I was going to say for "What Goes Around Comes Around" by Timberlake, or maybe "F--- it, I don't want you back" by Eamonn, myself. Schopenhauer though. Great minds.
Is utilitarianism OK with lying? Given the lyrics.
> Is it too late to say sorry
> Because I'm missing more than your body
If utilitarianisms only interest is the consequence of the action and whether it resulted in a positive outlook. the consequence that we care about is "your body" and if "sorry" is uttered in time, then we can receive the reward, If in the relationship you say sorry and there is an expectation of all actions being forgiven, then, this is the ultimate get out of jail free card. it is infinite because you can always use it, therefore although there is recognition of wrongdoing (at first), there is no need for a preventative measure to take place, because the recognition only looks at the consequence of reverting the status of "wronged" to "righted", not about the causes of the status "wronged" to have happened. This leads to an infinite loop of wrongful actions. What would happen if we constantly said "sorry" unnecessarily at a set interval, which we'll call the canadian way, there would always be our desired consequence and no wrongdoing to ever take place!
Without the recognition and admittance of wrongdoing, the wrong action itself will repeat forever in the relationship because its tolerable. making it an infinite get out of jail free card. If this was a system, fault tolerance would be at 100%, the error rate is probably the highest in any system that could exist, if it was code, then there wouldn't even be such a thing as bugfixes, the only recourse is "have you tried rebooting it?" method of recovery systems. Of course if the fault tolerance was not 100% then everything would be different.
Funny. Take a simple pop song about apology and make an academic treatise on what a heartfelt apology looks like.
On the other end of the spectrum would be to summarize it in the shortest form with the simplest words, instead of with many and multi-syllable words. How about this (not mine, I’ve heard this in addiction recovery rooms, where apologies and amends are often discussed):
In the sentence “I’m sorry I did x, but you did y”, the word “but” means “disregard the above.”
Whenever I catch myself reaching for “but” I recognize it is because I need to feel heard. What I did was unacceptable. But I didn’t do it in a vacuum and I need my grievances to be recognized. My belief is that omitting the “but” phrase is an act of faith. You need to trust that the other party cares about your feelings and side of the issue, too. Accepting an apology is just as delicate an act as giving one.
“I’m sorry I hit you with the blue shell.”
“I appreciate you saying that. I know you were in last place and that must have felt awful. I don’t want that for you either.”
I find you can almost always replace “but” with “and” in situations like those and end up more heard by the other side.
I understand the urge to feel heard AND whenever we bring something that may contrast we risk the disagreement connotation that “but” carries to trigger the recipient’s defensive reaction (even if unconsciously)
Depending on the relationship involved, asking the person why they think I behaved as I did often helps. Sometimes the reason they think I did what I did is more correct than what I would have put after but or and. And sometimes the answer they give shows they are modeling my motivations completely incorrectly.
Bieber in this case refers to body as in "corps", the subject's collective professional or military associations. He laments the loss of power he enjoyed stemming from the subject's erstwhile allegiance.
I suppose it helps to focus on the core of someone's strength, and the core of the content they are sharing.
You could be a great engineer and a great blogger, but have no skill in making graphics. If you made the artistic choice to add AI-generated art to an excellent engineering blog post, I would forgive it -- assuming it wasn't detracting in some important way.
Overall, the human skill of editing - particularly excluding that which is not additive - does remain key though.
I will say in this case, I don't know the pop song well enough to know if the AI-generated image is super relevant, or just random.
EDIT: I'm guessing it's "Kant"[0] in the image, listening to modern music. Ah... at first I thought it was like, George Washington.
You're absolutely right! jk. I hate this situation of "everything is slop until proven otherwise" and the author doesn't have to be good at writing and drawing just to share their thoughts. But generally you don't expect a Michelin star level meal after having a turd sandwich entrée. It's just a natural pavlovian response at this point to see slop and expect slop. Totally unfair, I agree, but really hard to get rid of it.
It's not even unfair. It's just a heuristic that occasionally gives incorrect results. We and the author would have both been better off skipping the illustration.
The real problem is that "serious content creators" believe (as far as I can tell anyway) that they must have a cover image to make the article appealing or set the mood or whatever. They might even be right as far as the actually reader is concerned, but either way this is the real disease, and it's decades older than LLMs.
You don't have to be an artist! Just draw stickman doodles, it shows personality and effort, and I will respect you a billion times more than Promptbert Sloppenheimer.
It's not an art piece, it's a writing piece. The illustration is just there for support, not the central focus or even the topic of the article. The author is obviously a decent writer, but I don't see how they should be expected to pay an artist for a simple illustration when this article has nothing to do with said illustration. Life isn't black and white, and you'd do yourself a favor by noticing the shades of gray.
They don’t have to pay an artist for the illustration, just use a stock photo (lots of which exist). Or leave it blank (nobody needed an illustration). Having an AI image for filler seems to be in poor taste.
They could just have no "hero image"? Quasi-irrelevant hero images where already bad before AI, AI-generated ones are just 10x worse.
Anyway, it is their piece, their website, so they choose how to structure it. I just don't like the plague of hero images in general. I can understand a hero image that adds something relevant, or even simply has some artistic value in itself. But both stock images and AI-generated ones add neither.
Due to that image, I immediately copy pasted it to pangram before reading the author's note. Interestingly enough it marked it all as AI generated that has "been paraphrased or rewritten". I am not sure I trust that though, and I want to give the benefit of the doubt to the author's claim because the article itself was not bad in the end anyway, and I also enjoyed reading it. I am very curious though if this was indeed a false positive.
The irony is, as I read the OP I thought it was very much in the style of McSweeneys and then there is this.
It is a pretty obvious humor device so I assume the ideas are independent. And the Socratic dialog framing adds another layer of humor since this is closer to a juxtaposition, lampooning both Swift's vapidity and Plato's writing style.
Then ask an LLM. I'm serious, if you like the style. This article, despite the disclaimer, is almost certainly LLM-written. It's one of many ephemeral blogs that have been cropping up on HN lately and that post single-theme content with striking regularity.
Both Aristotle and Sokrates would grant the song one point: The demand to be productive every waking hour is not a moral truth. The boss and the father do not own the day. The problem is what the song puts in the space it wins. It clears out the obligations. Then it stops short of asking what the free day is for.
This 3 minute song creates a fleeting portrait of a man, not necessarily Bieber, who we cannot know. The song captures the mindset of a character who, one might infer, cynically knows what he’s trying to do. It’s possible he has no interest in a heartfelt, meaningful apology. In fact, this character - who lives only within the song and the liminal world it creates - may be operating exactly to his own moral preference. We don’t know enough to say more. It’s like asking if a singer of “happy birthday” truly wishes their subject to be happy.
In short, you Kant analyze pop music with confidence.
Of course one cannot in all sincerity know. Today, and even yesteryear, are composed to entertain others, not oneself. They are seldom personal or about the singer, with exceptions like the well known songs by Carly Simon and others. In any event songs today are often written by others, passed around till they find a “home.”
In a recent South Africa vs England rugby match, an accusation of racism was levied against an SA player because he directed the phrase "white cunt" to one of the English players.
If Afrikaans, the word "kant" (pronounced 'cunt') means "side". "Wit" is "white".
So when he said "wit kant" he really meant "white side". England traditionally wears white livery, South Africa wears green. So it was the "wit kant" vs the "groen kant".
Hilarity and much confusion ensued for a while after that accusation!
there was once a small radical artis gallery in Edinburgh (as a part of the The Forest, when it existed as a 4-floor social centre) called "Total Kunst"
Surprised this article didn't explain the categorical imperative before appealing to it. Here's my interpretation of it, although some would say that (4) is a utilitarian interpretation(even though it's globally utilitarian) and therefore it is not truly categorical.
(1) We all know that doing what's best for oneself does not count as doing something "good" or "right". Even the worst psychopath or monster will do what is best for themselves. "What benefits me" is not a principle on which to decide how to act morally.
(2) The most basic moral principle might be "do no harm", i.e. you are free to do whatever you want as long as you do not cause others harm. This is something that most normal human beings instinctively recognize as a valid way to decide between good and bad actions. This is the absolute minimum moral compass you must possess in order to participate in civilized society.
(3) One level up is the golden rule, or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or treating others the same way you would want to be treated. This is generally recognized by many religions as the gold standard for what it means to be a good human being.
(4) Kant goes one level further. He says, basically: "before you do something, ask yourself: if everyone else in the world did what you're about to do as a matter of course, will it make the world better or worse? If it makes the world worse, then don't do it". This is a very basic formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative.
(4) is not actually co-extensive with any of Kant's four formulations of the CI. To break them down:
1. The "universal law" formulation (GMS 4:421) states that an action if permissible if and only if we can will that maxim of our action becomes a universal law. At no point does the FUL actually ask whether the world becomes a better place, it asks strictly whether there's a logical contraction between the maxim of one's actions and their universalization.
2. The "humanity" formulation (GMS 4:429) states that an action is permissible if and only if it treats its rational subjects (including the actor) as ends in themselves, rather than means. But this too is a logical construction without reference to outcomes: a plain reading of Kant suggests that the HF formulation permits actions that make the world a worse place so long as the maxim behind the action is derived from a basic source of respect for humanity as a means.
3. The "autonomy" formulation (GMS 4:432) is similar to the FUL, except that it asks us to imagine ourselves as a legislator of universal law. My interpretation of this formulation (IMO it's Kant's most confusing) is as his attempt to emphasize that we must not merely follow derivations of universal law, but actively legislate and derive it for ourselves. This effectively layers a constraint on the FUL, but preserves its basic logical structure, i.e. does not ask us to perform casuistry when determining whether an action is permissible.
4. The "kingdom of ends" formulation (GMS 4:439) is intended as a unifying formulation of the first three, and essentially challenges us to test the moral permissibility of the maxims our actions not merely through universalization, humanity, or self-legislation, but as acceptable to an abstract community (Kant's "kingdom") of similarly rational, self-legislating actors. This is arguably Kant in his most Rawlsian/Piagetian state, since there's an additional idea that the permissibility of our actions is qualified and constrained by whether our peers would accept them.
Of these, (4) is arguably the closest to us asking whether the world is made better or worse as our moral test. But two problems emerge. First, Kant himself sees his formulations as co-extensive, meaning that (4) cannot imply any consideration for outcomes if (1) through (3) do not (and they do not, as purely logical, non-casuistic constructions of duty). Second, Kant emphasizes acceptance of actions in the KOE formulation, and acceptance in turn is grounded in (1) through (3). If acceptance were not grounded so, the imperatives in question would be hypothetical rather than categorical.
From a Hegelian perspective, the concept of the apology inherently is contradictory: for an apology before the act of harm has occurred is always "too early," yet an apology after the act has occurred is always, in some sense, "too late," ie, the harm has already been caused. We can see from this point that the apology is therefore never-on-time, always a spectre in the realm of human temporality. Also, I've never read Hegel (not that this disqualifies me from being a Hegelian.)
We can not attribute the moral image of the protagonist to Bieber himself. He is an artist, so he is describing an experience of life, perhaps stemming from the receiving end of a fake apology.
Otherwise, it is a very good and thought-provoking article.
‘And so, given what we know regarding his desire that Anne Frank might have been a Belieber, we can conclude not either that this constitutes, as some have remarked, the worst moral failure, or bad taste, and so on, or also likewise not merely a youthful remark made in ignorance. But, instead, this desire is a semblance of the most moral imagination and one which we must maintain if we are to remain fully human in the world after such atrocities.’
> We cannot attribute any moral judgment to Bieber as a human being; we can only answer the moral question as posed in the song.
As a semi-off-topic little rant, why do we always assume that pop singers are singing about themselves and their own experiences? Can a song, as a work of art, not have an independent existence, much as a novel may? Pop, rap, and maybe country songs are all now assumed to be about the artist themselves.
The question might be asked "why would we assume the singer isn't singing about themself?" In modern pop music it's become it's become standard that the "character" an artist "plays" when they're performing or writing is themself; there's no suspension of disbelief like with a play where there's an entire context around knowing that what you're seeing is a portrayal. Same with a book or movie or other works of fiction, and with those forms of media it's clear when you're seeing or reading fiction or non-fiction.
In a sense, some artists write novels and some write memoirs.
86 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 2668 ms ] thread> Is it too late to say sorry
> Because I'm missing more than your body
If utilitarianisms only interest is the consequence of the action and whether it resulted in a positive outlook. the consequence that we care about is "your body" and if "sorry" is uttered in time, then we can receive the reward, If in the relationship you say sorry and there is an expectation of all actions being forgiven, then, this is the ultimate get out of jail free card. it is infinite because you can always use it, therefore although there is recognition of wrongdoing (at first), there is no need for a preventative measure to take place, because the recognition only looks at the consequence of reverting the status of "wronged" to "righted", not about the causes of the status "wronged" to have happened. This leads to an infinite loop of wrongful actions. What would happen if we constantly said "sorry" unnecessarily at a set interval, which we'll call the canadian way, there would always be our desired consequence and no wrongdoing to ever take place!
Without the recognition and admittance of wrongdoing, the wrong action itself will repeat forever in the relationship because its tolerable. making it an infinite get out of jail free card. If this was a system, fault tolerance would be at 100%, the error rate is probably the highest in any system that could exist, if it was code, then there wouldn't even be such a thing as bugfixes, the only recourse is "have you tried rebooting it?" method of recovery systems. Of course if the fault tolerance was not 100% then everything would be different.
On the other end of the spectrum would be to summarize it in the shortest form with the simplest words, instead of with many and multi-syllable words. How about this (not mine, I’ve heard this in addiction recovery rooms, where apologies and amends are often discussed):
In the sentence “I’m sorry I did x, but you did y”, the word “but” means “disregard the above.”
But,
Whenever I catch myself reaching for “but” I recognize it is because I need to feel heard. What I did was unacceptable. But I didn’t do it in a vacuum and I need my grievances to be recognized. My belief is that omitting the “but” phrase is an act of faith. You need to trust that the other party cares about your feelings and side of the issue, too. Accepting an apology is just as delicate an act as giving one.
“I’m sorry I hit you with the blue shell.”
“I appreciate you saying that. I know you were in last place and that must have felt awful. I don’t want that for you either.”
I understand the urge to feel heard AND whenever we bring something that may contrast we risk the disagreement connotation that “but” carries to trigger the recipient’s defensive reaction (even if unconsciously)
“I felt X, Y, Z, so I did P, Q, R, but I’m sorry for that because it caused you A, B, C.”
Your usage of “but” still invalidates the preceding phrase on behalf of the latter, which works here because the affirmed phrase is the apology.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with stating your side — but if you mean it, end on the apology.
"cause I'm missing more than just your body"
What else does she have that he misses?
Though I must state that the pic almost had me closing the tab before reading.
Here's another venting out, somewhere near Categorical Imperative https://kohlbergs7.org/epm/
a sentence i have't heard since middle school at the local corner store with my bros hesitant about buying a lad mag
I have once gotten a copy when visiting somewhere abroad as a teenager, it had a blue car on the cover. We didn't have those.
I have been amused by this memory occasionally while doing the middle aged version of maxim.
Damn. Please never stop writing
I suppose it helps to focus on the core of someone's strength, and the core of the content they are sharing.
You could be a great engineer and a great blogger, but have no skill in making graphics. If you made the artistic choice to add AI-generated art to an excellent engineering blog post, I would forgive it -- assuming it wasn't detracting in some important way.
Overall, the human skill of editing - particularly excluding that which is not additive - does remain key though.
I will say in this case, I don't know the pop song well enough to know if the AI-generated image is super relevant, or just random.
EDIT: I'm guessing it's "Kant"[0] in the image, listening to modern music. Ah... at first I thought it was like, George Washington.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
The real problem is that "serious content creators" believe (as far as I can tell anyway) that they must have a cover image to make the article appealing or set the mood or whatever. They might even be right as far as the actually reader is concerned, but either way this is the real disease, and it's decades older than LLMs.
Anyway, it is their piece, their website, so they choose how to structure it. I just don't like the plague of hero images in general. I can understand a hero image that adds something relevant, or even simply has some artistic value in itself. But both stock images and AI-generated ones add neither.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/taylor-swift-a-socratic-...
It is a pretty obvious humor device so I assume the ideas are independent. And the Socratic dialog framing adds another layer of humor since this is closer to a juxtaposition, lampooning both Swift's vapidity and Plato's writing style.
...
A Cartesian Critique of "Fireflies" by Owl City
...
A Humean Critique of "I Gotta Feeling" by The Black Eyed Peas
https://www.bensparks.co.uk/talk/the-sacred-geometry-of-chan...
https://talkhouse.com/neil-hagerty-royal-trux-pussy-galore-t...
In short, you Kant analyze pop music with confidence.
Fun fact: The correct German pronunciation of “Kant” isn’t like “can’t”, but like “cunt”.
In a recent South Africa vs England rugby match, an accusation of racism was levied against an SA player because he directed the phrase "white cunt" to one of the English players.
If Afrikaans, the word "kant" (pronounced 'cunt') means "side". "Wit" is "white".
So when he said "wit kant" he really meant "white side". England traditionally wears white livery, South Africa wears green. So it was the "wit kant" vs the "groen kant".
Hilarity and much confusion ensued for a while after that accusation!
(which is, in part, a play on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total art")
(1) We all know that doing what's best for oneself does not count as doing something "good" or "right". Even the worst psychopath or monster will do what is best for themselves. "What benefits me" is not a principle on which to decide how to act morally.
(2) The most basic moral principle might be "do no harm", i.e. you are free to do whatever you want as long as you do not cause others harm. This is something that most normal human beings instinctively recognize as a valid way to decide between good and bad actions. This is the absolute minimum moral compass you must possess in order to participate in civilized society.
(3) One level up is the golden rule, or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or treating others the same way you would want to be treated. This is generally recognized by many religions as the gold standard for what it means to be a good human being.
(4) Kant goes one level further. He says, basically: "before you do something, ask yourself: if everyone else in the world did what you're about to do as a matter of course, will it make the world better or worse? If it makes the world worse, then don't do it". This is a very basic formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative.
1. The "universal law" formulation (GMS 4:421) states that an action if permissible if and only if we can will that maxim of our action becomes a universal law. At no point does the FUL actually ask whether the world becomes a better place, it asks strictly whether there's a logical contraction between the maxim of one's actions and their universalization.
2. The "humanity" formulation (GMS 4:429) states that an action is permissible if and only if it treats its rational subjects (including the actor) as ends in themselves, rather than means. But this too is a logical construction without reference to outcomes: a plain reading of Kant suggests that the HF formulation permits actions that make the world a worse place so long as the maxim behind the action is derived from a basic source of respect for humanity as a means.
3. The "autonomy" formulation (GMS 4:432) is similar to the FUL, except that it asks us to imagine ourselves as a legislator of universal law. My interpretation of this formulation (IMO it's Kant's most confusing) is as his attempt to emphasize that we must not merely follow derivations of universal law, but actively legislate and derive it for ourselves. This effectively layers a constraint on the FUL, but preserves its basic logical structure, i.e. does not ask us to perform casuistry when determining whether an action is permissible.
4. The "kingdom of ends" formulation (GMS 4:439) is intended as a unifying formulation of the first three, and essentially challenges us to test the moral permissibility of the maxims our actions not merely through universalization, humanity, or self-legislation, but as acceptable to an abstract community (Kant's "kingdom") of similarly rational, self-legislating actors. This is arguably Kant in his most Rawlsian/Piagetian state, since there's an additional idea that the permissibility of our actions is qualified and constrained by whether our peers would accept them.
Of these, (4) is arguably the closest to us asking whether the world is made better or worse as our moral test. But two problems emerge. First, Kant himself sees his formulations as co-extensive, meaning that (4) cannot imply any consideration for outcomes if (1) through (3) do not (and they do not, as purely logical, non-casuistic constructions of duty). Second, Kant emphasizes acceptance of actions in the KOE formulation, and acceptance in turn is grounded in (1) through (3). If acceptance were not grounded so, the imperatives in question would be hypothetical rather than categorical.
Otherwise, it is a very good and thought-provoking article.
As a semi-off-topic little rant, why do we always assume that pop singers are singing about themselves and their own experiences? Can a song, as a work of art, not have an independent existence, much as a novel may? Pop, rap, and maybe country songs are all now assumed to be about the artist themselves.
In a sense, some artists write novels and some write memoirs.
Fortunately most artists are neither fighting dragons nor worshiping satan.