In the tags of one of my posts, I pondered the overlap between tumblr tankies and anti-anti-Ai people, suggesting the common link is anti-intellectualism and the disrespect for the arts and humanities that comes with it. Someone left this reply.
I think this is correct (and am only blocking out their name so idiots don’t attack them).
It would sound mean out of context, but we’ve all been on here for a while and know that tankies are genuinely some of the laziest, stupidest, and most incurious people alive. They’re losers who are mad at anyone who finds any success through effort, because they’ve made inadequacy and doing nothing parts of their political praxis. These people aren’t researchers saying “actually this AI model makes this kind of research easier”, but people who’ve seriously argued with me that artists are “gatekeepers” because they…can actually draw or paint, and say you’re not an artist if you can’t draw and instead make a computer program do all of it for you. I said before that it's like crying that it’s “gatekeeping” to say someone who does nothing but order takeout isn’t a chef lol.
But these people act victimized by the idea that you need to put time and effort into something to get better at it. It’s the same with academics; as I’ve said before, this type of person doesn’t want to increase accessibility to education, they want to attack the concept of education itself to justify their own refusal to learn and insecurities over being willfully stupid. How dare you say they should actually read something, or that someone who has studied something and demonstrated their knowledge through getting a degree knows more than they do. These people want the recognition and respect they think artists, academics, and professionals get while putting in ZERO of the time, effort, or work. I repeat: the core here is anti-intellectualism. It sounds a hell of a lot like the right, who feels threatened by experts and the very concept of expertise. Anti-intellectuals of all stripes feel oppressed by the stance that you need to gain knowledge and develop a skill set in something to be taken seriously about it, or achieve something to be rewarded, and they see generative AI as their savior because they don’t have to DO anything, but can have some kind of a result and demand to be seen as on the same level as people who actually put the fucking work in
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