My quote on this topic from the MIT book "Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media within Communities, across Disciplines & with Algorithms", chapter on Media co-creation with non-human systems:
"a defining human characteristic. Comedy is very complex, much more complex than, let's say, painting or visual art, and so forth. There's temporality to it, you need to have historical embedding, sometimes, to understand a joke, you need to have cultural understanding, and so forth. It's a beautiful thing."
Here some "The far side" comics created by the human Gary Larson
Ultimately comedy is in the eye of the beholder, which is the beauty and deep magic of it.
“Jesus as a guest star on a 1980s police drama” - Generated with Stable Diffusion
Professional news: I've joined Hugging Face 🤗 as product designer.
This post elaborates a bit on the backstory and reasons for why i have joined Hugging Face.
My journey into the intersection of machine learning, generative systems, open-source, HCI and design started about 10y ago. Coming from the worlds of design, game development and procedural generation - in 2013/14 i found a new home in a small community of researchers, developers and artists that were excited about the crude ML systems of the time. In those years, i realized countless public ML experiments and projects for corporate clients - allowing me to develop intuition for what it means to design products for humans in the age of AI.
Around 2015, two phenomena had captured my imagination: Open source and open knowledge were transforming how science and ML were done. To promote this trend, i launched Gitxiv in 2015 - a site for "collaborative open computer science" which combined open code, open research and community. It was quiet popular for a while. At the same time, machine learning began to transform creativity. Explorations of this trend led me to co-found the startup "Creative.AI" in 2016 and raising €2m+ to execute on a thesis that (generative) ML will democratize creative industries. The startup was premature, but the thesis and concernsfrom then are still valid.
After many other projects, I joined @GoogleAI in 2018 as part of a team that was strategically situated between fundamental A.I research and product development. I had the opportunity to help design ML-driven products across many of Google's key verticals and got to intimately collaborate with some of the leading people in the ML industry - from science, engineering, design and management. The scale of ambition and operations at Google was truly dizzying. My work on projects such as ██████ and ██████ significantly contributed to ████████ and ████████. After 4 years, i left Google in early 2022.
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Which brings me to the present day: I'm exciting to announce that I've joined @huggingface 🤗 as product designer. Hugging Face - "the AI community building the future" - is a startup I've followed with great interest for the past few years. It's bold mission of "democratizing good machine learning" by "empowering the community through open and collaborative technology building at the intersection of science and engineering" deeply resonates with me. So does the decentralized and nimble approach which is at the heart of this community. Over the years, Hugging Face has evolved into the leading open ecosystem for all one's needs to build machine learning solution and has become a catalyst for open ML science.
In a world where most companies will soon be AI companies, the value of a truly open and community driven innovation ecosystem can not be overstated. I believe that the real "foundation models" of our time will be built together by everyone for everyone, in-order to authentically contribute to the prosperity of all. On this path we face many difficult questions, such as "what does it mean to design products for humans in the age of AI"? I am excited to find answers together with my new colleges and the community at Hugging Face!
Feel free to reach me at any time at samim AT huggingface.co 🤗
Select a small & light object to get started, like some folded tin foil or paper. Focus your intention on the object. Stay centered on the object, and send your intention to it as you would your arm or leg. Remember not to let your thoughts stray and to focus on a single action. You’re one with the object, so attempt to move it as you would any other part of your body. Remember, practice makes perfect, and with some patience you can move the object with Yi.
Quote: The term SHO originated from ancient neigong art, it has a very specific meaning in daoist cultivation. The old daoist ancestors discover through their power that the Ren and Du channel of a fetus inside the mother's womb are connected together. When the baby is born and the umbilical cord is severed, the two channels also get disconnected. Daoist practitioners believe that if one want to get from Houtian to Xiantian (**), to reverse the aging process, Ren and Du must be reconnected again and the internal qi must be reversed back into the fetus stage. The authentic SHO is the method to reconnect the Ren and Du channel. What it means it that when the Xiantian qi is full, the Xiantian yuen qi initiate from the lower tien, then through the Hui Yin point going up inside the spine, knocking down the three gates of Wei Lu, Jia Ji and Yu Zhen, and opening up Tian Men, Tian Mu and the three fields. The Ren and Du channels reconnect and the process is automatic. Once this stage is reached, the internal qi reverse back into fetus stage and a series of natural Xiantian abilities will also appear, Internal viewing, remote viewing and the automatic movement of the internal qi. Since the authentic daoist SHO means that Xiantian qi reconnect the Ren and Du channel, and these two channels are part of the body's Eight Wondrous Channels, therefore this is also known as Channel Small Heavenly Orbit. In the Three Immortal Methods, this is the fifth stage, the "The Golden Sphere Flying up from the side".
Quote: When the houtian qi was full in the body, the xiantian qi began to be created, the yuen qi initiate from the lower tien, pass through Hui Yin then Wei Lu, Jia Ji and up to Yu Zhen. Then it came down from Tian Men, Tian Mu. The qi then went down to lower tien along the Ren channel. The cycle continues automatically. After the Channel SHO, the internal qi will be guided by Xiantian qi and automatically move around the organs, meridians and channels. Being initially restricted by the wellness of the practitioner, the automatic movement of internal qi began in part of the body where there was illness only, after the illness is cured. The internal qi can move in other parts. When the body is healed completely, the internal qi will automatically move around in all the organs, meridians and channels.
After the SHO was opened, the successful students develop different levels and kinds of abilities. Miss Wang saw a tree when she closed her eyes and meditate. Later she found the exact tree in the Taiyuan park, she had never been there before; Mr. He developed see-through power and ; Miss Ye could see her own bones, meridians and points; Mr. Zhou could see his own bones too; Miss Liu developed automatic daoyin and Nu Dan movements. Every student agreed that, opening the Channel SHO required confidence, endurance, sweats, pain and patience. Everyone is equal in front of it, it doesn't depend on external factors. There is only one way to do it, students must have strong faith and confidence, careful study the theory and follow the instructor's direction precisely.
Quote: An old gentleman opened his SHO with the help of Master Wang. This old gentleman was a headmaster of a school and he enjoys Zhouyi. Due to an accident, half of his body became paralyzed. The old man's son knew Master Wang and so he introduced his father to him and that's how he first attended a Master Wang's seminar. The old man was an intellectual and he analyzed Master Wang's teachings very carefully. But following the requirements of opening up the SHO, he practiced step by step on each obstacle. For example, he began by practicing the length of a sitting session, when he started sitting, he couldn't sit for too long. However, in order to recover from the injuries and improve his health he endured the all the pains that came from sitting and not long afterward, he was able to sit continuously for two hours and he did it two three times a day. Then he practice on the sitting postures, from natural cross legged to half lotus and then to full lotus. Then he worked on his line of essence, from "Heaven", "Eye" and "Opening" to construct the line of essence. When he pull on his line of essence, his wife would move a stick very lightly in front of him and he was able to feel the motion, this showed that his line of essence had opened. He worked very hard on the five elements. He also practice extracting bone marrow on his own, and then one day, whenever he extracted, something would come up. In conclusion, the old gentleman has completely mastered the techniques. The first day in that seminar, which was also the anniversary since he started learning from Master Wang, due to his strong foundation and the strong qi field in the seminar, he was able to open up the SHO.
Quote: In August 1995, I learned directly from Master Wang in Shanghai the whole process of opening up the Channel SHO. This gave me a much clearer picture of the process. Roughly speaking there are 4 ingredients:
(1) An intensive 15 days of continuous training to ensure the students can steadily increases their energy level.
(2) Intensive five element practice to "dissolve" the internal organs. This is the core of increasing the energy level.
(3) Daoyin must be focused, flexible and strategic so that when the opportunity was seized when it arised.
(4) The student must be able to sit for two hours continuously, at least in half lotus, at minimum.
Quote: two students who opened up the Channel SHO had the following features: one of them practiced extremely hard, he could sit in full lotus for 2 hours, he had done really well to accumulate internal qi, as long as the method was right, it's impossible for him to miss it. Another was a youngster who had super endurance, he could sit in full lotus perfectly still for 2 hours. When the body stayed still, the shen is focused and qi will be created, after an extended period of time, opening up the SHO is the natural conclusion.
Mr. Zhou, he could only sit crossed-leg in the first seminar, this time he could sit in half-lotus for 2 hours and full-lotus for 1 hour. He could see closed eyes things that happened inside and outside his body.
"Logic is about thought, not about concrete objects. Foundations are impossible ex nihilo since they would involve a thought located outside the thought." - Jean-Yves Girard
“Double Diamond” - from “Designing Social Systems In A Changing World” - Béla H. Bánáthy (1996)
#Comment: This influential design framework, as with most of the systems thinking of that time, is in my opinion best described with Wolfgang Pauli's famous saying "Not only is it not right, it's not even wrong."
Certainly there are more interesting and fun "active divination" and "reality tunnel management" (RTM) systems out there to explore, that are not limited by the contemporary totalitarian cult of scientism.
Western intellectual culture in a nutshell: White Male Thinkers
"Over 600 pages, Not a single non-white or non-European political thinkers in over 2000 years! Also, not a single woman thinker (neither in the 1st edition of 2003 nor the 2nd edition of 2009). And ready for this, in 2017 edition the editors decided to add ONE woman (of 33 thinkers). and guess what? the one they added is another WHITE, EUROPEAN WOMAN (Hannah Arendt)." - Ahmed Abozaid