samflir

[samflir]

I'm very curious about that poll!! :)

[samflir]

Yes. I'm not sure what people who are very against and also ignorant about AI hope to achieve by arguing about it online. If you argue from ignorance or misinformation, you will be dismissed with "that's not how it works" and your position in the debate obviously looks weaker.

I've seen the game of internet telephone play out in real-time with anti-AI talking points. Every time someone brings up its energy or water usage, it's some even bigger comical exaggeration from before (we actually don't know how much energy it uses exactly, and believing it'll keep going up forever is buying into Silicon Valley hype). When Sam Altman joked about "please" and "thank you" costing OpenAI millions, that somehow morphed into "you meaningfully waste OpenAI's money by being polite to chatGPT".

I also see anti-AI arguments that are disrespectful to other artists and their art all the time. If "AI is a collage machine" is a point against it, then you're saying that the art form of collage is bad too, because collage artists also reuse other people's artworks "without consent", something that was actually normal and respected as part of the evolution of art and culture prior to copyright's invention. The almost complete focus on digital painting as the sole valid form of art in anti-AI arguments shows an incurious approach to art history.

Speaking of art history, learning it will help you avoid making the same tired old arguments that were made against the artistic value of impressionism, photography, digital art and conceptual art. If you imply that modern art is somehow degenerate or not "art", your views on art are worthless to me.

If you want to talk about the problems of AI (which exist!), do so from knowing what it is and what it does and do so in a way that respects all creators, not just digital artists or fanfic writers.

there's a post going around with a gold-star image that has the text inside "never even has opened Chat GPT"

and the people in the notes are tripping over themselves to show how utterly incurious about the world they are.

"Where do you even find that thing?" use a search engine. "my professor broke my perfect record and made me use it" your soul is forever tainted now.

Is this some sort of ignorance olympics? Listen, you can be critical about AI and still know what it actually is. Don't act like it's a purity contest about who has touched the Evil Wand the least.

This is exactly what I fear AI will do to us: make us incurious to learn. Turns out, we don't need AI for that.

[samflir]

Similarities between Toki Pona and Lojban

Toki Pona and Lojban are two engineered constructed languages with speaking communities and very different goals. Toki Pona is a minimalist language based on simplifying your thoughts to fit the vocabulary of 140 words. Its grammar is similarly minimalistic. It has a simple sentence structure, not many particles and no affixes at all. Lojban is a logical language, one designed to express logical statements in its grammar and lack structural ambiguity. It is not at all minimalist, having over 3.5 times more particles than Toki Pona has words in total. It has particles for just about any grammatical function or marking you can think of.

So you may be surprised to learn that, having learned both languages, I consider them to be strikingly similar. They both have traits in common that English lacks for what I think are similar reasons.

Overall character

These are the big picture similarities. They are the cause of the specific similarities discussed later.

One class of root words

Both languages throw root words into one class, with usage determining their interpretation as a noun, verb or modifier. Both achieve this slightly differently.

Toki Pona's contentives

Most Toki Pona words cover broad semantic categories and have interpretations as nouns, verbs and modifiers relating to these categories in some way. For example, the definition of "moku" is:

eat, drink, consume, swallow, ingest; food, edible thing

These all relate to food and eating in some way. A very frequently cited example of Toki Pona's ambiguity is "mi moku" meaning "I eat" or "I am food", as Toki Pona doesn't have a copula. Note that it's not possible to predict how the meaning of a word changes between noun and verb usage and this must be memorised with each word.

Lojban's verbs

Lojban's only class of root word is verbs. These are defined in an unusual way, resembling sentences with blank spots given numbered Xs for nouns. For example, klama means:

x1 goes to x2 from x3 by route x4 with means/vehicle x5

"klama" is about as complex as verbs get, having 5 blank spots (arguments). Most have fewer than this! The blank spots are how Lojban creates nouns. The articles (lo/le) in Lojban select the first place of a verb and turn it into a noun. This avoids the need to memorise unpredictable changes in meaning for different words. For example, "lo citka" can only ever mean "an eater", it cannot mean "a food", which would be "lo cidja".

Concepts that are nouns in English are verbs in Lojban that include their copula. For example "cidja" means:

x1 is food for x2

This is as much as a verb to Lojban's grammar as the entire rest of its root word dictionary. The exact same grammar that works with "klama" works with "cidja". In other words, Lojban makes no distinction between being and doing. This also means that while Lojban does have a copula, it is barely ever used. Verbs contain "to be" in their definition.

Greedy phrases

In English you mostly know where a noun phrase ends because a lexically defined noun appears at the end of a string of lexically defined adjectives. Context and word order alone are usually sufficient to know how an English sentence is structured. Toki Pona and Lojban both take a different approach, because zero-deriving modifiers from contentives and verbs means that phrases are "greedy", they keep expanding unless explicitly separated.

Toki Pona phrases

Modifier phrases are the main way that Toki Pona stays expressive with only 140 words. Toki Pona has noun-modifier order. "jan pona" literally means "person good" but actually translates as "good person", since English is an adjective-noun language. You can keep adding root words onto phrases indefinitely and every following word modifies the whole phrase to its left:

small red car tomo tawa lili loje ((room move) small) red

Lojban tanru

Lojban's "tanru" are phrases just like Toki Pona's, where one word modifies another through juxtaposition. Lojban's order is backwards from Toki Pona, with the verb determining the place structure (and therefore most of the meaning) occurring last rather than first. However, Lojban still groups modifiers to the left. Just like in Toki Pona, root words can be added onto the end indefinitely since all are in the same category and they cannot, on their own, indicate the end of a noun phrase or start of a predicate.

intensely-red type of car kandi xunre karce ((intense) red) car

Keeping open question words in place

English fronts question words. This means that when asking a question, the syntax of the sentence is shuffled in some way that brings the wh-word to the start of the sentence. "You want what?" becomes "What do you want?". This is not the case in Toki Pona or Lojban, which prefer to keep question words unmoved.

Toki Pona's seme

The question word in Toki Pona is "seme" and it can go in the noun or verb positions of a sentence.

This is/does what? ni li seme?

This is good for who/what? ni li pona tawa seme?

Lojban's ma and mo

Lojban has different question words for every possible type of question. It has many more than just "ma" and "mo" which are noun and verb questions respectively. But those are the question words that most directly correspond with "seme" and just like it, don't require any change in word order.

This is/does what? .i ti mo

This is good for who/what? .i ti xamgu ma

Word order

Both Toki Pona and Lojban are similar to each other but also English in word order. Toki Pona has subject-verb-object word order and also tends to move preposition phrases to the end of sentences. While Lojban's word order is flexible, it defaults to a very Englishy order of putting the verb second, after a single noun and then putting all other nouns after the verb.

I give a book to you at the library.

mi pana e lipu, tawa sina, lon tomo lipu. I give a book, to you, at building book.

.i mi dunda lo cukta do bu'u le ckusro I give a book you at the library.

Specific similarities

As a result of the similarities in overall character, Lojban and Toki Pona have some very similar grammar.

Predicate markers

English doesn't have a predicate marker because it doesn't need one, not usually anyway. A predicate marker tells you where the verb in a sentence starts. This seemed like such an obviously artificial feature to me (having only seen it in Toki Pona and Lojban) that I assumed it was something that only existed in conlangs for a good while. I've since learned that Tok Pisin has a predicate marker. Natural languages are always stranger than I expect!

Toki Pona's li

The word "li" in Toki Pona separates third-person subjects from their predicates. It is essential to Toki Pona's grammar to allow for speakers to stop adding description to the subject and start the verb.

A big cat wants a fish. soweli suli li wile e kala.

Toki Pona allows for a subject to have multiple predicates attached to it by repeating "li".

A hunter sells food and goes to a house. jan alasa li esun e moku li kama, tawa tomo.

Lojban's cu

The word "cu" in Lojban terminates any nouns before the predicate of a sentence or clause. This is very similar to "li" and when Toki Pona speakers learn Lojban, it's very useful to be able to say "remember 'li'? it works like that".

A fish eats a person. .i lo finpe cu citka lo prenu

However, it is never actually obligatory in Lojban. It is usually used when the noun before the verb is one that uses an article, as opposed to a single-word pronoun. This is because pronouns self-terminate and don't start a greedy tanru phrase.

I run. .i mi bajra

Lojban only permits one "cu" per clause. This is a very helpful rule for certain deeply-nested sentence structures. Attaching multiple predicates to a single subject is still possible, but requires conjunctions.

A hunter sells a food and goes to a house. .i lo kalte cu vecnu lo cidja gi'e klama lo zdani

Phrase bracket particles

The default way that both languages group together modifiers in phrases means that it's impossible for multi-word phrases on the right to modify single words to the left. A phrase with the structure "A B C D" will always group together as "((A B) C) D" when what you want may be "(A B) (C D)". Both languages have words for this exact purpose of regrouping modifiers, a type of particle that has no direct counterpart in English.

Toki Pona's pi

Toki Pona's particle "pi" is used to override Toki Pona's default left grouping. An example is "tomo telo nasa", which translates to "crazy restroom" because "tomo telo" groups together and is finally modified by "nasa".

crazy restroom (tomo telo) nasa (room water) crazy

Putting a "pi" after "tomo" allows for "telo nasa" (alcohol) to modify "tomo", creating the meaning of "bar". These two very different meanings are only distinguished by the grouping of modifiers.

bar tomo pi (telo nasa) room (water crazy)

Using multiple "pi" in one phrase is ambiguous and considered bad style. It is unclear whether both pi phrases apply equally to the head of the phrase (flat pi) or the second pi phrase applies only to the contents of the pi phrase it follows (nested pi). The example given in sona pona is "lipu pi sona mute pi toki Inli". Is it a book of much knowledge of English, or a book of much knowledge and English?

Lojban's ke-ke'e

Lojban's particle "ke" does pretty much the exact same thing as "pi", but appears in opposite situations from "pi" due to the opposite word order of tanru compared to Toki Pona phrases.

catcher of big dogs barda gerku kavbu (big dog) catcher

The meaning of the phrase without pi in Toki Pona has to use "ke" to get the brackets on the right of the phrase.

a catcher of dogs, who is big barda ke gerku kavbu big (dog catcher)

Unlike Toki Pona, mulitple "ke" particles unambiguously nest into each other. Conjunctions are needed to achieve the "flat pi" meaning from Toki Pona.

small school for girls which is beautiful melbi ke cmalu ke nixli ckule pretty (small (girl school))

Unlike Toki Pona, a terminating particle "ke'e" closes the opening bracket created by "ke". Sometimes, the entire "ke-ke'e" structure may be replaced with "bo" as this marks a gap between two verbs to be interpreted as grouping together first before the usual left-grouping rule is applied.

small catcher of big dogs cmalu ke barda gerku ke'e kavbu cmalu barda bo gerku kavbu small (big dog) catcher

Analysis

Toki Pona is vague, not ambiguous

With a few small exceptions such as preverbs, prepositions and nested pi, the structure of a Toki Pona sentence is usually not ambiguous because of very un-englishy particles tagging parts of sentences such as "li" and "e". Most of Toki Pona's multiple interpretations come from its words covering board "semantic spaces", fuzzy clouds of meaning that are clarified through the addition of modifiers and context.

Toki Pona and Lojban both solve ambiguity in similar ways

Both being SVO isolating languages with greedy phrases, both languages use similar very obvious solutions for terminating phrases. Lojban has terminators, articles, prepositions and the predicate marker "cu". Toki Pona has "en", "li", "e" and prepositions marking the starts of phrases in sentences. The biggest overlap is predicate marking, but both languages also have particles exclusively for regrouping modifiers.

[samflir]

This week on Runaway to the Stars: Talita has some piracy-unrelated moral reservations, oops Idrisah is home now, OOPS SHE’S VERY MAD Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon!

[samflir]

oh shit guys. can we all please start using chatgpt faster so theyll build the nuclear power plants finally

[samflir]

it is funny that so many people with political opinions largely informed by twitter fanart discourse have gone from viciously mocking NFTs to becoming the very same "dont rightclick my jpg :(" guys they hated so much

[samflir]

you there. high quality production youtube channel with a team of people. why are your captions autogenerated.

[samflir]

What I don't get is that other your support of AI image generation, you're SO smart and well read and concerned with ethics. I genuinely looked up to you! So, what, ethics for everyone except for artists, or what? Is animation (my industry, so maybe I care more than the average person) too juvenile and simplistic a medium for you to care about its extinction at the hands of CEOs endorsing AI? This might sound juvenile too, but I'm kinda devastated, because I genuinely thought you were cool. You're either with artists or against us imho, on an issue as large as this, when already the layoffs in the industry are insurmountable for many, despite ongoing attempts to unionize. That user called someone a fascist for pointing this out, too. I guess both of you feel that way about those of us involved in class action lawsuits against AI image generation software.

i can't speak for anyone else or the things they've said or think of anyone. that said:

1. you should not look up to people on the computer. i'm just a girl running a silly little blog.

2. i am an artist across multiple mediums. the 'no true scotsman' bit where 'artists' are people who agree with you and you can discount anyone disagrees with you as 'not an artist' and therefore fundamentally unsympathetic to artists will make it very difficult to actually engage in substantive discussion.

3. i've stated my positions on this many times but i'll do it one more: i support unionization and industrial action. i support working class artists extracting safeguards from their employers against their immiseration by the introduction of AI technology into the work flow (i just made a post about this funnily enough). i think it is Bad for studio execs or publishers or whoever to replace artists with LLMs. However,

4. this is not a unique feature of AI or a unique evil built into the technology. this is just the nature of any technological advance under capitalism, that it will be used to increase productivity, which will push people out of work and use the increased competition for jobs to leverage that precarity into lower wages and worse conditions. the solution to this is not to oppose all advances in technology forever--the solution is to change the economic system under which technologies are leveraged for profit instead of general wellbeing.

5. this all said anyone involved in a class action lawsuit over AI is an enemy of art and everything i value in the world, because these lawsuits are all founded in ridiculous copyright claims that, if legitimated in court, would be cataclysmic for all transformative art--a victory for any of these spurious boondoggles would set a precedent that the bar for '''infringement''' is met by a process that is orders of magnitude less derivative than collage, sampling, found art, cut-ups, and even simple homage and reference. whatever windmills they think they are going to defeat, these people are crusading for the biggest expansion of copyright regime since mickey mouse and anyone who cares at all about art and creativity flourishing should hope they fail.

[samflir]

> brings up North Korea out of the blue and accuses other people of being ‘tankies’

> actively posts the most lukewarm, basic commie takes this website can manage

Make up your mind

no

[samflir]

Kill yourself lib cunt

no

[samflir]

I wish the work of every precious Smol Artist Creator Writer would be pirated, scanlated, referenced, studied, traced, collaged, edited, reuploaded, and fed to AIs, without their """permission""", and then I wish the sheer vibration of hitler particles within them would rend their bodies and petty bourgeois dreams asunder

[samflir]

"Now, plagiarism machine," I purr, "generate me an generic anime image of one of your finest waifus. Make her boobs inconsistent and her expression soulless."

The machine beeps in the affirmative, but as the sound of the woodchipper full of real, honest art revving up fills the room, I hold up my hand.

"And, machine?" I say, "waste some extra water while you're at it."

[samflir]

the absolute easiest ppl to rile up on this website r dweebs who get mad that an AI generated image exists at all. you put one 9/11 Gameboy ad or McDonald's Simpson Porn in front of them and they start crying and foaming at the mouth. lighten up, no Absurdly Tiny Dog On Leaf Artisan's Guild was harmed by this post i promise. you don't even know why you're mad.

[samflir]

pic goes hard feel free to screenshot

[samflir]

i am pro-copyright infringement. anybody who does fanfiction or fanart or anything should be pro-copyright infringement and obviously we are on the Fanart Website. why this is not a more popular stance among people who spend all their time doing transformative works is beyond me

[samflir]

Super Mario Bracket: FINAL ROUND

"You're about to have a really terrible experience!"

Vivian

SEED: 1 (215 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Daisy

SPECIES: Shadow

DEBUT: The Thousand-Year Door

BIO: Vivian is one of the main characters of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door for the GameCube and its 2024 remake for the Switch. while she is introduced as an antagonist along with her sisters, she later joins Mario, at a time when all of Mario's friends have abandoned him.

Vivian's arc is one of the most memorable parts of one of the most critically acclaimed games in the greater Super Mario franchise. the 2024 remake of The Thousand-Year Door was specifically praised by critics and fans alike for making Vivian's transgender identity textually explicit in the English-language release, which had been censored in the original 2004 localization.

in the Super Mario Bracket, Vivian has consistently been one of the strongest competitors, from before the bracket even began. in the preliminaries, she received over twice as many nominations as the second most nominated character, Luigi. she has yet to finish a match with anything less than 70% of the vote, as can be seen in her previous matches against Dribble & Spitz, Goomba, Kamek, Count Bleck, Big Bertha, and Daisy.

[Super Mario Wiki article]

"I'm The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens."

The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens

SEED: 38 (17 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Luigi

SPECIES: Human

DEBUT: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

BIO: The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens is a character from the live-action segment "The Great Hereafter" from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. she is a spirit medium who brings Mario and Luigi into contact with the ghost of their deceased grandmother.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! is, among English-speaking Mario fans, one of the most well-known of the Super Mario franchise's non-video game works. its live action half-episodes were either paired with animated Super Show! episodes, or (as is the case for "The Great Hereafter") with episodes of the Legend of Zelda animated series.

The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens is introduced after Mario suggests to Luigi that they should talk to "the old lady with the evil eye that she could tell fortunes and she could tell things before they happen", just before the woman in question rings the doorbell and says her full title out loud.

in the Super Mario Bracket, The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens has gained a notable dedicated following, winning new fans over almost entirely from her name alone. her pure appeal has led her to win against Ms. Mowz, Funky Kong, Yoshi, Elvira, Rosalina, and Luigi: a remarkable achievement.

[Super Mario Wiki article]

[link to all polls]

[samflir]

Super Mario Bracket: LUIGI vs THE OLD PSYCHIC LADY WITH THE EVIL EYE WHO READS FORTUNES AND KNOWS EVERYTHING BEFORE IT HAPPENS

"I'm-a Luigi! Number-a one!"

Luigi

SEED: 2 (104 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Catherine

SPECIES: Human

DEBUT: Mario Bros. (Game & Watch)

NOMINATION EXAMPLE: Luigi's just been my favorite Mario character since I was little. I probably started liking him because green is my favorite color, and I'd say I like him now because of how much personality and charm Nintendo gives him.

[Super Mario Wiki article]

"I'm The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens."

The Old Psychic Lady with the Evil Eye Who Reads Fortunes and Knows Everything Before It Happens

SEED: 38 (17 nominations)

PREVIOUS OPPONENT: Rosalina

SPECIES: Human

DEBUT: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

NOMINATION EXAMPLE: I'm gonna be honest I have not seen a single episode of the Super Mario Super Show, but her name instantly made her my favourite character of the franchise.

[Super Mario Wiki article]

[link to all polls]