> Nobody has responded to me with anything about how authors are harmed
The same way good law-abiding folk are harmed when Heroin is introduced to the community. Then those people won't be able to lend you a cup of sugar, and may well start causing problems.
AI books take off and are easy to digest, and before long your user base is quite literally too stupid to buy and read your book even if they wanted.
And, for the record, it's trivial to "out compete" books or anything else. You just cheat. For AI, that means making 1000 books that lie for every one real book. Can you find a needle in a haystack? You can cheat by making things addictive, by overwhelming with supply, by straight up lying, by forcing people to use it... there's really a lot of ways to "outcompete".
> It feels more like we just want to punish people, particularly rich people, particularly if they get away with stuff we're afraid to try.
If by "afraid to try" you mean "know to be morally reprehensible" and if by "punish people" you mean "punish people (who do things that we know to be morally reprehensible)", then sure.
But... you might just be describing the backbone of human society since, I don't know, ever? Hm, maybe there's a reason we have that perspective. No, it must just be silly :P
I just explained how it's morally reprehensible. The argument is right there, above the quote you chose to quote. Neat trick, but I'm sorry, a retort that does not make.
You didn't explain anything about why it is so, you just said it is, hence why I said it's your opinion. If you can't explain why, in more concrete terms, then there is no reason to believe your argument.
I just explained how AI books are able to cheat - they make more, faster, cheaper, and win based not on quality, never on quality, but rather by overwhelming. Such a strategy is morally reprehensible. It's like selling water by putting extra salt in everything.
Consumers are limited by humanity. We are all just meat sacks at the end of the day. We cannot, and will not, sift through 1 billion books to find the one singular one written by a person. We will die before then. But, even on a smaller scale - we have other problems. We have to work, we have family. Consumers cannot dedicate perfect intelligence to every single decision. This, by the way, is why free market analogies fall apart in practice, and why consumers buy what is essentially rat poison and ingest it when healthier, cheaper options are available. We are flawed by our blood.
We can run a business banking on the stupidity of consumers, sure. We can use deceit, yes. To me, this is morally reprehensible. You may disagree, but I expect an argument as to why.
> I just explained how AI books are able to cheat - they make more, faster, cheaper, and win based not on quality, never on quality, but rather by overwhelming. Such a strategy is morally reprehensible.
Okay, I fundamentally disagree with your premises, analogies to water and banking (or even in your other comment about piracy [0], as I have not seen any evidence of piracy leading directly to "suicides," as you say, and have instead actually benefited many companies [1]), and therefore conclusions, so I don't think we can have a productive conversation without me spending a lot of time saying why I don't equate AI production to morality, at all, and why I don't see AI writing billions of books having anything to do with morals.
That is why I said it is your opinion, versus mine which is different. Therefore I will save both our time by not spending more of it on this discussion.
You're of course allowed to disagree, but past a certain point you're yelling at clouds and people might think you're insane.
It's very simple logic, and it doesn't require your understanding to be true. Piracy is good for companies? Really? That's... your legitimate position?
If nobody is paying for anything how does a company operate? That's not a rhetorical question. Is it fairy dust? Perhaps magical pixies keep the lights running?
If you don't have explanations for even the simplest of problems with your position, your position isn't worth listening to.
Again, you're a Kantian and I'm not. Your arguments do not sway those who aren't, as I said, they are fundamentally different moral philosophies. If you cannot produce even the evidence of harm as you previously stated (please, link me suicide news reports directly caused by piracy, as you claimed) then "your position isn't worth listening to" either.
Does it make a difference? What I'm saying is plainly true and undeniable. I'll break it down, perhaps a bit slower this time so you can keep up.
You must agree companies require money to operate. No money, no company. You must also agree that piracy OR any action which takes money away from a company results in less money. In addition, you must agree every individual will take whichever action costs them the least amount of money.
Okay. Do you see where I'm going? Following these very simple rules, the result is that there is no money left for companies, and they go under.
Whether that's bad or not is, technically, debatable. Whether that's how it works or not, isn't.
I grow tired of having to explain very simple logic to bumbling idiots. Of course you're not a bumbling idiot. Rather, you're someone with a belief and a delusion. Meaning, you will simply ignore any and all reality to maintain your belief, even if, right before your very eyes, it is refuted. I don't know why people act this way. Maybe there's some medication that can help with that.
People might say I'm a prophet, maybe some kind of psychic. Really, I'm just a guy with, like, a quarter of a brain. We can often "see into the future" if we just rub some brain cells and put two and two together.
Until you can find away around these rules, perhaps some alternative economic system which has not been invented, there is nothing for you to refute. Not that you've been trying at all, your entire "argument" has been "erm, I disagree". Which, by the way, is not an argument. It's more of a statement, and one which is embarrassing to say out loud when you don't have anything to back it up with.
And, to be clear, this is well past the land of morality. I'm operating in a much simpler framework here. Even if you're under the belief everyone is perfect, or some people are perfect and some aren't, or whatever other moral beliefs - that doesn't change the rules and therefore doesn't change the result.
Logic can seem very consistent in a vacuum but again, because you can't find a single statistic to support your claims about piracy (while I already cited some evidence for my side), you cling to what you think is true, not what is empirically studied to be true. Your bloviating in as many paragraphs doesn't really mean anything, so unless you can cite something meaningful, I'm done with this nearly two week old conversation.
The same way good law-abiding folk are harmed when Heroin is introduced to the community. Then those people won't be able to lend you a cup of sugar, and may well start causing problems.
AI books take off and are easy to digest, and before long your user base is quite literally too stupid to buy and read your book even if they wanted.
And, for the record, it's trivial to "out compete" books or anything else. You just cheat. For AI, that means making 1000 books that lie for every one real book. Can you find a needle in a haystack? You can cheat by making things addictive, by overwhelming with supply, by straight up lying, by forcing people to use it... there's really a lot of ways to "outcompete".
> It feels more like we just want to punish people, particularly rich people, particularly if they get away with stuff we're afraid to try.
If by "afraid to try" you mean "know to be morally reprehensible" and if by "punish people" you mean "punish people (who do things that we know to be morally reprehensible)", then sure.
But... you might just be describing the backbone of human society since, I don't know, ever? Hm, maybe there's a reason we have that perspective. No, it must just be silly :P