II: Disintegration of the Modern Media Landscape w/ Merrick Ohata

Lots of changes to the podcast coming down the pipe! We now have a permanent co-host: Gordon Anderson. You can find him at Gordon on Substack! This week we sat down with composer and ML researcher Merrick Ohata to talk about the atomization of media, the AI-ification of media, and the benefits of lying to children. While this conversation kinda goes all over the place, we think there are some real gems in here. We hope you do, too. Thanks for listening!EPISODE TIMESTAMPS00:00:12 - Episode Start00:00:51 - How has the media landscape changed over the past 10 years as a result of atomization?00:01:22 - How has the role of the critic changed in that timeframe?00:04:20 - Are people becoming too narrowly read?00:06:08 - What if you had to become a specialist to consume most pop culture?00:06:49 - “Ars Longa, Vita Brevis” by Scott Alexander00:08:18 - Accumulated knowledge puts limits on the speed of scientific progress00:12:41 - The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and the Illustrated Primer model of education00:15:20 - Tacit knowledge erasure00:18:43 - Importance of rote memorization / doing reps in education00:20:36 - Multiplication table synesthesia feat. Bronzong00:21:26 - Placemats are good at teaching things00:22:52 - That one time Kid Kevin got roasted for talking about bird-eating spiders00:24:25 - The epistemic loneliness of childhood00:27:30 - Defending the Santa Claus worldview00:31:57 - Will you tell your kids that Santa is real?00:38:09 - Bonus Santa-related lore00:42:34 - Which pill would you choose in "...And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes" by Scott Alexander?00:48:41 - Free will and determinism in "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang00:57:24 - How much do you separate the art from the artist?01:02:49 - Joining the art from the artist ruins perfectly good arguments01:05:20 - Kevin is more interested in artists than art01:06:43 - Freedom of interpretation in "And We, Each" by Michael Hersch01:09:00 - Consuming the artist as the art01:09:52 - Star Wars as an argument against the primacy of the artist=01:10:50 - Does knowing that art was made by AI ruin it?01:11:16 - Are humans necessary for art?01:12:05 - Are human artists ready for AI art?01:13:01 - Underestimating the threat of AI01:14:09 - You can be underwhelmed by a technology if you want to be01:15:03 - The threat of AI girlfriends01:16:05 - Keep AI girlfriends low-status!01:17:13 - The existential horror of TikTok01:18:05 - TikTok has created a new type of media01:20:35 - Conclusion and Merrick's short fiction recommendationBONUS LINKS (story links are in the timestamps)* Scott Alexander’s Substack, Astral Codex Ten* “The Equidistribution of Lattice Shapes of Rings of Integers of Cubic, Quartic, and Quintic Number Fields: an Artist’s Rendering” by Piper Harron (the informal math thesis that Kevin forgot the name of)* We really wanted to talk about this neat Andy Matuschak article about The Diamond Age called “Exorcising the Primer”, but we totally forgot.* The Tacit Knowledge Series by Cedric Chin* Michael Hersch’s website This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit synthesizedsunsets.substack.com/subscribe