Martin Vidal
Bio
Author of A Guide for Ambitious People, Flower Garden, and On Authorship
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Instagram: @martinvidalofficial
Stories (11/0)
Why Creatives Shouldn’t Be Afraid of AI
AI, like any powerful technology, will have both positive and negative effects on society. But what’s particularly scary about this technology is that its development is moving incredibly fast, and it represents a way for technology to replicate and replace human functions like nothing before it. These ills are compounded by the unethical business structures surrounding AI. AI’s owners are relatively few, whereas the information that went to feed these machines was cultivated by all of us. They’re taking the works of individuals, giving it to the machine to study, and then having the machine recreate fundamentally derivative works without ever compensating the original creator. If they’re making a deal with a company like Shutterstock, YouTube, or even a platform like the one you’re reading this on, to be able to use their data, the shareholders of both the content company and AI company will see a financial windfall from it, but the content creators who actually supply that data are so far being left out. The same thing is likely to happen when companies use this technology to boost productivity. They will need less workers, and the people who will primarily benefit from this are those at the top. It should be clear by now that this article is not in defense of AI, nor is it a message of optimism about how AI will impact society. Instead, the aim here is to assist the creative in working through their reasonable fear that their contributions to the world are soon to be replaced and devalued from oversupply. We will find, however, that there is nothing to fear.
By Martin Vidal10 days ago in Writers
How to Deal with the Fact that Everyone We Love Will Die Someday
There's obviously a degree of pragmatism built into the human psyche, which enables us to carry on each day while somehow completely ignoring life's largest and most alarming truths. Yes, everything is meaningless, and we find ourselves floating about on a speck in an infinite universe, and we have no real idea how any of this came about, yet, for a time, one can manage to focus all their attention and care on the fact that they're running late to their morning shift at the grocery store. But every now and then these truths sweep over our awareness, and in an instant, the whole world becomes unrecognizable.
By Martin Vidal29 days ago in Humans
Why Are Black-Specific Colleges, Caucuses, and TV Channels Acceptable, but Not White-Specific Ones?
Previously, I wrote an article that sought to answer the following question: Why does it seem to be more acceptable for Black people to joke about or criticize White people than the other way around? It received a lot of attention, and some of the comments others posted under it were questions that I wanted to address in turn.
By Martin Vidal2 months ago in The Swamp
Why We Hurt the People We Love
In love, there is a responsibility that many assume but few are ready for. Suddenly our words and actions can have such a large effect on another person that we have to tiptoe around their hearts or risk breaking something. In a way, love actually shifts our ethical burden. To treat a stranger well is simple: Be kind, not malicious. But to treat a lover well one must forego a portion of their freedom. Just by following one's own interests or being impartial when it comes to those who favor us, or even by simply failing to give yourself to them, you can cause emotional pain. With the heightened sensitivity they have towards us, our capacity to cause harm is augmented.
By Martin Vidal3 months ago in Humans
Ava’s Magic Glasses
Ava had something of a secret. When she was in her early teens, she got a pair of unusual eyeglasses. When she looked through them, she gained a supernatural ability: She would see evidence for any truth she pondered. She would think to herself things such as, What really happened to Amelia Earhart? Immediately, she would see all of what actually happened to that poor woman, playing out in vivid scenes before her eyes. Naturally, she grew somewhat obsessed with using this ability. She’d spend all day wearing her glasses and pondering this and that — questioning history, politics, physics, philosophy, and whatever else was out there for her curiosity to explore.
By Martin Vidal5 months ago in Fiction
God and the Box
God once found a box. It was a small box, even by your standards or mine, but it was a special box. He would try to open it every day, but, for whatever reason, he simply could not. He sent floods, and lightning, and hell flame, but no matter what he tried, he just couldn’t get the lid to move in the least. His attempts to see or divine (as is his way) what was inside were equally futile. He could see clear through any planet, and watch our universe from outside it or the atoms from within them, but he couldn’t get the slightest glimpse of what was inside this little box.
By Martin Vidal5 months ago in Fiction
Where Does Sanity End and Insanity Begin?
Perhaps the headline for this article is too extreme, but really there is no way around it because it’s difficult to conceptualize, much less to describe, insanity and sanity as a spectrum, and so we cling to some definitive distinction, likely cause this dividing line is so central to the reliability of our own perceived reality. Yet, exempting various forms of hallucination — the direct, confirmable non-existence of something perceived — the line becomes quite blurry.
By Martin Vidal3 years ago in Psyche
Is Intelligence at Odds With Wisdom?
There is a mysticism surrounding the concept of wisdom. Yet, wisdom wherever manifest seems to be simply knowledge. How else is it gained through things like life-experience? The effect of this knowledge is that it is applicable in every situation of general understanding: It is marked by general application, not technicality or specificity. Though one must be exceedingly intelligent to become an ophthalmologist, they mustn’t necessarily gain wisdom, for the information required for this profession isn’t relevant to life at large.
By Martin Vidal3 years ago in Longevity
When Does a Person (or Anything Else) Become Irredeemable?
In the age of “cancel culture,” which is sometimes silly and sometimes a powerful tool for separating bad actors from their means, we continue to butt up against a deeper underlying question: When does a person become irredeemable? I would extend this to include social organizations as well.
By Martin Vidal3 years ago in The Swamp
How to Understand Subjects We Don’t Want to Invest the Time in to Master
It’s an interesting process, learning is. I love when I delve into a new subject and the vernacular is like another language, but slowly you memorize words and then you can read the sentences fluidly and start grabbing concepts. You, then, have a bunch of individual concepts, and some of their interactions, and as your memorization of concepts and their interactions grows into a global network you achieve an understanding of the system and can then form strategies/opinions.
By Martin Vidal3 years ago in Education
