[latexr]

Being struck by lighting may affect your desire to go outside, but it has zero correlation with the sky’s beauty.

Outer space is beautiful, poison dart frogs are beautiful, lava is beautiful. All of them can kill or maim you if you don’t wear protection, but that doesn’t take away from their beauty.

Conversely, boring safe things aren’t automatically beautiful. I see no reasonable reason to believe that finding beauty in the night sky is any sort of “training”.

[ipaddr]

If your experience includes bombs falling out of the sky the beautiful description fades away quickly.

[ninetyninenine]

Do you think a fat pig is beautiful? Like a hairy fat pig that snorts and rolls in the mud… is this animal so beautiful to you that you would want to make love to this animal?

Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly and sex with a pig is universally disgusting.

But you realize that horny male pigs think this is beautiful right? Horny pigs want to fuck other pigs because horny pigs think fat sweaty female hogs are beautiful.

Beauty is arbitrary. It is not intrinsic. Even among life forms and among humans we all have different opinions on what is beautiful. I guarantee you there are people who think the night sky is ugly af.

Attributes like beauty are not such profound categories that separate an LLM from humanity. These are arbitrary classifications and even though you can’t fully articulate the “experience” you have of “beauty” the LLM can’t fully articulate its “experience” either. You think it’s impossible for the LLM to experience what you experience… but you really have no evidence for this because you have no idea what the LLM experiences internally.

Just like you can’t articulate what the LLM experiences neither can the LLM. These are both black box processes that can’t be described but neither is very profound given the fact that we all have completely different opinions on what is beautiful.

[bigstrat2003]

> Do you think a fat pig is beautiful? Like a hairy fat pig that snorts and rolls in the mud… is this animal so beautiful to you that you would want to make love to this animal?

I don't want to make love to the night sky, so that last bit is completely irrelevant to the question of beauty. As for whether a pig is beautiful, sure, in its own way. I think they're nice animals and there is something beautiful in seeing them enjoy their little lives.

> Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly...

It would seem not.

[DonHopkins]

Somebody never read Charlotte's Web, or watched the Muppet Show.

[ninetyninenine]

I did read Charlotte’s Web. The whole story is a lesson in how beauty is created by language. Wilbur doesn’t become beautiful because he changes, but because someone clever enough decided to write the right words above him. That’s what beauty usually is something we agree to see, not something that exists on its own.

And Miss Piggy understood that better than anyone. She didn’t have beauty, she performed it. She made desire itself her act.

So yes, I read both. Maybe that’s exactly why I don’t mistake the show for the substance.

[ben_w]

> Of course not! Because pigs are intrinsically and universally ugly and sex with a pig is universally disgusting.

Allegations regarding one of the recent British Prime Ministers aside:

If this was truly universal, nobody would have bothered writing laws to ban it because nobody would be offending their sensibilities by doing it. Aella's surveys suggest such interests are far more common than I would have guessed.

Which actually supports your statement that "beauty" is not intrinsic… or at the very least "sexy", which isn't the same thing at all, c.f. the other reply pointing out that they don't want to get off with the night sky.

[ninetyninenine]

It's similar.

Put it this way, you don't necessarily want to fuck everything that's beautiful. But everything you want to fuck will be beautiful and this is nearly an absolute must. It's a single arrow, one way relationship.

So my example is apt. The whole point is pigs are ugly, but there is a high intelligence out there who thinks pigs are so freaking beautiful they will fuck a pig. and that high intelligence, is other pigs.

People get so pedantic with the example and deriving little unnecessary things off of it. It's JUST an example. You really need to see what the "point" of my example and see if it makes sense. The example is just illustrative. If some minor aspect of the example is "offensive" or doesn't make sense to you it doesn't mean my point is dead. The example is an example to help you understand, it's not a proof.

[latexr]

> Is this for real?

Frankly, I think you should be the one answering that question. You’re comparing appreciating looking at the sky to bestiality. Then you follow it up with another barrage of wrong assumptions about what I think and can or cannot articulate. None of that has anything to do with the argument. I didn’t even touch on LLMs, my point was squarely about the human experience. Please don’t assume things you know nothing about regarding other people. The HN guidelines ask you to not engage in bad faith and to steel man the other person’s argument.

[ninetyninenine]

> You’re comparing appreciating looking at the sky to bestiality.

That’s my point. You think beauty is profound but this is arbitrary and not at all different from bestiality. It’s only your intrinsic cultural biases that cause you to look at one with disdain. Don’t be a snob. This is HN. We are supposed to be logical and immune from the biases that plague other forums. Beauty is no more profound than bestiality. It’s all about what you find beautiful. If you find beasts beautiful then you call it beastiality?

What is so different about finding a beast beautiful versus the night sky? Snobbery, that’s what.

It’s just semantic manipulation and association with crudeness that prevents you from thinking logically. HNers are better than this and so are you. Don’t pretend you don’t get it and that my comparison to beastiality is so left field that it’s incomprehensible. You get it. Follow the rules and take it in good faith like you said yourself.

> The HN guidelines ask you to not engage in bad faith

Fair I edited the part that asks “is this for real” that’s literally the only part.

I also find your dismissiveness of my arguments as “bestiality” is bad faith and manipulative. I clearly wasn’t doing that. Pigs are attracted to pigs that is normal. Humans are not attracted to pigs. That is also normal. I took normal attributes of human nature and compared it to reality. You took it in bad faith and dismissed me which is against the very rules you stated.

[latexr]

Again, please stop telling me what I think. You have zero idea what that is and all your arguments are full of wrong (and frankly unhinged) assumptions. I don’t know what conversation you’re fantasising in your head, but it’s not this one.

> Fair I edited the part that asks “is this for real” that’s literally the only part.

Even if that were true, which I disagree with, that was the very first sentence and set the tone for the entire comment.

> I clearly wasn’t doing that.

That’s not clear in the slightest.

You keep making wrong assumptions and telling other people what they think. You can’t have an honest and productive conversation like that. You’ll never be able to engage in good faith and truly comprehend what the other person is saying until you understand and fix that.

[ninetyninenine]

Look, you keep saying I’m telling you what you think, but that’s just a way of dodging the actual argument. In any serious conversation, we have to interpret each other’s words. That’s how reasoning works. When I restate your point, I’m not claiming psychic powers; I’m engaging with what you said. If I get something wrong, point to the sentence and explain where. But saying “you have no idea what I think” shuts down discussion instead of clarifying it.

And about the example, you keep missing what it was doing. I wasn’t saying the night sky and bestiality are the same thing. Obviously not. The example illustrates how beauty is subjective. Humans find pigs ugly, pigs find pigs beautiful. That’s not crude, it’s biology. The point is that beauty depends entirely on the observer. That’s the entire argument. You can swap out pigs for anything else and it still holds. You got hung up on the imagery instead of seeing the reasoning behind it.

You also seem to think I’m being unhinged because I’m willing to follow an argument wherever it leads, even if it’s uncomfortable. But that’s the whole purpose of rational discussion, to question assumptions rather than hide behind emotional reactions. If your position can’t survive a provocative example, that’s not my problem.

You accuse me of making assumptions, but that’s what all reasoning is. We start with assumptions and test them. If you think mine are wrong, show why. Don’t just say “stop assuming things.” That’s not logic, that’s avoidance.

And about that opening line, you keep acting like it somehow undermines everything else I said, but that’s not how rational discussion works. I took it out because it added heat, not because it invalidated the argument. You can’t take one emotional sentence and use it to dismiss paragraphs of reasoning that followed. That’s not proportional, and it’s not logical. If my logic is wrong, show me where it’s wrong. But if all you can point to is tone, that’s just a way of dodging the argument. The content stands or falls on its reasoning, not on how politely it began or how it continues.

You talk about good faith, but good faith means addressing the argument, not the emotional impression it gave you. I laid out a clear thesis: beauty is observer dependent. It’s not intrinsic, not sacred, and certainly not a unique human experience. That doesn’t make it meaningless; it makes it relative. If you disagree, then tell me why you think beauty is intrinsic or what makes human perception special. But just calling the argument crazy and walking away doesn’t make your point stronger, it just makes it look like you don’t have one.