Your timing in making this post coincides with some things I have been thinking about. Hallucination is such a great word for the phenomenon. There is another, Pareidolia, which describes how one takes the craters of the moon and makes it into the “man in the moon”. I’m not sure that this will bring about the destruction of the internet because I would say expecting that the internet ever was this repository of accurate and factual data never actually happened. A while ago, I had a discussion with a friend about pulling down confederate statues and the friend suggested that the statues remain up so that we can learn about them. I countered that statues pretty much never contain truth with statues of Lincoln being an example. The statues of Lincoln were generally put decades after his death and are ahistorical propaganda. Lincoln’s views about Black people were stated in the Lincoln Debates and in Frederick Douglas’s writings and historians agree that he freed the slaves to cripple the Southern economy and not because he wanted abolition. Nonetheless, we live with this Lincoln hallucination as an American people and treat it as truth. Yet, we persevere.
I should add my world view is shaped by two moments in my life. The first was introductory literature as an undergrad. I had an excellent teacher who had us read Virginia Woolfe’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, which is about how women who want an accurate depiction of women in literature have to write it themselves. The essay reminded me that it is easy to confuse objective reality with a viewpoint. The second event was, when working with a professional photographer on some work projects, we discussed photography as evidence. He often had to testify in court about his medical photographs and explained that a photograph is never evidence on its own since you need to know the details like focal length to interpret whether those two people are standing next to each other or separated by a large distance.
After babbling on, I want to add one more point. A long time ago, I watched a program about the billionaire, Gordon Getty, who became wealthy in his 30’s. His wife married him was he had a modest income. She was asked if “money is the root of all evil”. She said that money is a magnifier; one can do great good or great evil because the gestures are writ large. Likewise, AI is a magnifier or a sharp knife. We can do horrible things or miracles with it. It will both amplify our faults and our greatness. We should not forget that it is a magnifier and a tool so that the fault is in the artist and not his tools.
Your timing in making this post coincides with some things I have been thinking about. Hallucination is such a great word for the phenomenon. There is another, Pareidolia, which describes how one takes the craters of the moon and makes it into the “man in the moon”. I’m not sure that this will bring about the destruction of the internet because I would say expecting that the internet ever was this repository of accurate and factual data never actually happened. A while ago, I had a discussion with a friend about pulling down confederate statues and the friend suggested that the statues remain up so that we can learn about them. I countered that statues pretty much never contain truth with statues of Lincoln being an example. The statues of Lincoln were generally put decades after his death and are ahistorical propaganda. Lincoln’s views about Black people were stated in the Lincoln Debates and in Frederick Douglas’s writings and historians agree that he freed the slaves to cripple the Southern economy and not because he wanted abolition. Nonetheless, we live with this Lincoln hallucination as an American people and treat it as truth. Yet, we persevere.
I was just going to say that it has it's own version of Pareidolia and then I saw the comment below :-)
I should add my world view is shaped by two moments in my life. The first was introductory literature as an undergrad. I had an excellent teacher who had us read Virginia Woolfe’s essay, A Room of One’s Own, which is about how women who want an accurate depiction of women in literature have to write it themselves. The essay reminded me that it is easy to confuse objective reality with a viewpoint. The second event was, when working with a professional photographer on some work projects, we discussed photography as evidence. He often had to testify in court about his medical photographs and explained that a photograph is never evidence on its own since you need to know the details like focal length to interpret whether those two people are standing next to each other or separated by a large distance.
After babbling on, I want to add one more point. A long time ago, I watched a program about the billionaire, Gordon Getty, who became wealthy in his 30’s. His wife married him was he had a modest income. She was asked if “money is the root of all evil”. She said that money is a magnifier; one can do great good or great evil because the gestures are writ large. Likewise, AI is a magnifier or a sharp knife. We can do horrible things or miracles with it. It will both amplify our faults and our greatness. We should not forget that it is a magnifier and a tool so that the fault is in the artist and not his tools.