."

If you're not defending your argument at all, I'm going to interpret your position as not worth defending.

Right, so everything you said is hot air. If you're not going to bother defending your position and applying it to a simple non-hypothetical situation then I guess you concede that it's bunk. Clearly you're interested enough to repeatedly assert that you're right, but just saying "gaslighting" and "strawman" isn't convincing anyone.

It's not a tool? If I plug it into Blender and get a skeleton of an asset I wouldn't otherwise be able to make with my resource constraints, that's not a useful part of the process? Just because it has tradeoffs doesn't mean it has no applications.

I understand people who argue against it on ethical grounds, but I'll never understand arguing it always makes everything 100% worse. Telling people "just spend X hours learning to make it" or "just pay someone on fivver" or "restructure your project so you don't need it" just to protect the sanctity of the artform is thinly veiled elitism.

I've personally used Gen AI in projects and found some useful applications. My own personal experience is corporate propoganda? Or am I just a filthy plebeian because I couldn't dedicate multiple days to learning other tools?

If I followed your advice those projects wouldn't have been finished. You can scroll up and read your own comments, I was on a shoestring budget and wasn't willing to cut into other responsibilities or shrink the project into a toy. Or is this just "framing" as you say, when really I shouldn't have pursued my art at all because I wasn't willing to risk my paycheck?

These are genuine questions, what should I have done? Why would it have been better to do it another way? I don't want to make a strawman, I want to know how your pontificating results in anything useful outside of an internet discussion.

Strange to not qualify the last one as theft. If it's out putting code, it's from the same kind of training set. If it's out putting character responses, they're from that same literary training data.

I'm not perverting any argument, you're just arguing something completely orthogonal to the point people above are making. We all understand creativity and that having more control and agency in a project is a good thing.

My argument isn't framing, it's reality. Time is a resource and the creative process is irrelevant when you've got bills to pay. The vast majority of people don't have the luxury to maintain a passion project, much less the chance to recoup a portion of what they poured into it.

Yes, in a vacuum with no regard for money or other responsibilities, the creative output is better for working through those problems. There are examples of this: Transport Tycoon, Undertale, Stardew Valley, Minecraft, etc... Usually games made in spare time over years by someone with a well paying tech job or game dev experience.

These indie games having success is very much the exception. The growth of the indie scene came from the wide availability of dev tooling and distribution platforms. Cutting out those hurdles massively expanded the pool of people who could now make games, thus we get more gems.

Not everyone needs to use Unreal Engine or Steam, but having them as an option is the only way that many games get made. That doesn't have any correlation to quality, they can be masterpieces or shovel ware. Gen Ai is the same, it just lowers another barrier of entry.

The choice isn't "Gen Ai or flop". The choice is in how you allocate your limited resources to make your project. It could add no value to a small project or be the key to unlocking a larger project. If your goal is to make some money from your efforts, it can be great at adding that veneer of polish that gets eyes on your game. I'm not one to judge someone for that just because lazy people can also do lazy things with it.