> I like to think art is anything that speaks directly to us, moves us or inspires us.
Then that would include anything in the natural world that evokes such feelings and this clearly goes against the meaning that 'art' has had over millennia.
I'm amazed at all this discussion upon a misinterpretation when, exactly as you say, he clarified what he meant by struggle in the same sentence and it is not life struggle, it is creative struggle (to create music, poetry, etc).
(Of course, pretty much everyone experiences hardship in life and some artists have experienced very harsh hardships and drawn upon that in their later art but he is very clearly not saying that that is an essential part of creating art.)
To be fair, I think he wants to have it both ways. He seems to oscillate between the two ways of struggling, even in that one paragraph. I'm just trying to offer a very generous reading. Nick Cave is a great lyricist, but I've never really been impressed with his other writing; he becomes Romantic and fuzzy like this when it's convenient.
Agree with you about him being a great lyricist (I find 'the loom of the land', to give one very brief example, a masterful configuration) but I also have mixed feelings about the man. I find him intellectually pretentious, politically distasteful (to put it mildly) and suspect him to be very lacking in his personal relationships. An exemplary case, for me, of liking the art while not necessarily liking the artist.
> A pedantic conversation about what is and isn't true AI is not productive.
It's not at all 'pedantic' and while it's not productive to be having to rail against this stupid term, that is not the fault of the people pushing back at it. It's the fault of the hype merchants who have promoted it.
A key part of thinking independently is to be continually questioning the use of language.
> Any counter argument about "it's not real intelligence" or "it's just a next-token predictor" ignores the fact that LLMs have enabled us to do things with machines that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.
No, it's entirely possible to appreciate that LLMs are a very powerful and useful technology while also pointing out that they are not 'intelligence' in any meaningful sense of the word and that labeling them 'artificial intelligence' is unhelpful to users and, ultimately, to the industry.
If by most you mean 50% then sure. But the other 50% countries prefer to use different app. Be it Facebook Messenger or Telegram... In my eu country nobody has WhatsApp and its not uncommon. Network effects are at play so it's what became popular first.
I appreciate that I was a bit too confrontational in my first reply and should have just added that WeChat, Line and Telegram are also used (plus many others), not just WhatsApp.
Why I think I (over) reacted is that it was, to me, an example of only partial escape from US American insularity. They understood that ppl outside the USA don't use SMS much, but only suggested a US American messaging platform as what was used instead.
I think your worry comes from a materialist viewpoint. You perceive the universe as only being material, and then, looking out at the infinite material expanse, you are rendered distraught by the seeming lack of life 'out there'.
My view is that the material universe is only an illusion, that Earth is the centre of 'the universe' (it's immaterial that we orbit around the sun) and that life and consciousness only 'exist' on this planet. It's the 'stage' where we play out our lives; from whence we come and to whence we go is the bigger 'mystery' and one more rewarding to ponder on, then wonder about life 'out there'.
> Honestly it's hard to see how we get to this level of speed and content online without it having been funded by advertising.
If we had gone (or stayed) peer to peer we could have done it, rather than going the expensive client server model. Server farms require funding; peer to peer doesn't.
My opinion on strength training being essential for health into old age largely stems from Peter Attia’s recent book Outlive [1] where he goes into great detail about the topic, and every piece of medical research I’ve ran into only seems to underline that having sufficient muscle mass is the single biggest intervention you can do to impact your long term health. Do all healthy old people do it? No, but if the question is what can you do to improve your odds, it seems silly to throw away the biggest lever you have (though it’s anyone’s personal choice to risk it and hope for the best).
(If you think he’s a quack and his message is wrong then I’d love to see some research pointing to the contrary, that having muscle mass is detrimental or at least does nothing significant for your long-term prospects)
The point about athletes is really more about pros, I should have been clear. I can guarantee you that almost every accomplished pro athlete in most sports, from running to swimming to cycling to basketball to gymnastics to soccer and the list goes on, incorporates a significant amount of strength training into their lives; there are probably some genetic freaks or sufficiently ‘roided mutants who don’t need to, but I assure you that Michael Phelps and LeBron James didn’t get their physiques purely by swimming and playing basketball.
And in case you think I’m talking about weight lifting for the purpose of competing at a bodybuilding show or strongman competition, that is not what I am referring to; I am referring to doing strength training to the extent that you have a reasonable amount of muscle mass. I don’t care if it’s traditional weight training or if it’s calisthenics or something else, so long as you don’t end up with no muscle tone and probably experiencing or prone to significant metabolic disease like most unfit people these days.
I agree that muscle tone is vitally important for human health and maintaining 'fitness' into middle and old age. However muscle tone and strength can come from many things, a lot of which don't need to deliberately include any form of 'strength training'.
I also agree that many modern professional athletes include specific strength training in their training regimes but this is a fairly recent phenomenon (e.g. tennis and swimming really only from approx. the 80s/90s on) and I don't see this as critical to them being 'fit-looking athletes'; it's only become necessary in a kind of arms race type of way, and in my opinion, with an unfortunate impact of modern competitive sport favouring 'power' over grace and technique. (I personally prefer the physiques of previous generations of athletes to those of most of the top athletes today, particularly the female ones.)
Why I responded fairly forcefully to your original comment is because it was a reply to someone who hadn't found strength training appealing and I perceived your reply as shutting down their thinking that some other option could be found that would build some strength and give other positive benefits of exercise to the questioner, including enjoyment and fulfillment.
Laws that prosecute ppl for possessing, downloading and storing computer files are deeply problematic, in my opinion. Whatever the content of those files.
(Publication of the contents of the files is another matter. I appreciate how this can be cause for prosecution.)
Including your 'tribe C' (the USA) with two indigenous tribes (A & B) in your example is highly disingenuous. And self-serving to your contrived hypothetical.
Then that would include anything in the natural world that evokes such feelings and this clearly goes against the meaning that 'art' has had over millennia.