[HN Gopher] Alchemy
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Alchemy
Author : tobr
Score : 23 points
Date : 2025-11-09 20:04 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (joshcollinsworth.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (joshcollinsworth.com)
| hastamelo wrote:
| when music became easier to make in the 90s and 00s due to
| computers, and you no longer needed studio access, everybody in
| their bedroom started flooding the market with songs. yet music
| remains valuable.
|
| today instagram is flooded with ai videos, many extremely obvious
| (cats doing things), yet these videos are highly popular, some
| have 400!!! mil views, millions of likes
|
| author is confused, thinks music means just beethoven or Pink
| Floyd or whatever he considers "good music"
|
| > AI will never fully displace creatives, because the moment AI
| can mass-produce any kind of creative work at scale, that work
| will stop being worth producing in the first place.
|
| literally confusing art with elitism and gate-keeping. might as
| well require "artist degree from an accredited institution"
| dzink wrote:
| The only question is whether what is valuable to Humans remains
| what is valuable. If major chunks of global money is in the hands
| of a few entities who can generate more money by doing things
| that humans don't care for (example oligarchs profiting from war,
| or by some far out analogy - some AI company blocking the sun to
| extract as much energy as possible to power AI farms at the
| expense of food farms). Then you have a real problem.
|
| Money at its start was human willpower packaged conveniently for
| transport - in exchange for money you could have humans do
| something for you they wouldn't normally do on their own. If you
| can make money by crunching numbers with a GPU that doesn't sleep
| or eat, using energy that doesn't need humans to make, and you
| can buy products with it that make you more money automatically,
| how much would you ask of humans and serve to humans?
| heddycrow wrote:
| Look at the history of art itself to find several movements where
| artists make the point that difficulty in production is not the
| key feature of art. You might even find proof that human
| connection and humanity are not the key features. In fact, it's
| pretty hard to nail down an objective definition of art, but we
| can say what it doesn't have to be.
|
| Gold doesn't share this nebulous sort of definition. Same with
| diamonds, what's their price now that we have figured out the
| "alchemy" for those?
|
| What is it about these sorts of questions that escape those that
| write articles like these? Better yet, if the authors did ask
| these sorts of questions, could they write at all? Put another
| way, must there be a lack of depth in order for these sorts of
| ideas to be properly viral?
|
| Maybe my feed just sucks. Someone please tell me where I can read
| what I describe. Thanks in advance.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I think gold was mentioned to give the nod to alchemy.
|
| Diamonds are an interesting example. My understanding is that
| synthetic diamonds are largely used in industrial process (esp.
| abrasives). Synthetic diamonds in jewelry are cheaper
| alternatives, but jewelers can still sell natural diamonds for
| a premium. I think jewelry diamond prices are down in recent
| years, but not a crash. I think the market largely split.
|
| The value of diamond jewelry feels quite nebulous to me. I
| remember looking at diamonds when picking an engagement ring
| and the jeweler had me look through the loope to examine
| microscopic imperfections, trying to upsell me on a different
| stone. Realizing the absurdity of using a microscope to assess
| jewelery which would otherwise only ever be seen by naked eye,
| the illusion of value broke and I purchased none.
| Ekaros wrote:
| The resale value of any diamond jewellery should tell all
| about real value of it. Unless it is actually rare and
| special piece my understanding is that value drops massively
| moment the payment clears.
|
| Compare this to gold, silver etc. which do have labour, but
| still difference is mostly that and some buy/sell margin.
| darepublic wrote:
| Artificial means of creating gold has not made it less scarce.
| Diamonds on the other hand should be less expensive, its value
| is based on proving your love to someone. Diamond resale value
| sucks. Diamond hasn't changed at all in the process.
| nprateem wrote:
| From the school of thought that brought you "No one will buy mass
| produced goods" and "They won't believe it if it's not true"
| comes another idea that won't age well...
| drdrek wrote:
| Its the first player past the goal post problem, the first
| alchemist will crash the gold market but he will be insanely
| rich. You can see this with advertisers, when a new approach is
| found they all rush to it. They know its going to kill it soon,
| but the first few will get that sweet sweet revenue before the
| public catches on.
|
| AI art will poison the well, but someone will make the few bucks
| that can be extracted before it happens.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| Always thought it was a strange objection. Obviously the
| argument proves too much: by the same logic there is no point
| in inventing or operating say a wheel; the price of pots will
| just fall to the price of clay. Of course that isn't true, you
| make money hand over fist until reaching some kind of perfect
| competition again once everyone else catches up, at which point
| it becomes merely a living.
| eochaid wrote:
| New things are hard to value.
|
| > When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and
| gold,
|
| > Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick
| in the mould;
|
| > And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to
| his mighty heart,
|
| > Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: 'It's pretty, but
| is it Art?'
|
| -- Rudyard Kipling, _The Conundrum of the Workshops_ [1]
|
| [1] https://poets.org/poem/conundrum-workshops
| ibash wrote:
| AI is having the same effect on art as the iPhone did on
| photography.
|
| There's a lot more photos now, most of them mediocre, but some
| exceptional.
|
| It does become harder to filter great photography from noise.
| bananaflag wrote:
| Why do people want to present some tired point, that has already
| been made a thousand times, like some clever new insight?
|
| At least, if you believe that, engage with some counter-arguments
| at least, to make your article worth reading. This blog post is
| exactly the kind of slop (though not AI) that the author is
| criticizing.
| firefoxd wrote:
| This should help: https://xkcd.com/1053/
| jamamp wrote:
| I would argue that the author has no obligation to engage with
| more counter-arguments, or provide something "new" (to you) to
| the conversation.
|
| This is a blog. Blog posts are a way to show the voice of the
| author, share their thoughts on the matter, perhaps work
| through their own thought processes and come to a nice
| conclusion for themselves that they choose to share with the
| public.
|
| I would find the internet and the community incredibly dull if
| the first person to post a criticism was it and everyone else
| always referred to their article. There'd be no further
| discussion whatsoever.
|
| I found this article to be enlightening and a wonderful way to
| frame my disdain for AI-generated art and other content in a
| framing that I hadn't thought of so explicitly before. The
| analogy to alchemy is a welcomed and fresh take. I appreciate
| this article. Perhaps I'm one of today's lucky 10,000 to have
| made this connection.
|
| I also appreciate this article because the author put effort
| into it and voiced their opinion. Voicing opinions don't have
| to be novel, since this isn't academia necessarily where you
| have to fight for uniqueness and new takes.
| jhbadger wrote:
| There was a real world example akin to the alchemists getting
| their wish of making gold and finding out that that destroyed the
| value of it -- Spanish colonialism. Spain brought back tons of
| silver and gold from the New World and instead of making them
| wealthy it crashed their economy by hyperinflation.
|
| https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2045/the-gold-of-the-co...
| d--b wrote:
| Ok so this argues that alchemists would destroy the value of gold
| by creating loads of it, and that's what's going to happen to AI
| artists. A bit of a stretch IMO, but whatever.
|
| So instead what they should have done is to buy tons of lead, and
| make people believe it was actually as good as gold. So people
| would buy it from them, cheap at first, but then they would rise
| the price slowly, and those people who had bought first would
| have made a profit, triggering others to buy lead at an even
| higher price, and making the alchemists a ton of money.
|
| The play was crypyto mining, not AI art.
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| Some people make art for the sake of art though.
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