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   myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 21:42:53 JST myrmepropagandist

   OK one more musing about human pre-history. We have many cave paintings from all around the world and they almost always show animals, the accuracy and beauty of these drawings of the fauna are such that we can tell the sex, age and exact species in many cases. There is a wall of animal footprints carved in stone and you can tell the age and sex of the animals *from the prints* our ancestors knew the natural world intimately and made careful records of this knowledge. 1/

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 21:42:50 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     But it still is very strange since when modern children start drawing one of the first things they will draw are faces.

     Faces dominate our minds, the brain seems to process faces in special ways that other things are not.

     I wish I could go back and just ask them... why not draw some portraits so we could see the emotions and faces of all of you people of the past?

     This makes me think they saw the world in radically different way from how we see it now.

     4/4

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 21:42:51 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     I'm speaking very broadly, about tens of thousands of years of human history across multiple continents and contexts. And where you find the fine careful paintings of wildlife you DO NOT find human faces.

     I think it says that people must not have felt motivated to make such drawings of the face, that they didn't like it or see it as useful.

     They also didn't do drawings of IDK, insects very often. Insects were not as important as the large animals they hunted and that hunted them.

     3/

     Rich Felker repeated this.
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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 21:42:52 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     So, that makes it more remarkable that what you almost never ever find in this kind of painting are human faces. Possibly there will be human forms... humans hunting and running and swimming, having sex and giving birth... but the humans are like abstracted shadows. Sometimes with pinheads, hardly ever with eyes. And practically NEVER a face.

     It's very tempting to make up a taboo about drawing faces. A cultural rule, but I think it has to go deeper than that.

     2/

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 23:45:34 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • Martijn Faassen
     • Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️

     @faassen @rayhindle

     "but faces are fine."

     then why do I so often get nausea when looking into their eyes?

     Maybe we need to do a blind study to see if faces drawn by people vs. AI faces have different impacts.

     I swear there is something "off" about them but I admit I may be biased and projecting. But... I don't *feel* like that is what I'm doing.

     I think something is WRONG.

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     Martijn Faassen (faassen@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 23:45:35 JST Martijn Faassen

     in reply to

     • Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️

     @futurebird

     @rayhindle

     The latest image generation models do a great job on faces. They still break down massively (additional finger or even limb) but faces are fine. They can't do different flower species well at all though.

     tinydoctor repeated this.
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     Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️ (rayhindle@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 23:45:36 JST Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️

     in reply to

     @futurebird Perhaps, like Odo in DS9, they found faces “difficult?”

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     myrmepropagandist (futurebird@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 24-Nov-2024 23:45:36 JST myrmepropagandist

     in reply to

     • Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️

     @rayhindle

     Maybe the uncanny valley made any attempt so creepy and horrible they might have tried it once or twice but quickly agree that such paintings were not "good"

     Meanwhile we churn out AI art even though everyone keeps screaming about how creepy it is.

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Nov-2024 00:08:21 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     • Martijn Faassen
     • Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️

     @futurebird @faassen @rayhindle Whenever I see an online image, particularly a face or faces, that even slightly "looks too good" not necessarily because it's attractive, but somehow too perfect in composition or definition or composition, I think it's a deep fake or AI. I feel like I might be living in the uncanny valley. Perfection is a kind of hatred. AI hates the human face perfectly.

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     tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Monday, 25-Nov-2024 00:16:43 JST tinydoctor

     in reply to

     • Martijn Faassen
     • Citoyen européen Ray Hindle ✔️

     @futurebird @faassen @rayhindle Of course, more and more images I see strike me that way. I don't know whether that's because the number of AI etc. images are increasing so fast, or whether it's a perverse sort of pareidolia on my part. Or both.