Libb

Without you sharing some context it’s hard to suggest anything precise. I mean, are you talking about sudden frustrations or long-lasting ones? Sudden and unexpected or constant and relentless? Caused by yourself to yourself or by other persons? Caused by some physical issue/pain?

• Long walks. This is like magic to me. Plus it helps get in much better shape physically and mentally (better blood flow helps the brain works better or something like that).
• Writing, sketching. Longhand with pen and paper. As far as I’m concerned, it’s much slower than typing which also helps thinking slower, which helps take a step back and consider whatever the issue is.
• The most useful tool I have: if the source of my frustration is something I can’t change (that’s the keyword: I must know I can’t change it), I will accept it or I will ignore it if you prefer. I will forget about its existence, accept the nuisance, zap it out of my mind. It’s one trick that can be learned with practice (aka with… more frustration), that’s really worth it. Philosophers may refer to that practice as stoicism, but it’s not exclusive to the stoics. For me it’s all about my available energy and time (time I have in a day and time I have to be… alive, on this planet). I have a limited amount of energy I can spend each day, I have only 24h a day and I have a limited amount of days remaining to live. Why would I want to waste them on stuff I can’t change or that will only make things worse (since I can’t change them)? So, I don’t waste my time with those ;)

Like many I imagine: China to where I live (France), back in those days when I ordered too much useless crap online.

Welcome and there is zero need to apologize. Some people (and group of them) can be a real pain. Once you have learned how to filter them out, it’s a nice place with nice people. There is no shame in blocking them, a bit like I would not let someone enter my home so they shout their nonsense into my ears, or make their mess on the carpet.

Once again, welcome ;)

Maybe you live in a rural area and people are less attached, but in cities, everyone is addicted af

I live in Paris, France (hopefully enough of a city to qualify?) but I’m not ‘addicted af’ (not at all, for that matter) and neither is my spouse, nor are quite a few of the people we know ;)

That said I also see a lot of people walking looking at their screen, bicycling looking at their screen, driving and looking at their screen. And I see a lot of accidents too. I wonder, could there be a link?

Do you feel weird/anxious if you go outside and don’t have a phone with you?

Nope. I sometimes forget my phone at home, no big deal I seldom use it. And even when I don’t forget it I have zero social apps or games installed on it, not even email ;)

I only use it to pass phone calls and to manage IDs and finances (and it’s only because my banks all require me to use their stupid apps, I would gladly tell them to go funk themselves but I need to be able to access my accounts).

What I never forget and I never hesitate to use whan I have the opportunity is a pocket book, so I always have something to read (without distraction, aka no Internet) and a pocket notebook/pen so I can write stuff (without any distraction, bugs, updates or whatever…) and in both case without any worry about being tracked.

so like its basically social expectation to be on your phone when you are by yourself.

Is it? And then people are surprised they’re exhausted, and constantly anxious and/or angry at one another? Doom scrolling is poison for the mind and for the soul. I’d rather look around, or speak with people.

you are missing a lot of information

Do I? Well, so far it has not caused me much issues.

that you might need in case you get lost or something.

When that happens, I ask my way around to people. It sometime is a nice opportunity to start a real conversation ;)

edit: typos and clarification.

I often talk aloud all by myself when I’m reading. Either reading the book aloud, or talking to no one in particular commenting whatever I’m reading. Maybe talking to its author, or to the book itself?

Worse: I do think it helps me a lot get what I’m reading, and I would love to see more people doing it ;)

Oh, thx a lot!

I must admit I don’t know much about those kind of snacks but I would be surprised a doctor would suggest to eat those with any kind of medication.

My wife has to eat a snack with her medicine she takes before bed or she gets nauseas. I have struggled to find an alternative to goldfish because I agree, it’s garbage. Any thoughts?

What is a goldfish (beside a fish, I mean)? If you mean an alternative to snack, has she tried fresh fruits (an apple, pear, a few grapes,…) or maybe things like nuts? The idea being to no eat heavily processed food at all and not too much of anything. If she is not into fresh fruits (that would be sad), at worst I would suggest a slice of fresh bread (here again not the industrial hyper-processed kind of bread, real bread) with something, maybe a little jam?

This

I wake up between 4-5AM every single day of the week, and all year long. I don’t even need an alarm clock. I can go to sleep at anytime

• No screen before bed. No computer, no phone, no tablet, no TV (we don’t own a TV, so we don’t have much choice here ;). What do I do instead? I read a book, journal, write, chat with my spouse or friends, play chess or board games,… I do various stuff just not on a screen. Not even using a Kindle.
• No coffee in the evening. No alcohol at all (evening as well as in the day: I was an alcoholic many, many years ago). No soda either. Either I’ll drink water or herbal tea.
• Light & healthy diner. I don’t stuff my stomach, don’t eat garbage pre-packaged industrial ‘food’ either (this alone was a huge change for me, the day I quit eating that absolute turd a few years ago and my health has jumped through the roof, pre-packaged food is just poison in a fancy packaging and a lot of marketing, I would not be surprise if it was to become the tobacco of the XXI health-wise).
• No snacking, no candy, chips, or whatever.
• At least one long walk during the day. Every day.

But does it not sound like the horse farmers when the car came out?

but I also accept that it is inevitable

Look where we’re heading as regard to pollution (to which all our engines are not a little factor) and ask yourself: would have we known what we know today, was this ‘inevitable’ path we decided to follow (ultimately it was a choice, nothing more: the choice of using much cheap(er) energy and workforce as a way to gain more power/money faster) was it really the smartest one? Or should we have tried to follow another less obvious path but maybe less destructive? Destructive, like AI is in regard to the OP question but it obviously is not limited to AI.

fighting against technological advances has rarely worked historically.

That’s one of the most glaring lie (not yours, I mean it in a general way) in regard to tech: criticizing it or one of its form is not being ‘against tech’. It’s a critic of tech and/or a refusal of a certain type of tech. The choice is not between '‘using tech’ and ‘being a caveman’. It’s about questioning the way we use tech (to do what? Do we really need machines to do creative work?), how we control it (who decide what it’s allowed to do and how it is trained), and who owns it (who get all the money? Not the artists they were trained upon, obviously). And who controls all of that?

Also, keep in mind that exactly like AI or the smartphone are considered ‘high tech’ today, the horse and the cart were also considered high-tech back in their days. Do you think their users were hostile to tech? I don’t think so ;)

I heard a bunch of explanations but most of them seem emotional and aggressive, and while I respect that this is an emotional subject, I can’t really understand opinions that boil down to “theft” and are aggressive about it.

Why the anger?

How do you earn a living yourself? Or even better, what is your most precious hobby? Whatever it is that you love doing for the love of it (that’s the definition of a hobby) try imagining being told one day, out of the blue: ‘Guys, my fancy but completely soulless computer can do as good as many of you. And it can do it in seconds. Wanna compete?’

Now, imagine it’s your job and not your hobby, the way you earn your living (and pay your rent/mortgage and those always more expensive bills) and imagine being told 'That way you used to earn a living? It’s gone now. It instantly vanished in a magical cloud of 1 and 0s. This AI-thing can do in mere seconds something that would take you weeks and it can do it well enough that quite many of your customers may not want to spend (a lot more) money to pay you for doing the exact same job even if you do it much better. How happy would you feel about that?

So, yeah, like you said it’s kinda ‘emotional’ topic…

is there an argument against models that were legally trained?

Being 100% sure there exists such a database that contains no stolen creation, and then that AIs were indeed restricted to it for their training is already something worth debating and doubting (the second it is not open source), imho.

There had been a similar problem a few centuries ago, when photography first appeared many painters rightfully considered photography a threat to their business model as one could have their portrait (edit: or have a picture of a landscape) made in mere minutes (it was a longer than that, early days photography was far from being as quick as we know it but you get the idea).

What happened to them and their practice?

1. Some painters had to find rich sponsors that were OK to pay in order to get a portrait that would be more unique than a pĥotography (I know what I would prefer between having my photo taken by even a decent photographer or, say, a painted portrait made by Sargent), others found niche domains were to could still earn a living, while others simply went out of business.
2. Others decided painting could be much more than just being realistic like it (mostly) was before photography became a thing and they quickly started offering us amazing new kind of paintings (impressionism, abstract painting, cubism, expressionism,…)

And here we are in the XXI century. Painting is still doing fine in its own way (exposed in art galleries and in the home of rich people). There is also a lot more hobbyist painters that will paint all they can including realistic scenes no matter how much ‘better’ a photo could be. They don’t care. Next to those, there are many photographers taking countless photos (many of which being worthless too), some of them trying (and many failing) to earn a living selling them.

is it something past the saying that AI art is lifeless?

Maybe it will get better, most probably it will, but so far I feel real sad for people that are unable to see, to feel and to understand how lifeless and how clueless AI art is.

Edit: typos (yeah, this was handwritten without the help of any AI :p)