These past few months, as I find a particular aesthetic emphasis on specific input to AI GANs - old master's works, generally Western ideals - I start to wonder if the body of knowledge in this field is skewed so heavily in a specific direction - in one or a few pictorial experiences, expressions and value systems. And to the extent that derived data comes from other sources - other human experiences, other values, I think about how is that data being used - or not used - because it is not valued by the human inputing the data.
The ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one problem, - how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless; to get a one end, with out an other end.
From Compensation, Essays, First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"But isn't it cool?" To develop something that glorifies one end, the cool, while ignoring the other end, the controlling.
Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature, - the sweet, without the other side, the bitter.
Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as soon as we seek to separate them from the whole.
The consequences are delayed - when the only measurement is the initial satisfaction gained by indulging a personal goal.
The bitter is inevitable - at least know that it is on its way.
Does this mean don't pursue any activity unless no one is harmed? Unless no one or thing is at a disadvantage?
No. But I think it is at least honest to acknowledge that there could be harm - that there is a down side - and let others have an opportunity not to involuntarily participate in furthering a myopic utopia.
