3D computer animation notes. Notes about entertainment industry, the media, limitations in human logical decision making, and how to avoid letting those biases leak through to computer systems that we want to make logical decisions.
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The media is biased. So, you ask, what makes a “good” song or a “good” movie in the entertainment industry? Well, one that is entertaining, of course, and for the matter of fact that there is such a distinction definition, we know that what you end up seeing from the “professional media” is indeed quite biased. What both music and animation share in common. And video, and movies. Not just any random sequence of data, will do, and for this reason, this is one of the reasons why it is so much harder to predict whether some commercially developed entertainment will be a box office hit or a box office flop.
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The difference between data that is to be “ingested by a computing machine” versus what is most entertaining. If you are training a machine, you really do want it to receive a stream of unbiased information, otherwise its logical decision-making capabilities will be erroneous.
Actually, as a matter of fact, it is just as bad for humans to be fed with a long stream of entertainment as it is for computers. Indeed, in both cases, it causes the intelligent subject to tend to think irrational thoughts.
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* But, were it the case that were humans not so biased and more
permissive and liking of even but random sequences, then the
world would be revolutionized. Entertainment industry would be
much more predictable and economically sustainable.
* The human biases of only paying attention to certain types of
information that are considered most "entertaining" work against
human logical reasoning. First, the attention source is biased.
Second, as a consequential damage, the range of information
available inside the human brain for decision making becomes
biased.
"Garbage in, garbage out" as is often said in the field of
computing. As it turns out, the large amount of entertainment
data contained inside of computers is the "garbage in." The
problem that happened here is that humans tend to photograph and
film only those scenes that are thought to be most entertaining
to themselves. The rest is not recorded, in the interest of
minimizing storage space requirements. Of course, it would have
been much better to perform a statistically unbiased random
sampling of the world via a video camera, were the purpose to be
to view the world from a logical perspective.
* Yeah, like seriously, you know, what "security cameras" end up
seeing almost every single day. A large, long stream of
uneventful pictures.
* So, on one hand, "entertainment engineering" can be used to grab
people's attention, then educate them on a statistically sound
view of the world. On the other hand, it can be used to help
spread misinformation and generate mass hysteria, along with
other crowd mentalities. And I think we can all agree that for
the mass majority of "entertainment," it is designed with solely
that motive: to be entertaining, regardless of logical
interpretation. So the "on the other hand" is in fact the most
widely observed effect of entertainment.
* So what is emotion? Emotion is attention, and one of a very
narrowly defined set of states. Yes, a finite state machine.
How about that? Yes, actually, in some sense. Although,
similarly related, pain or discomfort causes attention too.
* So, now you're asking. What about entertainment? The
interesting thing is that in essence, the things that entertain
people have not really changed over the thousands of years.
Despite technogical advancements, many of the newer forms of
entertainment are simply mapping reductions to existing,
lower-tech forms.
At least for the mass majority of people, that is. Yes, there
is a counterpoint. On one hand, there is _mass entertainment_,
and on the other hand, there are specialties.
So, this is what I was going to say, now that I have set the
scene with context information. The thing is that all humans
have some in-built biases in how they pay attention to things.
Sure, humans can be trained away from these biases, but the fact
that these are so pervasively in-built says something
interesting.
Traditionally, some of these tendencies, such as paying
attention to moving objects, had their advantages. Why not just
watch the grass grow? Well, if there is an animal charging
right at you, it might be more useful to take notice.
But, in the modern era, these tendencies can be used against
humans, especially when exploited through technology. Now,
technology does not remotely need to have the same connctions in
behavior and operation as is the case in the natural world. VR
objects flying at you might not actually hit you. So it's
important to understand the virtualization of sensations so as
to logically react to them, or conversely, ignore them. Not
just virtualization, but I should say, in better words, more
importantly, the artificial engineered nature of the senses.
Yes, like "entertainment engineering," or perhaps better put,
social engineering.
* Ha ha! "Why not just the grass grow?" That's a funny question
to go asking in the middle of this technical document.
* Professional entertainers. They get paid to grab people's
attention, and that is how they sell. So, it can't be
"ordinary," and unfortunately that makes their business model
less predictable too.
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Statistical decision making, and how humans are so bad at it. Well, duh, given the discussion just above, I think you should know that all quite well.
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So, you say. Your productivity output for writing text far exceeds your productivity for music? But that’s because I don’t have to listen through the text to make sure the rate is just right, unlike the case for music. Hey, maybe you can automate that, can’t you? Then you’d speed your productivity way up, right? Well, I guess so. Hey, that makes sense. But then it brings into question. Why even make a huge collection when just a small amount will do, right?
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Again, I reiterate. With archives, more is always better! You want to provide artists with the largest selection of available assets.
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Discussion about digerati. Who they are, and why you should be careful about trying to repeat their “experiments.” Portability, and associated costs with experiments.
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So, about “entertainment industry.” Well, now I’m thinking, maybe it is only applicable to mass media ones and those that rely heavily on technology.
- Mass media is a phenomenon in that it relies on language synchronization among a mass community. Obviously a reality in the United States, but this cannot be expected to be the case elsewhere in the world. The local regional languages might be much more fragmented.
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So, music is just entirely “fictionalized” by humans? Like just a random play of experiments? Well, that’s not entirely the case. There’s also a statistical element to it.