“Unnatural” in their argument just means “adapting my idealized personal philosophy to accept this is too hard”

Now imagine that 8.3 billion people are trying to pitch their tents all around you. You’re going to have to work out something formal with your neighbors to make sure all these tent groups fit.

If we were hunter gatherers I might believe you. People are just as rooted as trees. Almost nothing that sustains our civilization is mobile. Crops, forests, water supplies, minerals, etc…

If a freak famine (wind) causes a mass migration (swaying branches) onto your finite and fixed resources (canopy space), someone must lose fingers.

Only a half truth. Borders may have been loosely defined but they were absolutely defended with violence. You couldn’t wander in and hunt in your neighbors woods, take their timber or set up a farm too close. Hell, sometimes they even had well defined natural borders or walls (see: Hadrian’s wall, the great wall of China)

Moving through an area in large numbers might draw a violent response and you might be coerced to leave if you spoke the wrong language or dressed the wrong way. If you were an unknown group of strangers they may well let your boat sink or leave you to starve outside their walls. Modern states have simply codified these reactions into law.

Proto-states and the associated mechanisms developed extremely quickly once sedentary agriculture became dominant. If your entire livelihood is tied to a field of grain you no longer get to run or hide from conflict; controlling who can and can’t get near it becomes imperative.

Disagree pretty hard. SciFi has always been a medium for exploring the philosophical and political. Every description of a future dystopia/utopia is social commentary; every alien race is a commentary on xenophobia or cultural exchange. Hell even his own books explore…

If you don’t want politics in your books SciFi is probably the worst place to look. Someone should tell him to stick to… idk… character driven romance novels or something.

I’m not understanding, studios are going to insist that their artists bloat assets for no reason? Are these professionals being paid per VRAM GB used?

Also this is some pretentious argument. If you’re distributing art through the audience’s hardware then you’re meeting them where they are no matter what. It defines your constraints; a good artist will make art that works nicely with AI in the same way that pixel art worked with CRTs.