So many philosophers did this! My favourite is Hegel, who ‘rationally’ reached the conclusion that German was the best language, Prussia was the best country and Protestantism was the best religion. Nothing to do with the fact that he’d been raised in German-speaking Prussian Protestantism, oh no.

This is it. The temptation to slap on reciprocal tariffs is obvious but it’s generally self-defeating. Much better to do things this way and free up trade elsewhere.

Her instincts are the worst. Imagine being a conservative and not being able to exploit a ‘rally round the flag’ moment!

Good question.

The Newer Forest.

Always makes me laugh that the ‘New’ Forest is getting on for a thousand years old.

Again, you’ve written quite a long comment, almost none of which is pertinent.

Music is not math. Some aspects of it can be expressed mathematically, yes, but that’s not the same thing.

Imagining the idea ‘I’d like to see an image of a lemming’, which is what you’ve done, does require some imagination. However, the output is not art because the process used to go from your ‘prompt’ to the image was not a creative one. (Also, this isn’t entirely pertinent, but the image output is really bad. If it had been made by a person and otherwise looked like this, I would still say that it was just ugly, bad art.)

You may well be a creative and imaginative person; I don’t know you and I wouldn’t want to judge! However, your image of a lemming was not the result of a creative process and so is not art.

Current AI is lacking both.

Only word wrong here is ‘current’. AI will never have creativity or craftmanship. It’s impossible.

You’re lazy and talentless, and you like how it allows you to steal the hard work and talent of others.

That some, most or all art is partly or wholly derivative of other art is not relevant because the process used by ‘AI’ does not resemble the artistic process. When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (a work derived from an older play, itself derived from an older myth which itself had been through countless retellings, variations and translations), he did not do what an LLM does, which is approximately to say: ‘It’s statistically likely that the phrase “to be” will be followed by the phrase “or not to be”’. Putting together statistical likelihoods is not creativity. This alone shows that AI ‘art’ is not creative and therefore not art at all.

Additionally, instructing a machine to make things from prompts does not require creativity. Creativity is not ‘having ideas’; it’s an ongoing process. When you tell an image generator to make an image, you’re not asking it to create something, because it cannot do it. You’re saying ‘Show me the statistically likely output for this input’. Again, this statistical generator is not the same as, nor is it comparable to, the human imaginative process.

Yes. It can only exist through stealing the creative work of others.

Also, it looks terrible.

Yes, everyone here trembles under my tyrannical rule. I try not to let it go to my head.

Gosh, how strange. I expected him to say, ‘He’s a total cunt and I’m only pretending to like him because it’s part of my job’.

Destroying healthcare by… increasing funding for the NHS and for social care, ending strikes by negotiating with the unions, and hitting their initial appointment targets years early?

Yes, very useful for subtle distinctions like this!

For me number one would be to let trade unions do their job without restriction. In the US I think that would mean abolishing so-called ‘right to work’ laws as a priority.

Yes, it’s metonymy, as people have said. You also get it in similar contexts where people will name a building such as ‘the White House’ or ‘[10] Downing Street’ to refer to the governments of the US or the UK.

It’s not surprising that he’s not been able to exploit people’s empathy given that he has literally argued that empathy has gone too far.

Me. But I should add that a system of wages and salaries is not slavery, and that part of the reason I know this is that actual slaves really, really want instead to be paid a wage or a salary.

By far the most coherent response, thank you. I still think the contexts are sufficiently different that I find it odd that anyone would feel the need to paint his face on a wall thousands of miles away.

I think you probably understand why it’s ridiculous when right wingers say that socialised healthcare = Stalinism, and so on an identical basis you should see it’s ridiculous to describe the people of the UK as oppressed slaves.