alt Hacker News"I was an art major and switched to CompSci purely for the money." Translation: Not an artist.
I worked for 30 years as a pianist. The number of programmers who have told me they too are a musician... No- you aren't. And you never were. That's the thing, if you were a musician, you would be playing music. That would be your job.
I mean as a hobbyist, yes, sure, enjoy splashing paint and calling it art, but spending the tens of thousands of hours to learn what music actually is, no, no, no. You aren't. Would you call yourself an architect if you can draw a picture of a building? No, you aren't.
No artist wants to "create things which were beyond their capabilities" with an AI, they want to develop their capabilities to create things beyond who they are now. Art is about discovering the world, yourself, the strange magic of an ethereal plane, some how reached through vibrations.
I don't know. Reading programmers talk about art, as if they are not dilettantes, is always depressing for me.
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So Vivian Meier was not a photographer? The local bands that work day jobs aren't musicians?
Nonsense, frankly. Being an artist is not dependent on monetizing your talent.
There are artists and musicians and photographers, and there are professional musicians and artists and photographers.
What is someone who writes and performs music every day their whole life but bartends to pay their rent, to you? They're not a musician but someone that makes ukulele tracks for corporate training videos is, because the latter does it professionally?
I agree with some of your characterizations here, but I don’t think it is fair to say that if you are not currently a professional artist, you were never a true artist. People get unlucky, have families to support, etc