I like the blog but the premise of the blog is an engineering/epistemological perspective on the craft. The writer clearly cares more about the process, technique and history more than the feeling and validation.
It could be, that a big part of the the future of hobby's and entertainment in this way is the feeling and validation over the actual performance. Or it can be that a massive amount of people find their value in this content.
So .. I think we need to ask a deceptively simple question here, which is: is knitting real?
I'll add in an aside to this, which is not only are there fake knitting podcasts there are fake knitting and crochet patterns, which is a problem because people get a substantial way through making them only to discover that they don't work. In some cases the giveaway is that the supposed final image isn't physically possible, like the images in this article, but the fakers can use a real stolen image and just spam a pattern underneath it.
So: what is the knitting that is real? It has to be the use of your hands, needles, and yarn to produce a physical object, right?
The podcasts work towards something else. The identity of "being a knitter". This is a form of "hobby" that was already not unusual, that of discussing a thing without ever bothering to actually do it. Photographers are especially bad at this: too many lenses, not enough photographs. They've also got comprehensively run over by AI, because you can just generate the photographs now. Same for "authors".
But ultimately all these pleasant sensations aren't backed by a connection to the real. If you're going to talk about the history of knitting, shouldn't it be the real, evidenced history? As done by real (usually) women? Otherwise you're just knitting a pleasant fantasy for yourself.
The AI approach is "wireheading": the logical conclusion of all of that would be to find a means of inserting a wire in your head that provides constant pleasant sensations. Achieving happiness through a constant feed of generated images is less effective, but it's the same order of things.
(see also: authenticity in food, which could easily turn into another ten thousand words)
I'd also say a few things, if knitting takes a long time consider how long it takes to make a good clear pattern so that others can replicate it.
People who make patterns are already dealing with a saturated market.
This includes historical/vintage patterns, which for many years patterns were primarily given away freely to incentivize yarn sales, or dominated by publishers. It wasn't until recently (internet, etsy, ravelry) when designers actually had the means to sell directly to consumers. People making an effort to produce usable patterns are now being dwarfed by AI nonsense in the speed of their output. It was already a difficult market. That everybodys images of real objects (along with AI generated ones) are being used to peddle and market patterns that will never work can be really demotivating.
One last thing is how many of the 8 people in this podcast company are actually generating slop and how many are actually just doing marketing?
> But ultimately all these pleasant sensations aren't backed by a connection to the real. If you're going to talk about the history of knitting, shouldn't it be the real, evidenced history? As done by real (usually) women? Otherwise you're just knitting a pleasant fantasy for yourself.
If the real is the feeling you get from listening to the podcast or identifying with a subculture, then that is the real for that person. Factual, grounded information is just one take. If it was not this way, we would have much less myths, religions, etc historically.
People will feel the same degree of joy and completion when the final word of the podcast is read like you feel when you finish a really complex piece of work.
If you genuinely believe this, there is no point to doing anything at all except heroin. Every moment that you aren't dedicating to being on heroin or getting more heroin, to heroinmaxx if you will, is a net loss.
'But what if I run out though' I hear you ask? Simply finish off on a truly heroic dose and sail into oblivion on a wave of bliss that's much better than all your relationships and hopes and dreams. It's real for you, right? If it makes your friends sad, they could just do some heroin about it. More real than real!
Look, I get your comparison and while extreme, it's funny. I just have very little faith in that the average person cares this deeply about the physically grounded reality. It's kind of a luxury of the well-off to be able to sit and think about what content to engage with when you just want to relax after a 8 hour shift followed by picking up kids, getting groceries, etc. If someone sees an AI-video that makes them happy or laugh, they send it to their friend who also laughs about it, that's their reality.
We happen to have time to argue about the philosophy about direction of the ontology of information at the downvoted bottom of a HN thread today, most people dont.
The idea that we could create a world where 'a big part of the future of hobbies and entertainment' is people listening to meaningless words made up by machines that help them feel good about themselves sounds horrifying. How could anybody feel ok about that? What would it say about the society we've built?
It would say that society changes, and people who were not used to a new world get upset about it, as it has always been throughout the entire history of humanity.
We were used to having psychologists and doctors in person, now the most common form is to have it through apps, and the younger generation does not care, it's in fact more efficient to get a prescription that you like than to spend time going places and having in-person meetings. But older generation finds it hollowing out and horrifying.
You need to accept that society moves on, and it can look different from your perspective.
A looooot of assumptions here. We have yet to see any of these brave new ideas actually work.
Therapy has never been more available, yet mental health is through the basement.
I’m also not seeing any evidence that young people are the driving force behind turning the world to shit. Every Gen Z person I know craves authenticity, connection, and meaningful work. All of this is the opposite.
It's interesting how every time this argument is made, its about subjective experiences of 'craving'. If this was the objective reality, we would have a majority of Gen Z engaged in movements, social groups and other concepts that would help them fulfill their 'cravings'.
However, it seems to not be the case, it seems like they prefer to spend their free time to doomscroll, or sit at home, and engage more in parasocial relationships that perhaps can be more on their terms, on their timeframes, and with their opinions.
That’s one explanation. The other explanation is that young people feel powerless to change anything, and that they are hooked against their will on deliberately addictive ad delivery platforms.
The more alarming conclusion here happens to be backed by a lot of science, unfortunately, so it’s not easy to dismiss.
In this case, the user is deciding that they choose what progress is. I am saying, that people who use the tool and value the utility of it decide what is progress. If people listen to the podcast, or use doctors in the phone because it provides them any value, it will be a change and a perceived progress for them.
If the generated podcasts did not bring any value to the users, such as validation, or engagement, they would not use them, and there would be no change.
> If the generated podcasts did not bring any value to the users, such as validation, or engagement, they would not use them, and there would be no change.
Your meaning and your truth, not necessarily other peoples who find their meaning and truth in other things.
Go to China, or Congo and you will find that the public might hold a different version of some truths than you do.
We had religions dominating the world order for thousands of years, which projected their versions of the truth onto their societies.
If we would extrapolate that to today and to your opinion, it would be that everyone in the middle ages actually had it all figured out, they knew that the religious texts about splitting oceans or the moon were fake, and were all just playing along with it for the social structure.
Maybe it just happens that the LLM-generated stuff is the next thing in this iteration.
> Your meaning and your truth, not necessarily other peoples who find their meaning and truth in other things.
The makers of those AI podcasts explicitly stated they were unconcerned with whether their content was factual, so this is not comparable to people that actually thought they were right. But if you're arguing that listeners of those podcasts will believe that made-up slop is truth, that that's the "their truth" you're talking about, then yes, that is exactly what I meant by "collapse of truth".
If you only care about the material and physical utility of the product, you can order the sweater from AliExpress for 5% of the cost and no time spent.
Seriously? You can't get the feeling of satisfaction of wearing something, or having someone wear something you made from AliExpress. My point is your sense of feeling and validation is extremely distorted if you have no knitted material to show for it?
Completely subjective take by you with similar epistemology around value as the blog author.
People might not care. I might identify as a runner because I bought a little jacket, expensive shoes, and wide-purple-tinted sunglasses, do I have to run? Not necessarily if the objects and my identity gives me the feeling of completion and satisfaction.
If your premise was true for all people, and the sense would be distorted, we would not see these phenomena, and people wouldn't listen or engage with AI-content. But the biological reality and the path of least resistance seems to prove us otherwise.
The same way that the AI generated podcast about knitting, or engaging in consumption is enjoyable for many people and a form of stress relief, which was the point that the comment above was criticizing.
So the conclusion is that the utility of the activity is subjective, and if most people spend their time listening to AI factually incorrect podcasts about knitting and enjoying it, it's no different than knitting yourself and enjoying it. The blog was poor in this disambiguation, and pushed a more Aristotole-like ontological view of what is meaningful, which is more common view in engineering/hard-science dominated fields.
They are not the same. One is a passive thing (viewing) and the other is active (physical creation). We should not mistake one for the other. It is like the difference between listening to music and making it.
That's completely your subjective opinion that ignores reality. If people feel like they are participating in something, or they feel like their identity is based on something they consume passively, it's as valid as the physical thing.
If people did not feel good from passive consumption, no-one would be listening, following or looking at things, people would just make and create all the time, which is obviously not true.
If what you say is true, there would be no value from AI-generating blogs in question, or AI-generated movies/youtube films. Yet both have millions of downloads, views and listens, as the article mentions.
Reality involves physical objects you can hold in your hands, not abstract experiences. Abstract experiences are subjective not objective most of the time.
Knitting is not just entertainment, it's a means to produce useful things as well as artistic projects.
Many people are either lazy or have been discouraged from creativity by a consumer society and the education system. I've watched plenty of online content. I have nothing from it but feelings (the very subjective opinion you talk about), and very occasionally a tiny bit of new information. Knitting creates clothing which can be used to keep out the cold (objective) and so on. In fact this very winter, I wore things my friends knitted me. Gloves, hat, socks, snood, scarves... They served a practical function beyond entertainment or just looking good.
Completely subjective take, but I feel like 95% of these "tools" that are prompt-engineering inventions created by the authors with their bias and to suit their needs don't have anything supporting them besides the authors' subjective experience.
I have seen the same idea with processes, pipelines, lists, bullet points, jsons, yamls, trees, prioritization queues all for LLM context and instruction alignment. It's like the authors take the structure they are familiar with, and go 100% in on it until it provides value for them and then they think it's the best thing since sliced bread.
I would like, for once, to see some kind of exploration/abalation against other methods. Or even better, a tool that uses your data to figure out your personal bias and structure preference for writing specs, so that you can have a way of providing yourself value.
The inherent lack of distinction for LLMs between code, structured formats and natural language is ridiculous. Before the AI era we had a trend to increase type safety everywhere. Now we just sling code and natural text around and hope it works.
No-one cares dude. People like good enough, convenient things that serve their entertainment needs, which is shaped by said entertainment, so there is not really an issue here.
Since they are up against a insurmountable mountain of capital which will commoditize and optimize whatever it wants, they are kind of in for a pointless fight with an inevitable end. They could save themselves a lot of despair if they saw the writing on the wall and pivoted to something that still has value, or accepted the new reality instead of throwing a fit.
That is too difficult as the concept (of trusting one's perception) is, I believe, intertwined deeply with other aspects of being human, for many people.
It's not reasonable to require that those people be mentally organized in a manner that already mistrusts reality, in a healthy manner.
Maybe it is a pointless fight with an inevitable end but at least I'll die with my humanity and dignity intact rather than being a boot licker for Sam Altman, but you do you.
You can die with your humanity at a farm growing veggies and being surrounded by people you love and still be consistent with that I write. Seeing the inevitable does not equal loving or wanting it.
I care deeply. It is not single-handedly going to destroy humanity. However, we are clearly on a course where people are more isolated, less challenged, less social, and very very very unhappy. Music is one of those things that can really bring people together. If we flood the zone with AI music (or any other art form) we will slowly edge out the humans who are doing that. That is less new music. Less chances to come together. Less chances to dance together. It's a death by a thousand cuts. I, and many others, think it's worth fighting for because we want others to have the amazing experiences we're having.
Every generation has a new baseline. The younger generation will not be able to imagine having anything other than doctors and psychologists in the phone, and they are content with it because it's all they know. Social media might be all the social connection they have, and that will be the best thing where they will have the best experiences, they won't know another baseline. Eventually maybe the best experiences will be had with digital companions, etc.
The only losers here are old or bitter people who have tied up their worldview into their own time and cannot see or comprehend that the world has moved on with a different bound for the experiences and expectations.
> Eventually maybe the best experiences will be had with digital companions, etc.
Obviously I can't speak for all of Gen Z (and I realize we're no longer "the younger generation"), but my friends and I don't want any part of this, and feel optimistic rather than bitter that things won't go the way you're describing. I seldom meet anyone in my age group that isn't talking about moving away from social media, cancelling software subscriptions, all of the things that millenials and Gen X seem to be so excited to continue building and promoting.
Even at my workplace the "older" people are the ones that are excited about stuff like AI jazz remixes of rap songs and AI generated short films, while literally everyone else under 30 finds it pretty cringe and makes fun of them in DMs.
So all that to say, I disagree with your outlook, but I guess time will tell.
Talking about and doing something are different things. What are the social and market structures around your friends that lets them avoid having a smartphone, cancelling subscriptions, and uninstalling everything? Do you see this getting better with media consolidations from Substack(Andreassen), Twitter(Musk), and Youtube channels by the hyperscalars/billionaries and questionable merges like Paramount and Warner Bros?
When the social culture is based around platforms and content that has subscriptions, and when media and what you see is consolidated, you can't just exit without losing a big part of the social context because the people around you are eating the same thing.
I dislike slop as much as anyone else. I think it puts a higher burden on the receiver of information to filter the signal in a pile of trash. I just don't really see an actual way out if you look at it from a societal level with the existing structures and incentives.
> you can't just exit without losing a big part of the social context because the people around you are eating the same thing.
That's exactly it. The goal is lose a big part of the social context. It driven by rage bait, AI bots, state actors, and a thousand other influences that are predominantly negative. Of course amazing things happen online. However, the good is not worth bad. I'm raising my kids and they will never have a smart phone. Will they miss out on somethings? Of course! They also won't have their attention span destroyed, their ability to be bored and creative in the real world destroyed, they won't have body issues, they won't be caught up in the alt-right pipeline, they won't have their brains fried by content like Mr. Beast which is designed to be as hyper and addicting as possible. Missing out on the current social context is the entire goal. People were happier before it.
This structure expects all of their friends to live in similar systems. Otherwise their friends will talk about games, memes, series at school while your kids are isolated away as they are not a part of the culture and not in the loop.
I think this is only possible if you find a community with similar values, like religious, or hippie, where the focus is put on other things. Otherwise you might deprive your kids of what you want to give them because they will not feel socially connected.
I am not an idiot. I'm well aware they will pick up things at school My 5 year old already knows who Mr. Beast is. He's never watched a video of his and never will at my home. If he watches one or two at a friends house that of course is going to happen. But he won't be consuming that poison regularly every day. My 8 year old is doing just fine. Happy. Healthy. Active. Lots of friends. And when they're older and fully functioning adults unlike some of these Gen Z zombies who have had their brain fried, they will thank me.
You can be very AI-skeptic in various ways and still think that this is a fair take.
I teach and supervise students as master's level courses, and about 15% of them have intrinsic motivation to learn. These students have set up their own AI tutors with prompts and know way more than me in certain areas of the field, they are extremely ahead of their class.
The issue in my country is that you equate education with getting a safe job. 20 years ago, you needed a high-school degree in social science to get a government job. 10 years ago you needed a bachelor in social sciences to get the same job. 5 years ago you needed a bachelor in economy/engineering to get the same job. Now, because of recessions this is stretching to masters degrees.
You can't expect people who just want a job and a comfortable life and NEED to go to uni for this to want to be curious and want to learn.
And on other side education attainment has become metric for governments. More degrees and higher the degrees are better it will be for the economy somehow. Where there is likely quite a lot of jobs that don't actually need the degree.
> about 15% of them have intrinsic motivation to learn [...] they are extremely ahead of their class.
Feels like whatever tool they'd be given, they'd be ahead anyway. What's more worrying IMHO is, are the remaining 85% faring even worst than they would have before because they are learning even less, not just slower than the 15% learning faster. Namely is the gain for the few a loss for the majority?
You are right on both counts. I do think that it's however different on the first concept. Before, they would be ahead but still capped by their university. If you come from a uni in a 100k person city, you probably would not have the material nor the best teachers. Now you can have literal Stanford quality education (by accessing Stanford's open source lectures) as well as the collective aggregated knowledge of humanity in the chat interface. The curiosity/intrinsic motivation is the only limit except for perhaps compute.
As for the other question, its mixed. I think about 20% of students understand that they are fucked if they just delegate it all to LLMs, they still go through the ropes and show up to class but do the minimum.
However most are down the deep end in various degrees. I have seen students with 5 different 3000-line files for 5 questions for the same lab where each file has 3 lines of code different. This never happened even when the students cheated by accessing old labs online or plagiarizing before.
I believe that what will happen (because universities move really slow on policy and education on LLM use), is that pre-LLM, the university had a normal distribution of skills upon graduation. A company could trust that someone with a degree knew X and Y. With this however, you have more of a bimodal distribution, some know nothing and some know it all, so then the trust in universities deteriorates. I think we will see much more IQ-test/practical tests in hiring processes as the trust falters for that a degree equals something.
A bit like "they do not have cancer", if you are fitting to a distribution you will have the best results by estimating an average. Being hetero is the majority/average, so a good prediction.
But doing this on a 20-way parlay like in this case will almost always fail.
Playing devil's advocate here, but in theory, you could claim that setting up harnesses, targets, verification and incentives for different tasks might be the learning that you are doing. I think that there can be a fair argument made that we are just moving the abstraction a layer up. The learning is then not in the specifics of the field knowledge, but knowing the hacks, monkey patches, incentives and goals that the models should perform.
It could be, that a big part of the the future of hobby's and entertainment in this way is the feeling and validation over the actual performance. Or it can be that a massive amount of people find their value in this content.
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