I’ve researched the subject of Chinese antiques to some extent, but I would not claim to be ‘”knowledgeable” on this subject, nor to have gained knowledge from handling an enormous number of items which I was certain were actual antiques.
I collect objects for the artistry they display.
Thus, I believe that, of the many objects I’ve collected over the decades, only a handful of them are actually, really antique.
Linked below is a video by a westerner who speaks Chinese, and who says that he worked in China for a couple of decades, facilitating the export trade in Chinese “antiques,” and, according to him, 95% of things which are claimed to be or which actually look like Chinese antiques, are actually reproductions, fakes.
Included are pictures from thick catalogues with what look like hundreds of pages each, showing all of the fakes you can order from Chinese factories, plus pictures of Chinese workers producing massive amounts of these fakes, these fakes then sold to tourists in China, with massive quantities exported to the West.
He points out that very wealthy collectors buy their Chinese antiques from established, knowledgeable, major, reputable dealers, and that those antiques are very likely to actually be real antiques.
But that, for the rest of us, the “antiques” we are likely to encounter are almost exclusively fakes.*
The little girl wants to be “a farmer”.
Buying strawberries from a freelance Mexican woman who had her 5-6 year old son with her, I gave the kid a dollar tip. Asked what he would do with money he earned, he put his shoulders back, chest out, and said “I am saving for a cow”
It was pretty cute. But, in his world, having a cow was something genuinely important and practical. Suspect family situation back home would improve if they owned a cow.
Wonder how he turned out.
I just glanced at the TV, and I see some sort of proposal for a Trump 1 dollar coin for the semiquincentennial. I suspect it’s another Trump troll, but just in case: No. No. No.
50 years after he’s dead we* can decide.
*editorial “we”, because I certainly won’t be around
Snow: A compelling video, and having a small collection of African art, I have to agree almost everything people call “real” antique art was, in fact, made for the tourist market.
buddhaha: Agree entirely: no coins, bridges, buildings, airports, highways, or anything else to be named after a living person. Wait until they’ve been gone from this earth at least 50 years. Then we can judge whether or not they deserve the honor.
He should have no discretion over the bloody fine, which should be set per a formula stated in the statute in question. His discretion should be to determine whether or not she is liable and to state the reason for his decision. It’s a municipal court, so the evidentiary basis for any decision is going to be thin as the case has to be processed in a matter of minutes. For that matter, if he has a line of cases to process that evening, he shouldn’t be clowning around with the daughter of a member of the public, no matter how cute she is. He should be clowning around with his own grandchildren or extended shirt-tails.
F–I’ve collected a few African masks, and looking at various books, museum catalogs, and exhibits I’ve tried to buy masks which are authentic, which look like they have actually been worn and “danced,” but I am aware that, nowadays, a lot of tribesmen in Africa are producing fakes, sometimes termed “airport art”–the kinds of masks you see displayed for sale as you get off the plane in Africa–and many other places–and walk through the terminal.
buddhaha: Agree entirely: no coins, bridges, buildings, airports, highways, or anything else to be named after a living person. Wait until they’ve been gone from this earth at least 50 years. Then we can judge whether or not they deserve the honor.
==
Absolutely. The line up on the paper currency will pass, though you might discontinue the $2 bill and put Jefferson and Madison on the $20 bill and Jackson and Grant on the $50 bill; have an Indian head, a buffalo, Eisenhower, and MacArthur on the coins. Be very wary about naming things after a politician, even fifty years after their death.
==
While we’re at it, can we transfer the archival material in the presidential libraries to a modular records center in Kansas City? What’s left we can deed over to the county where it sits and then pledge to never build another one.
==
The National Parks Service has a mess of properties which might be transferred to local governments, transferred to philanthropies, or sold off to private interests. Independence Hall is a site where events in the sweep of national history took place. Sara Delano Roosevelt’s house is a handsome old house.
Art Deco, I add a suggestion that the monstrosity Obama is constructing in Jackson Park in Chicago be demolished, and the open space returned to the City of Chicago.
Oh my! African masks! Chinese art pieces! Such cultural appropriation! Where’s my fainting couch? I’m about to swoon!
Speaking of antiques, many years ago we purchased at auction a bronze sculpture of a Native American by E. E. Heikka, a noted western artist and sculptor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Heikka
A couple of years ago, we decided to sell all our art that our heirs didn’t want. I took the Heikka to a dealer that examined it very closely. He removed the base and found that it was a very good copy of a Heikka original. He showed me the way it was done. The original might have been worth $1000. The copy – $100.
The world is full of scam artists working diligently to sell art and antiques to unsuspecting people.
Buyers beware.
Art, lighten up.
SHIREHOME:
Not gonna happen. 🙂
Obama needs to take a cue from Trump and put his* name on the Chicago building in giant gold letters.
To remind everyone how important he is.
*Obama, not Trump.
Virginia Dems go from “Let your rage fuel you” to fantasizing about political assassinations “2 bullets to head” – RePost
Key graf (RTWT):
“…We expect our political speeches to be unlovely now. Starmer’s went beyond that and managed to be offensive and yet boring all at once. As I said, the Prime Minister is an algorithm, and there are three things you can say about algorithms: they lack memory, have no sense of humour, and are unaware that they are, well, an algorithm….”
Indeed, there is a very good reason why Britain’s Labour Party NEEDED “Harris” to win last November…and to this end sent earnest, eager reinforcements across the pond to help “make it so” (the utter blunderers, the idiot fools).
Your “danced” masks could well have been danced, as there’s a lot of dancing that goes on in a variety of countries. I say that not in jest, but because we sought out authentic dance rituals while we lived on the continent (a total of 20 years, 7 countries), and saw some very fine examples. One was literally at the “end of the road” in Zaire, a village where the dirt track went in but never came out. That was a coming of age dance for the 14 year old son of a very important man (he was introduced as the chief, but who knows?). The celebration started before first light (we had spent the night) and continued well into the afternoon, with a lot of palm wine and weed being consumed. We filmed and video taped it, having arranged it all in advance, but cannot find the films or tapes now.
Anyway, lots of dancing going on around the continent. The best we saw was in Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) and was feverish to say the least.
OTOH, we found a flourishing market in “antique” African masks in Cameroon, and soon learned that the most obviously “used” had been tied on the side of a cow for a week, and showed great signs of wear after being rubbed by other cows in the herd. BTW, they also showed small hairs if examined with a loupe.
The meme war continues, and a lot of ordinary Internet wise guys are adding fuel to the fire.*
Honestly, once these memes take hold their target is, forever after, always going to trail a faint scent of the ridiculous, and when you see these people, these images which have made fun of them can’t help but come to mind, be remembered, and detract from the image of knowledge and seriousness that they are trying to project.
F–There is a story of a western tourist in China who talks to a farmer in the countryside, and asks him what his crop was, and the farmer says “antiques”–he takes the objects, puts them in a pit full of manure, pulls them out a few weeks later and voila, instant, old looking “antique.”
P.S. If you see pictures of the “antiques” market in Beijing (and that’s just Beijing), you will understand the sheer volume of these items on display, and the difficulty of discerning which among them (if any) are actual antiques.
I suspect that this market in Beijing–and its imitators all around China–have been fleecing the gullible for a couple thousand years or more.
I don’t know how many large scale factories–plus mom and pop operations, throughout China–are churning out these fake antiques, but my impression is that their output is in the many millions of “antiques” each year.
So you pack a long metal shipping container with tens of thousands of “smalls” you’ve bought, contained in the larger wooden fake “antique” pieces, ship them around the world, and if many of these smalls break in transit, their individual cost was so low that you can still make a good profit selling the fake “antiques” which survived intact.
One wonders what percentage of the remnants and symbols–true antiques–of China’s ancient culture the Red Guards destroyed, as their violent, crazed mobs swept through China and Tibet.
From the pictures I’ve seen, the damage to the structures of Tibet’s monasteries, and nunneries, and to the religious texts, statues, and other artwork they contained was immense.
Quite aside from the Red Guards China has just had too many wars, and too much building out of wood. Little that you see there is more than 400 years old, and most of it suffers from the “ship of Theseus” problem in that it has been rebuilt over and over. The Great Wall is mostly ruins except for a few locations restored for tourists and quite a bit of it was originally built of mud.
I visited the Prince Gong Mansion in Beijing, and it was very lovely, but had been extensively restored in 2008. From the 60s to the 80s it was used as an air conditioning factory. It had originally been built in 1777–San Jose, California was founded in that year, and its oldest building is nearly that old, though not quite as elaborate.
The Temple of Heaven was first constructed in 1406 but is made of wood and has been rebuilt over and over, the current structure dating to the 1890s. King Street Station in Seattle is almost that old, but has a lot more bums in it.
There are Chinese manuscripts held in state universities in the US that can no longer be found in China.
I understand the fraud element, but I’m not sure why I’d care if something was an authentic antique, or not, if the craftsmanship was identical. I wish more craftsman and manufacturers were mimicking older designs with modern materials and techniques. I’d love to own a car with an interior and exterior identical to a 1937 Duesenberg Model J, but with modern mechanics.
Rufus T. Firefly–You pose an interesting question.
Take two items which appear to be pretty much identical.
One is old, and was the result of, say, a month of dedicated and meticulous, time-consuming work involving many intricate steps, performed by one artisan or by a team of them.
The other is brand new, a copy of a hand-made original, which has been scanned by a laser, the scan uploaded to a computer, then, used as a pattern to direct various machines to create an exact duplicate–the whole process taking, say, a couple of hours.
Put these two items side by side, and compare them, they look identical, but what value might you place on th genuine, old, hand made item vs. the just created machine made copy?
Would it matter if this item was functional vs. just decorative?
“Best yet” says James Woods, and he’s not wrong. More Sombrero Siesta Fiesta video at link, starring — Hakeem!, Chucky!, Granny Nan!, Pocahontas!, AOC! and a cast of backing entertainers: https://x.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1974951359310119286
sdferr,
Very good. The scene with Schumer grilling street tacos was especially amusing.
I have a couple of thoughts about the antiques question, which is quite interesting.
The immediate impression is that the difference in perceived value is tied to the mere age of the older object. But as is evident, “age is just a number” in that strict sense – one can’t touch age or time. Hence, if this is the explanation, it can’t be merely because a thing is old that the price or demand is high. (Well, price being a first-approximation proxy for demand. But let that go.)
I think the deeper reason, even if buyers don’t necessarily articulate it, is that the age is, again, a proxy for the historical associations that go with the object. It’s as if the buyer is not interested in the object per se as much as in acquiring, as best he can, a share in that history and culture, at least the good sides thereof, which produced such an item as a tangible output or remnant. And I mention ‘remnant’ here because there is, I suspect, always an unspoken consciousness that time only runs one way and good, once gone, does not generally return (not in human affairs, anyway, and not in the same manner).
That’s the one side of it. The other, I suppose, is that for particularly knowledgeable collectors, it’s not really about the external form of the object, but often about hidden details within. Take the difference between a Japanese sword made with a certain ancient process as against one that may look and even function identically on the outside, but was merely cast in some modern foundry a few years ago. In that case, what gives the object the perceived value is the inward metallurgical detail. But that’s not something that can be seen with the naked eye, so it relies on background technical knowledge on some level. That could be an example of a buyer being motivated by a different sort of aesthetic, if aesthetic we may call it. It is, ironically, a little bit like the labor theory of value being ported into the field of art.
I suppose I would have to take a different line from either of these if I were to think about something like ancient Byzantine or Chinese manuscripts or something like that, because with those, there is text and thus comprehensible meaning that can be objectively identified and so on. That’s a different dimension of value yet again.
But what if we were not talking about an object but rather, say, a story acted out on video, one story acted out be an actual living actor or actress, the same story acted out by an AI generated actor or actress which even looked exactly like the living actor or actress?
In this case I would think that the distinction between the two forms is much clearer, and that the performance by a live actor or actress would be much more highly valued, would be preferred over that generated by an AI, even if the AI generated actor or actress looked exactly like their living counterparts.
The age-old question, “What is Truth”? seems to have morphed into “What is Reality”?
Might one wonder if, with the uptick of Optics and the unstoppable spread of AI, “reality” will, all too soon cease—gradually and then suddenly?—to have any meaning at all?
@ Barry > “Might one wonder if, with the uptick of Optics and the unstoppable spread of AI, “reality” will, all too soon cease—gradually and then suddenly?—to have any meaning at all?”
Interesting question if applied to the “degrees of separation” theory on Open Thread 10/6, especially the discussion at the end in respect to how fast behavior, either negative or positive, can spread depending on the connections of the people in the data set.
Also might explain why activism of any stripe, with its concomitant ideological rigidity, seems to lead to silos or bubbles each with its own designated perception of “reality” that might have little or no connection to any actual objective happenings.
(I’m obviously dodging the word “facts”.)
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To those who collect Chinese antiques–
I’ve researched the subject of Chinese antiques to some extent, but I would not claim to be ‘”knowledgeable” on this subject, nor to have gained knowledge from handling an enormous number of items which I was certain were actual antiques.
I collect objects for the artistry they display.
Thus, I believe that, of the many objects I’ve collected over the decades, only a handful of them are actually, really antique.
Linked below is a video by a westerner who speaks Chinese, and who says that he worked in China for a couple of decades, facilitating the export trade in Chinese “antiques,” and, according to him, 95% of things which are claimed to be or which actually look like Chinese antiques, are actually reproductions, fakes.
Included are pictures from thick catalogues with what look like hundreds of pages each, showing all of the fakes you can order from Chinese factories, plus pictures of Chinese workers producing massive amounts of these fakes, these fakes then sold to tourists in China, with massive quantities exported to the West.
He points out that very wealthy collectors buy their Chinese antiques from established, knowledgeable, major, reputable dealers, and that those antiques are very likely to actually be real antiques.
But that, for the rest of us, the “antiques” we are likely to encounter are almost exclusively fakes.*
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3kH4YumI10
The little girl wants to be “a farmer”.
Buying strawberries from a freelance Mexican woman who had her 5-6 year old son with her, I gave the kid a dollar tip. Asked what he would do with money he earned, he put his shoulders back, chest out, and said “I am saving for a cow”
It was pretty cute. But, in his world, having a cow was something genuinely important and practical. Suspect family situation back home would improve if they owned a cow.
Wonder how he turned out.
I just glanced at the TV, and I see some sort of proposal for a Trump 1 dollar coin for the semiquincentennial. I suspect it’s another Trump troll, but just in case: No. No. No.
50 years after he’s dead we* can decide.
*editorial “we”, because I certainly won’t be around
Snow: A compelling video, and having a small collection of African art, I have to agree almost everything people call “real” antique art was, in fact, made for the tourist market.
buddhaha: Agree entirely: no coins, bridges, buildings, airports, highways, or anything else to be named after a living person. Wait until they’ve been gone from this earth at least 50 years. Then we can judge whether or not they deserve the honor.
He should have no discretion over the bloody fine, which should be set per a formula stated in the statute in question. His discretion should be to determine whether or not she is liable and to state the reason for his decision. It’s a municipal court, so the evidentiary basis for any decision is going to be thin as the case has to be processed in a matter of minutes. For that matter, if he has a line of cases to process that evening, he shouldn’t be clowning around with the daughter of a member of the public, no matter how cute she is. He should be clowning around with his own grandchildren or extended shirt-tails.
F–I’ve collected a few African masks, and looking at various books, museum catalogs, and exhibits I’ve tried to buy masks which are authentic, which look like they have actually been worn and “danced,” but I am aware that, nowadays, a lot of tribesmen in Africa are producing fakes, sometimes termed “airport art”–the kinds of masks you see displayed for sale as you get off the plane in Africa–and many other places–and walk through the terminal.
buddhaha: Agree entirely: no coins, bridges, buildings, airports, highways, or anything else to be named after a living person. Wait until they’ve been gone from this earth at least 50 years. Then we can judge whether or not they deserve the honor.
==
Absolutely. The line up on the paper currency will pass, though you might discontinue the $2 bill and put Jefferson and Madison on the $20 bill and Jackson and Grant on the $50 bill; have an Indian head, a buffalo, Eisenhower, and MacArthur on the coins. Be very wary about naming things after a politician, even fifty years after their death.
==
While we’re at it, can we transfer the archival material in the presidential libraries to a modular records center in Kansas City? What’s left we can deed over to the county where it sits and then pledge to never build another one.
==
The National Parks Service has a mess of properties which might be transferred to local governments, transferred to philanthropies, or sold off to private interests. Independence Hall is a site where events in the sweep of national history took place. Sara Delano Roosevelt’s house is a handsome old house.
Art Deco, I add a suggestion that the monstrosity Obama is constructing in Jackson Park in Chicago be demolished, and the open space returned to the City of Chicago.
Oh my! African masks! Chinese art pieces! Such cultural appropriation! Where’s my fainting couch? I’m about to swoon!
Speaking of antiques, many years ago we purchased at auction a bronze sculpture of a Native American by E. E. Heikka, a noted western artist and sculptor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Heikka
A couple of years ago, we decided to sell all our art that our heirs didn’t want. I took the Heikka to a dealer that examined it very closely. He removed the base and found that it was a very good copy of a Heikka original. He showed me the way it was done. The original might have been worth $1000. The copy – $100.
The world is full of scam artists working diligently to sell art and antiques to unsuspecting people.
Buyers beware.
Art, lighten up.
SHIREHOME:
Not gonna happen. 🙂
Obama needs to take a cue from Trump and put his* name on the Chicago building in giant gold letters.
To remind everyone how important he is.
*Obama, not Trump.
Virginia Dems go from “Let your rage fuel you” to fantasizing about political assassinations “2 bullets to head” – RePost
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/10/virginia-democrats-go-from-let-your.html
In fact, SD, it’s a totally naturally progression…
…for progressives…
Meanwhile, in the UK…
“The worst speech in modern British political history”—
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-worst-speech-in-modern-british-political-history/
H/T Instapundit.
Key graf (RTWT):
“…We expect our political speeches to be unlovely now. Starmer’s went beyond that and managed to be offensive and yet boring all at once. As I said, the Prime Minister is an algorithm, and there are three things you can say about algorithms: they lack memory, have no sense of humour, and are unaware that they are, well, an algorithm….”
Indeed, there is a very good reason why Britain’s Labour Party NEEDED “Harris” to win last November…and to this end sent earnest, eager reinforcements across the pond to help “make it so” (the utter blunderers, the idiot fools).
And so maybe it’s time to, um, edit Shakespeare? Hmmm.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/286979-this-royal-throne-of-kings-this-scepter-d-isle-this-earth
(Not yet, Dear Lord, not yet….)
Snow:
Your “danced” masks could well have been danced, as there’s a lot of dancing that goes on in a variety of countries. I say that not in jest, but because we sought out authentic dance rituals while we lived on the continent (a total of 20 years, 7 countries), and saw some very fine examples. One was literally at the “end of the road” in Zaire, a village where the dirt track went in but never came out. That was a coming of age dance for the 14 year old son of a very important man (he was introduced as the chief, but who knows?). The celebration started before first light (we had spent the night) and continued well into the afternoon, with a lot of palm wine and weed being consumed. We filmed and video taped it, having arranged it all in advance, but cannot find the films or tapes now.
Anyway, lots of dancing going on around the continent. The best we saw was in Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) and was feverish to say the least.
OTOH, we found a flourishing market in “antique” African masks in Cameroon, and soon learned that the most obviously “used” had been tied on the side of a cow for a week, and showed great signs of wear after being rubbed by other cows in the herd. BTW, they also showed small hairs if examined with a loupe.
The meme war continues, and a lot of ordinary Internet wise guys are adding fuel to the fire.*
Honestly, once these memes take hold their target is, forever after, always going to trail a faint scent of the ridiculous, and when you see these people, these images which have made fun of them can’t help but come to mind, be remembered, and detract from the image of knowledge and seriousness that they are trying to project.
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCjkrc1HJeo
F–There is a story of a western tourist in China who talks to a farmer in the countryside, and asks him what his crop was, and the farmer says “antiques”–he takes the objects, puts them in a pit full of manure, pulls them out a few weeks later and voila, instant, old looking “antique.”
P.S. If you see pictures of the “antiques” market in Beijing (and that’s just Beijing), you will understand the sheer volume of these items on display, and the difficulty of discerning which among them (if any) are actual antiques.
I suspect that this market in Beijing–and its imitators all around China–have been fleecing the gullible for a couple thousand years or more.
I don’t know how many large scale factories–plus mom and pop operations, throughout China–are churning out these fake antiques, but my impression is that their output is in the many millions of “antiques” each year.
So you pack a long metal shipping container with tens of thousands of “smalls” you’ve bought, contained in the larger wooden fake “antique” pieces, ship them around the world, and if many of these smalls break in transit, their individual cost was so low that you can still make a good profit selling the fake “antiques” which survived intact.
One wonders what percentage of the remnants and symbols–true antiques–of China’s ancient culture the Red Guards destroyed, as their violent, crazed mobs swept through China and Tibet.
From the pictures I’ve seen, the damage to the structures of Tibet’s monasteries, and nunneries, and to the religious texts, statues, and other artwork they contained was immense.
Quite aside from the Red Guards China has just had too many wars, and too much building out of wood. Little that you see there is more than 400 years old, and most of it suffers from the “ship of Theseus” problem in that it has been rebuilt over and over. The Great Wall is mostly ruins except for a few locations restored for tourists and quite a bit of it was originally built of mud.
I visited the Prince Gong Mansion in Beijing, and it was very lovely, but had been extensively restored in 2008. From the 60s to the 80s it was used as an air conditioning factory. It had originally been built in 1777–San Jose, California was founded in that year, and its oldest building is nearly that old, though not quite as elaborate.
The Temple of Heaven was first constructed in 1406 but is made of wood and has been rebuilt over and over, the current structure dating to the 1890s. King Street Station in Seattle is almost that old, but has a lot more bums in it.
There are Chinese manuscripts held in state universities in the US that can no longer be found in China.
I understand the fraud element, but I’m not sure why I’d care if something was an authentic antique, or not, if the craftsmanship was identical. I wish more craftsman and manufacturers were mimicking older designs with modern materials and techniques. I’d love to own a car with an interior and exterior identical to a 1937 Duesenberg Model J, but with modern mechanics.
Rufus T. Firefly–You pose an interesting question.
Take two items which appear to be pretty much identical.
One is old, and was the result of, say, a month of dedicated and meticulous, time-consuming work involving many intricate steps, performed by one artisan or by a team of them.
The other is brand new, a copy of a hand-made original, which has been scanned by a laser, the scan uploaded to a computer, then, used as a pattern to direct various machines to create an exact duplicate–the whole process taking, say, a couple of hours.
Put these two items side by side, and compare them, they look identical, but what value might you place on th genuine, old, hand made item vs. the just created machine made copy?
Would it matter if this item was functional vs. just decorative?
Same value, different value?
Thoughts of some English Jews.*
* See https://www.thefp.com/p/im-leaving-the-uk-antisemitism-manchester
and https://x.com/AshleyRindsberg/status/1973849074349514823
“Best yet” says James Woods, and he’s not wrong. More Sombrero Siesta Fiesta video at link, starring — Hakeem!, Chucky!, Granny Nan!, Pocahontas!, AOC! and a cast of backing entertainers:
https://x.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1974951359310119286
sdferr,
Very good. The scene with Schumer grilling street tacos was especially amusing.
I have a couple of thoughts about the antiques question, which is quite interesting.
The immediate impression is that the difference in perceived value is tied to the mere age of the older object. But as is evident, “age is just a number” in that strict sense – one can’t touch age or time. Hence, if this is the explanation, it can’t be merely because a thing is old that the price or demand is high. (Well, price being a first-approximation proxy for demand. But let that go.)
I think the deeper reason, even if buyers don’t necessarily articulate it, is that the age is, again, a proxy for the historical associations that go with the object. It’s as if the buyer is not interested in the object per se as much as in acquiring, as best he can, a share in that history and culture, at least the good sides thereof, which produced such an item as a tangible output or remnant. And I mention ‘remnant’ here because there is, I suspect, always an unspoken consciousness that time only runs one way and good, once gone, does not generally return (not in human affairs, anyway, and not in the same manner).
That’s the one side of it. The other, I suppose, is that for particularly knowledgeable collectors, it’s not really about the external form of the object, but often about hidden details within. Take the difference between a Japanese sword made with a certain ancient process as against one that may look and even function identically on the outside, but was merely cast in some modern foundry a few years ago. In that case, what gives the object the perceived value is the inward metallurgical detail. But that’s not something that can be seen with the naked eye, so it relies on background technical knowledge on some level. That could be an example of a buyer being motivated by a different sort of aesthetic, if aesthetic we may call it. It is, ironically, a little bit like the labor theory of value being ported into the field of art.
I suppose I would have to take a different line from either of these if I were to think about something like ancient Byzantine or Chinese manuscripts or something like that, because with those, there is text and thus comprehensible meaning that can be objectively identified and so on. That’s a different dimension of value yet again.
But what if we were not talking about an object but rather, say, a story acted out on video, one story acted out be an actual living actor or actress, the same story acted out by an AI generated actor or actress which even looked exactly like the living actor or actress?
In this case I would think that the distinction between the two forms is much clearer, and that the performance by a live actor or actress would be much more highly valued, would be preferred over that generated by an AI, even if the AI generated actor or actress looked exactly like their living counterparts.
The age-old question, “What is Truth”? seems to have morphed into “What is Reality”?
Might one wonder if, with the uptick of Optics and the unstoppable spread of AI, “reality” will, all too soon cease—gradually and then suddenly?—to have any meaning at all?
“Germany In Shock: Merz’s Media Show Vs. Economic Collapse”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/germany-shock-merzs-media-show-vs-economic-collapse
File under: “All the world’s a stage…”, etc.
@ Barry > “Might one wonder if, with the uptick of Optics and the unstoppable spread of AI, “reality” will, all too soon cease—gradually and then suddenly?—to have any meaning at all?”
Interesting question if applied to the “degrees of separation” theory on Open Thread 10/6, especially the discussion at the end in respect to how fast behavior, either negative or positive, can spread depending on the connections of the people in the data set.
Also might explain why activism of any stripe, with its concomitant ideological rigidity, seems to lead to silos or bubbles each with its own designated perception of “reality” that might have little or no connection to any actual objective happenings.
(I’m obviously dodging the word “facts”.)