Studio Ghibli doesn’t want the style “amplified”. That brings them no benefit, it’s only detrimental, and they’ve made that abundantly clear.
They are one of the best, most popular and influential animation studios ever. That you had never heard of them suggests you have little to no interest in animation, which is perfectly fine but also means you’re not their target audience.
What you are saying is that you either do not understand or do not care for craft (it’s an observation, not a criticism), but craft has definite value beyond the end result. Effort does play a huge part, including in animation.
The lights in windows on the background of Akira, for example, were painstakingly painted one by one. That takes skill. That is impressive. It’s the kind of work that makes one with an appreciation for art (which goes beyond “pretty picture”) take another look and imagine what the artist was feeling and thinking as they were working. It makes you wonder about exact techniques and how to improve them, how to create something new.
All of that enhances the appreciation for the movie. The craft, the skill, the sweat put into it to make a hard and grandiose vision plays into how good and influential it has become.
Had those buildings just been spit out by gen AI along with everything else, there would be no value to taking a second look. You’d probably be looking at distorted images anyway, and even if you weren’t it’d just be a bunch of pixels with no intentionality to it. If no one put effort into the details, there’s no reason to look at them. The converse is also true.
I do care for craft, but I don’t view it as an end in itself. The value of craft lies in what it creates, and that value reflects back on the undertaking itself.
But if a machine can replicate mechanically what takes a human effort and ingenuity to do, a human doing the same thing through effort and ingenuity doesn’t magically add further value. And this is understood quite universally; that’s why no human practices the craft of multiplying large numbers anymore.
The part of craft that can be replicated mechanically is the least interesting and valuable part of art.
This is what AI art supporters fail to understand because few if any of them actually practice the craft they emulate. They tend to only work with code and algorithms for which there is no fundamental human expression involved. They assume that because apart from rote intellect and memory the human experience is meaningless in regards to coding as they are acting merely a means of inputting instructions into a machine, that the human experience is equally meaningless for all creative endeavors.
However the value lies not in the technical aspects of craft as an end (which, mind you, no AI is actually good at yet) but as a means of expressing the human experience of an artist and their relationship to the viewer. That dialogue isn't something an LLM can replicate because by definition humanity isn't something an LLM can experience. And even if perfectly mastered on a technical level, it wouldn't have the same value as human expression just as a skillful forgery doesn't have the same value as an original.
> The part of craft that can be replicated mechanically is the least interesting and valuable part of art.
Everything humans do can be replicated mechanically. We’re biological machines, and crafts are just behaviors, not some mystical feat that somehow defies replication or analysis. And there can be no reasonable doubt that machines will replicate (and indeed surpass) everything human very soon.
This doesn't actually refute my comment, even given the assumption that your predictions prove correct. Even given a purely physicalist universe and a machine perfectly capable of replicating all human endeavors, most humans will find more value in human expression.
That doesn't require any argument from mysticism, just an understanding that the context of humanity has value for most humans (perhaps not you, but most humans) beyond the pure transactional mechanisms of value creation, stimulus and response.
> There seems to be this pressure to either go fully vegetarian or it doesn't count, which is obviously total nonsense.
Hard agree. It’s counterproductive to have that view, even, and it’s why many people give up on vegetarianism (“I wasn’t able to go all in cold turkey, so it isn’t for me and I’ll revert completely”).
> that looks exactly like the ones I was used to growing up
Unless you’re so young you just finished growing up, I find that unlikely. Sure, this ad isn’t visually revolutionary by today’s standards (nor does it need to be; it’s an ad, it’s not being played in theatres before the next Disney movie), but it’s still competent and has a ton of detail which surpasses earlier Pixar pictures.
There’s an argument to be made that by watching higher image quality versions, you’re losing on the experience. I.e. the blurriness helped the effect. Their nostalgia and your (presumably) more recent viewing are then two different watching experiences.
So, although it's difficult to generalize because exactly where the line is drawn varies from one vegan to another, it's generally not enough that the animal wasn't directly harmed.
For example the honey bees make honey for a reason, just as apple trees make apples for a reason and maple trees make a sugary sap for a reason. "So that humans can eat it" isn't the reason in either case. The apples and maple syrup are categorised differently by vegans because the trees aren't animals. That's still an arbitrary line, but so are most things.
For themselves. To eat. So it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey, which is the result of their labour.
But surely there’s nuance there. I don’t doubt there are ethical growers who provide bees with an extra nice and controlled environment, plus care for them and help them fight pests, and thus feel like taking a share of the produced honey is a fair trade. The bees might agree.
> "So that humans can eat it" isn't the reason in either case.
But it is. In the case of many fruits, the goal is for an animal (humans included) to eat them, seeds and all, then poop them out (bonus fertiliser) somewhere else.
> That's still an arbitrary line, but so are most things.
No disagreement there, but I don’t see how any of that is relevant to my comment. I was correcting a misconception about mushrooms, not debating the nuances of vegan opinions. I don’t care for the label and don’t think it’s helpful to fight about what it means. It’s much more important to strive to be progressively better than to aim for perfection and fail.
Essentially all modern honey farming is what you're calling "ethical". It's too expensive to replace the colony each year now that we have an alternative, and a winter - even a relatively mild winter in most parts of the world - will kill the bees if you've stolen all their food.
Unlike the maple tree, we do know how to substitute the valuable honey for nutritionally similar but cheaper alternatives - you can buy suitable food commercially because this is a whole industry, nevertheless, vegans object to our intervention, the bees didn't make nutritionally equivalent bee food, they made honey. Even farmers who choose to calibrate and remove only some honey, judging what will be enough for their colony to survive, are considered not to meet vegan requirements for the same reason.
To the extent there's a shared definition it really is as simple as originally explained, animal: not OK, non-animal: fine.
One of my professors (who is now vegan) had an ethical rule prohibiting eating things which, like him, had backbones. Same idea, it's more similar to me, therefore don't eat it. All such lines in the sand are somewhat arbitrary.
Many might, but many don’t. This is a prime example of why fighting over the label is counterproductive. You’re putting a bunch of different people in the same sack and criticising them for something which the group is not consensual on.
Again, I have no desire to nitpick over what makes one a vegan or not. That’s a waste of everyone’s time and only generates unnecessary conflict. It is not only detrimental but unbearably boring.
> For themselves. To eat. So it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey, which is the result of their labour.
On the other hand the bee social structure (not sure what the right word to use here) is so brutal that taking their honey seems to be just keeping pace. :)
> it’s easy to understand the argument that you’re harming them directly by stealing their honey
Do you think no physical arm is done to an Apple tree for it to give fruits? You should read about fruit tree pruning then…
> But it is. In the case of many fruits, the goal is for an animal (humans included) to eat them, seeds and all, then poop them out (bonus fertiliser) somewhere else.
Which we don't. So we're doing exactly the same thing to tree as we are doing to cow: abusing a natural process that's designed to help their babies.
> I was correcting a misconception about mushrooms, not debating the nuances of vegan opinions.
There's no misconception about mushrooms.
> It’s much more important to strive to be progressively better than to aim for perfection and fail.
The problem is that there isn't an objective definition of “better”. As heterotrophs we can only survive by destroying other living thing. This is a curse we must live with.
Which living thing is fair game is fundamentally an arbitrary position driven by our subjective moral values. You have to draw a line, but there's no valid reason to say that the line must be drawn at the Animalia border rather than at the Tetrapod (which means fish are OK to eat). Most of the arguments that apply to the whole order of animals also apply to most multicellular beings anyway (including the existence of a pain-like mechanism).
You are free to have stronger emotional bonds with a fish or a bee than with a mushroom or a plant, but it's in no way more rational or objectively better than when most people refuse to eat dogs and horses but are fine with cows.
Well the reason apple trees make apples is actually that someone can eat them, and then ideally poop out the seeds so that a new tree can grow. But that is literally their purpose.
> Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungus. Complaining about eating those is akin to complaining about eating apples; you’re not harming the tree.
Why are eggs a problem for vegans then? They are quite literally the “fruit body” of birds. Milk and honey should be even less problematic, as it's not even made of parts of cow or bees.
Each have his own reason, but I refer you to the definition of veganism by the Vegan Society (whose founder "invented" the world vegan):
> [...] exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, [..]
While ecology and health are cited by some vegans, many (if not most) of them are interested in avoiding unnecessary cruelty. That's why there's a discussion where some people define themselves as vegan but do eat musles and other "nerveless" animals they don't considered sentient. On the other hand bees, cows and chicken are sentient and most of they don't have a lot of fun at the farm.
> I don't think it's only from a cynic point of view - the question "if meat is murder, am I a bad person if I literally can't survive without it?" is a fair and interesting one.
I think the argument is “meat is murder because you can survive without it”. Maybe that doesn’t work for the wolf, but I mean, it’s literally a story being made up for a child, and animals in those are allegories for humans.
I can choose to not eat meat and live healthily, but I’m not going to feed only vegetables to a pet cat, who needs something different. To each what they need, as ethically as possible. When you can minimise harm, do.
Extremely debatable and seems very dependent on your personal genetics/ethnicity.
Just because you don't drop dead doesn't mean it's ideal; people can live underground too…
You can survive without a lot of things. Some people survived eating dead bodies on a mountain in the Andes. When people reference life quality they generally don't talk in terms of "survival."
Cats doesn't need more beef kibbles than vegan kebbles! It's a common fallacy but cats do thrive with vegetables if selected and cooked right! Sure they're meat eater in the wild but if we accept modern (ultra processed) meat keebles as suitable for a cat, the vegan options definitely also check the healthy and nutricious points.
Now we can debate if it's "natural" but that would open the horizon to other aspects of cat's modern live.
What parts of my message you think is misinformation? Beside multiple anecdotal evidence, heres a paper on the subject:
> No differences in reported lifespan were detected between diet types. Fewer cats fed plant-based diets reported to have gastrointestinal and hepatic disorders. Cats fed plant-based diets were reported to have more ideal body condition scores than cats fed a meat-based diet.
> Cat owner perception of the health and wellness of cats does not appear to be adversely affected by being fed a plant-based diet. Contrary to expectations, owners perceived no body system or disorder to be at particular risk when feeding a plant-based diet to cats.
I love it when you share some insight about HN or internet communication for which you have relevant searches at the ready to explanations of the concept.
A personal favourite is “the contrarian dynamic”.
Do you have a list of those at the ready or do you just remember them? If you feel like sharing, what’s your process and is there a list of those you’d make public?
I imagine having one would be useful, e.g. for onboarding someone like tomhow, though that doesn’t really happen often.
The process is simply that moderation is super repetitive, so eventually certain pathways get engraved in one's memory. A lot of the time, though, I can't quite remember one of these patterns and I'm unable to dig up my past comments about it. That's annoying, in that particular way when your brain can feel something's there but is unable to retrieve it.
Well, you're #24 in this article's hall of fame, and the LLM thinks your moderation views stood the test of time. Perhaps it can already retrieve them for you.
Submissions put in the second-chance pool briefly appear (sometimes "again") on the frontpage, and the conversation timestamps are reset so it appears like they were written after the second-chance submission, not before.
I suppose they want to make the comments seem "fresh" but it's a deliberate misrepresentation. You could probably even contrive a situation where it could be damaging, e.g. somebody says something before some relevant incident, but the website claims they said it afterwards.
I think the reason is much simpler than that. Resetting the timestamp lets them easily resurface things on the frontpage, because the current time - posting time delta becomes a lot smaller, so it's again ranked higher. And avoiding adding a special case, lets the rest of the codebase work exactly like it was before, basically just need to add a "set submission time to now" function and you get the rest for free.
But, I'm just guessing here based on my own refactoring experience through the years, may be a completely different reason, or even by mistake? Who knows? :)
There is some action that moderators can take that throws one of yesterday's articles back on the front page and when that happens all the comments have the same timestamp.
They are one of the best, most popular and influential animation studios ever. That you had never heard of them suggests you have little to no interest in animation, which is perfectly fine but also means you’re not their target audience.
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