Production Techniques • Re: I Have A Confession To Make

We have two different points of view:

(1) The individual is completely unimportant and can be replaced
at will. He is only important to society insofar as he is supposed
to fulfil the function assigned to him. He is just a cog in a
senseless machine.

(2) The individual is extremely important, unique. He is the
source of all creativity, all thoughts and the basis of society in
general. All great ideas - social or scientific - have been thought
up by individual people. Great songs have been invented by
individual people. It is the individual, every single person, who
counts.

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Both viewpoints (1) and (2) are possible. However, the
viewpoints imply very different philosophies about humans:

Just wanted to say, this framing is way too close to rhetorical.
The framing is already biased towards one result, that free will and individuality is inherently better than any sort of collective project, or that somehow it's the individuality of the people involved that make for anything like progress.

I just personally find it too reductive to break things down this way. I don't necessarily believe in free will, but our patterns are complex enough to make it seem like it exists, and in no way is the greater society around you not immensely responsible for the decisions you make.

So to me it's not as you say at the end

This raises many questions: Does (1) or (2) have to do with
where - in which country, in which family, in which financial
environment - you grew up?

Do (1) or (2) also have anything to do with how you evaluate
an AI?

You don't have any choice to not be influenced by which country, family and financial environment you grew up in, nor the big traumatic events in your life. These literally shape people into who they are. You're not getting Einstein from a country that doesn't teach algebra. Geniuses are always walking in the knowledge of the people before them, and nurtured or destroyed by the society they live in.

Plus, Einstein and really all scientists aren't inventing things, they're using accumulated knowledge to discover new things. This also applies to art, it's almost all subtle tweaks on what came before it. I mean all of your musical choices directly stole from blues and country artists before them.

Statistics: Posted by machinesworking — Sun Mar 02, 2025 7:21 am

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