Unpopular Opinions

They should adapt that book Scientology claims kills you if you aren’t Scientological(?) enough to comprehend it. Excalibur has to be absolute ass if being Tom Cruise rich and John Travolta stupid is the barrier to read it.

Dunno if unpopular per se but, I despise when stealth focused games have missions and/or sections that throw said stealth out of the window with forced fights and then expect for you to go all non-lethal in said armed confrontations if you want the S rank or whatever rank is the best possible in the game.

Thankfully Hitman and Splinter Cell (the old ones at least) tend to skip this and let you fight without judging you for going the lethal route in a mess where is the sensical option, encouraged and the game ultimately forced on you. The worst offender is Metal Gear, that if you went for those Big Boss and S ranks, they expect you to KO people who are very aware of your presence and actively doing their best to fill you with lead.

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I hate it when anyone or anything in the entertainment sector uses the term “return to the roots,” in all its various permutations. This, to me, is a coded phrase that essentially means this thing being discussed isn’t as popular anymore, so we’re gonna try to recapture the original magic by making a new thing that’s sort of like the old thing and hope that it works.

The latest example I saw being an article that says Steven Spielberg’s next project will be “a return to the director’s roots.” And I have to ask, what the fuck does that even mean? He’s gonna make another shark movie? Another story of friendly aliens interacting with curious humans? What precisely are the roots he’s returning to that signify he’s currently out of steam at this time in his career? At this point, this whole going back to the roots thing has become as much a cliche’ as sequels and reboots.

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Don’t know if it’s unpopular, although it probably would be, as it would be yet another case of a white actor playing a Western Asia character, and I’m normally against that, but I’ve always believed that Robert O’Reilly would have made a fantastic Ra’s al Ghul in a Batman live action film, based on his performance as Gowron on Star Treks The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Tell me you don’t see it.

Apparently, based on my incredibly brief internet research, the population at large doesn’t know what the term “plot hole” means. In order for something to be a plot hole, it must contradict the logic of the world established by a film, book, or other narrative. It doesn’t mean “thing I don’t understand” nor does it mean “thing the author simply didn’t explain”.

Notable examples of “plot holes” that are not actually plot holes:

The eagles not flying the ring to Mordor… not a plot hole.
The kick to the face at the end of Karate Kid… not a plot hole.
Doc not using the gas from the Delorean in the mine… not a plot hole.

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I have to question that one for Karate Kid, as it was explicitly stated that such a move was not allowed, and yet he won. I haven’t seen an argument explaining it.

Read the scripts for both The Karate Kid and The Karate Kid 3.

In the first movie (the one where Daniel actually kicks Johnny Lawrence in the face), the only rules that are explained are (by Ali):

“Everything above your waist is a point. You can hit the head, sternum, kidneys, ribs. Got it?”

In the Karate Kid 3, before the final fight between Daniel and Mike Barnes, the referee states:

“You both know the rules. Light contact is allowed to the body, and I do mean light, Mr. Barnes. No face contact is allowed. Any violation of the rules will result in a penalty point.”

Ergo, the kick was completely legal in the Karate Kid but would have been illegal in the Karate Kid 3. Not a plot hole.

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I’ll have to rewatch that scene. I’ve admittedly only watched it once.

It’s very commonly cited so you’re not unusual in that regard. Those movies came out a long time ago and people conflate 1 and 3 together, I think.

I’m pretty sure that because it worked well as a climatic point when people did a contrarian analysis to show Daniel as the bad guy. Those were pretty popular on YouTube for a while.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand the intricacies of lying and not lying.

You are not lying if you tell someone something that isn’t true, unless you are aware at the time you tell them that it’s a lie.

I hear people say all the time, after telling someone else something incorrect, and then they say “no, wait, I’m lying, blah blah blah.” And it’s so annoying. You’re not lying, you’re just wrong. It’s ok to say ”I’m wrong,” it’s better to be wrong than a liar.

If you tell someone something that someone else told you, and you believed what they told you and passed that information on in good faith, you’re not lying then either; you are spreading a lie, but you yourself are not a liar.

A lie of omission is usually not a lie. This one is trickier because it really depends on the situation. I’ll use the best analogy I can: imagine someone is about to go fight someone, and they ask you if that person is carrying a knife. You tell them “yes, he has a knife.” Now, the person gets to the fight, and the other person pulls out two knives, and you knew in advance that they were going to have a second knife. You did not lie to the person by omitting the fact that they had another knife, because the person only asked if they had a knife, and you truthfully answered them. If they wanted to know if they had more than just a knife, it is on them to ask follow-up questions, or word their initial question more carefully; you are under no legal or social obligation to give them any more information than exactly what their initial question asked for.

Now, if you answered their question by saying “no, they don’t have a knife,” because you know that they actually have two knives and the question only specifies the foreknowledge of one, then you are lying by omission, because you are misleading them to the wrong conclusion - that the other person has no knife at all - by giving the answer to the question under a greater technicality than the first example in order to deliberately mislead.

A situation like that is a lie by omission; not telling your parents the names of everyone expected to be at a party when they ask who else is going to be there and you only tell them the names of a few of your friends you know will be there is not a lie by omission. It is on the question asker to word their questions carefully and ask for clarification.

That’s sarcasm.

The person passing the info should say; “Well, I heard from Bob/Sally that bla, bla, bla.”

In this instance the person answering should’ve put emphasis on the “a”. Also, say it in a way that feels like it has an open end… As if there were more to add to the phrase/sentence. If the person that asked didn’t pick up on that - that’s on them. Although, in the case of a knife fight or some other potentially dangerous situation, the person not readily divulging critical info such as the example given, to me, seems like a malevolent a-hole. Or the person that will potentially be getting knifed deserves it… I dunno.

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Irrelevant. It’s the wrong thing to say, and repeated use of terms leads to changes in the language, and we don’t need to be making lying and being wrong interchangeable.

“No, wait, I’m lying,…”

Could be replaced with…

“No wait, that’s not right! I was confused/mistaken…”

Nobody would say (I imagine it being in a robotic, monotone voice) the following.

“I regret to inform you that my previous statement was a complete fabrication.” :robot:

Because that’s just as valid of a statement if one is to take the phrase…

“No, wait, I’m lying.”

Literally.

I’m pretty sure you know this, but… why fret over it?

Well, I don’t see a reason to. You do you.

Like I said originally, all they have to do is say they’re wrong, or that’s wrong. Simple, fewer words, and truthful.

It annoys me more when native english speakers have complete disregard for the use of then and than. It’s as if they use them incorrectly on purpose. Same thing, albeit not to the same extent, with there/their/they’re.
And when they write of instead of have. “Would of/should of/could of”.
I probably make mistakes here and there too, but at least I try to make a semblance of effort not to.

Don’t know if that’s an unpopular opinion though.

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Regarding AI Art. Yes. While it could be argued that in its early days it borrowed or “stole” images from other sources that were produced by real people, at what point did AI develop a foundation or knowledge base from which it could work off of? Doesn’t AI have the ability to learn? It has, without a doubt, improved since it began.

It does seem ironic that a great deal of human artists stole… er, were inspired by the work of others so they could (hopefully) develop their own style. (There’s potentially a larger discussion here, but I’ll stay away from that for now.)

Anyway, my point is that, given the AI image generator, can we still say that AI steals others’ works? I’d think that AI has learned enough that it’d be nearly impossible to take an AI image and say that it came directly from X or Y image produced by a real person.

While it can be said that it steals from artists in that their talent wasn’t utilized to generate whatever image, by which they would usually (or hopefully) be paid for said work, that I can understand.

Pros of using AI: Super easy, almost instantaneous, free, and will usually be of high quality.
Cons of using AI: Might have small details that aren’t right. It is still learning after all. It might take multiple attempts to get it just right if not “close enough”.

Pros of hiring an Artist: Easy in that details can be discussed with an actual, understanding human, will more likely be of a high quality, have way fewer chances for mistakes like you’d get with AI.
Cons of hiring an Artist: It could take a long time, but hopefully, they will have an idea of when to expect the work to be completed. It is, in most instances, not free depending on the size or complexity of the work requested and the level of talent the artist has.

So I guess that would mean you get what you pay for.

I believe AI image generation has surpassed the point of mere “stealing” and has learned enough to generate original images. Is it lazy? Yeah. Is it the devil? I personally don’t think so. But I’m not going to point and laugh at anyone rebuking it or thinking it’s :poop: the instant they find out it was produced by something lacking a soul. :robot: :droplet: If an image objectively looks great/perfect and you immediately fault it just because it’s AI generated… Sorry, that’s not a rational argument.

Not to be all Oral Roberts or whatever but the bible literally says that sloth is a mortal sin.

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The problem isn’t that AI art “looks bad” or “steals art to replicate styles”. It’s the worry that corporations will start replacing humans with AI. It may look high quality, but it can never be. It lacks what makes art art, a human touch.

AI has no life experience, AI doesn’t know what love is, AI has never known hardship. Would you seriously sit down and read a comic generated by AI? Would you read stories generated by AI? Would you play videogames where a large quantity of the creative work was produced by a cold lifeless computer? I know I wouldn’t. Not only do I not see the point of spending my time on it, I also think it’s immoral to the countless artists out there who will be/has been replaced by this dumb thing.
If you can generate an image/song/text in a second it has no value.

Fuck AI “art”.

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Learning is basically what makes an AI to fulfill it’s purpose, at least it is with LLMs that we talk about here. Feeding it data is the process of learning, that did not change. It also did not change that it needs data to grow, creativity does not emerge from that.

Improvements come from increasing the amount of data or improving the internal networks. There are theories that these types of models will hit a ceiling soon because they simply already pumped pretty much all data there is through them. Instead with AI stuff flooding the Internet, you get some backward loop where AI gets trained by AI stuff which is generally undesired as this can lower the quality.

Yes we do, I don’t think AI ever made it obvious from which artists the image was influenced from the most unless the user told it to. Nothing changed here. Just the amount of fingers are more often correct. :joy:

Also, just because more sophisticated AIs exist do not make the less ones disappear. I still see more of the latter simply because they are free more often.

If we allowed AI art but only if you prompt it to mix it many styles and not an iconic one, that’d be impossible to enforce. And if the forum does end up being sued by an artists or their right societies then philosophical questions do not save us. I read here and there that the legislation catches up on the matter where at least AI art is not considered art in the legal sense.

In Germany we even have laws that assume you must have used copyrighted music and you have to actively proof that you used free-to-use audio at events or else you have to pay general fees anyway. (did not find an english source for that, it is called “GEMA-Vermutung”) With such an approach it does not even matter which artist the AI makers stole from when you are sued by a legal body representing enough artists.

Hell, even a single artist could sue us given how likely it is their art is in the training data of all big AIs and your work surely was influences in some tiny tiny percentage.

The whole matter of using AI art or hiring an artist for professional work is another topic, though personally I find it unethical to not only use AI art, but to make money with it. Saying “but I will be less likely to be caught by which artist in specific I used ‘stolen goods’ from” is, well, quite an insight if that is what you mean. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

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