I miss scarcity

There are still artists whose new releases I am just as thrilled by, and I anticipate as much as any other new releases by favorite artists over the past decades. The problem for me is finding out about upcoming new releases. There used to be a newsletter called ICE (no relation) that was a dependable source, but that's been gone for decades. 

Should I or do I spend time reminiscing about past things? Is there more or less water in the glass at present vs the past? If I'm feeling nostalgic the past becomes more rose colored, when I'm living in the moment I more appreciate the present. 

I used to have to work to acquire the music I enjoyed, going to the record stores, shows and finding wonderful new music, rather like hunting and gathering experience. Nowadays, with streaming I can add even more wonderful new music with simple tap of keyboard. There can be no doubt some of the primitive pleasures of hunting and gathering lost, but then I have so much more access to so much more wonderful music. 

I'm of a mind I'm not losing a thing these days with music streaming, having more choice and easier access is all good. Moreover, I find this ease of choice and effort to acquire leads to a more pure musical experience, this exact lack of effort means no attachment to all the other experiences one may have in the old ways of acquiring music. 

Now, on the other hand, if we are talking in generalities, I can empathize with feeling of being overwhelmed with excessive information/choices, etc, we humans not built for this, I fully expect the costs of this will continue to accrue. Losing sight of the small things and appreciation for them will take it's toll.

Wow, what a topic that has led across a number of thoughts.

Regarding the Music experience and scarcity and abundance.

I like Roon for the interface into the music and exploration. It has easy to follow cover art, liner notes, credits, reviews, lyrics all linked so that I find it most like my original exploration into vinyl LPs. I can explore and discuss with friends and chase other versions of the song/composition or individual artists, writers, composers to go deeper into music places I may not have gone to before. I don't need the distributed streaming of Roon (small apartment), and I am not sure It offers the best sound quality, but I like the interface for music exploration and understanding. Apple Music has some of it, but not the same breadth and depth available for exploration. If anyone has recommendations for a similar or better immersive experience, please let me know.

Regarding the branching into AI and social dissociation.

I think that the term AI at this point in time is used for a number of computer assisted things that are not all the same, nor even related, so discussion goes all over the place.

There is an AI that has so much computing power that it can work from a fixed set of rules and project results faster than a human and pick the best outcome. Think Big Blue or the GO example. Great accomplishments, but not what I would consider Intelligent. The initial rules are fixed, and the only outcome choices are win or lose (binary). Useful for some cases where the rules are well defined and the outcome is always binary.

There is an AI that just links massive amounts of data by numerous classifications that allows one to gather information about any topic and explore it to any depth desired. It is massive database with link clues. Not really intelligent. Someone had to construct the link clues.

The next level or iteration of that creates a human language interface to those link clues so that a person can ask a question and get a number of responses based on the question. A little bit of intelligence, but it is constrained by social and language norms that are culturally and time dependent, and those depend on a human to construct the context.

Both of these version of AI I find can be useful and help with learning as long as a person remains aware of the variability and bias of the link clues and language constructs.

We are now entering an era where AI is being pushed to where the link clues and language constructs are being abstracted to patterns that expand the possibilities. That allows this computer thing to compose writings, poetry, music and images seemingly Intelligently. I get uncomfortable at this point, because some person created the abstraction of the pattern and language, and that is locked into the social and temporal norms of that particular person at that time. A lot of bias and social hierarchy are a part of that abstraction. Is the result Intelligence? I am not sure, and I do not believe it is really intelligence without the emotional and historical inputs that only a person can provide.

There are those who believe that the next step is when we create something that constructs its own abstract patterns to link things and give them a value weight to make independent decisions. That is truly scary. To me it is not human intelligence, and I do not see a way that it can contain emotional, social, or temporal weight to make any of its decisions human friendly.

To me human intelligence is a merging of sensory and emotional patterns that have social and temporal context that leads to a decision or action that may not be win or lose (binary). This is also where creativity originates in my view.

Sensory patterns are somewhat fixed, but can vary by individual. Emotional patterns I don't think are fixed. They seem to change based on hormones and environment. And social and temporal patterns can have similarities but also seem to be in a state constant change.

I hope we do not drift away from emotional, social and temporal patterns as living beings and never see all things as needing a binary solution.

Enough for now..

AI = Instant Gratification = ?

I do miss the excitement of finding a hard to find LP ... though it's great that with streaming there are very few hard to find albums...but yes, something has been lost in all this...