> The real question is why is your bar set so low?
Have I misunderstood? Did you list them because they're *bad* writers?
Because everything you've written gave me the impression you thought they were good. It totally changes things if you think this is a low bar that AI is failing to cross.
Regardless of how you rank those writers: being in the top 10k of living people today means being in the top 0.0001% of the population. It means being amongst the best 3 or 4 in the city I live in, which is the largest city in Europe. Now, I don't know where you live, but considering the nearest million people around you, do you know who amongst them is the best writer? Or best anything else? Because for writers, I don't. YouTubers perhaps (there I can at least name some), but I think they (a German language course) are mostly interviewing people and I'm not clear how much writing of scripts they do.
And I don't expect current AI to be as good as even the top percentile, let alone award winners.
If I googled for those people you suggested, what would I gain? To know the biography and bibliography of a writer someone else puts on a pedestal. Out of curiosity, I did in fact later search for these names, but that doesn't make them relevant or give me a sense of why their writing is something you hold in such esteem that they are your standard against which the AI is judged — though it does increase the sense that they're what I think you think is a high bar (so why be upset AI isn't there yet?) rather than a low bar (where it actually makes sense to say it's not worth it). I can see why of those four George Will wasn't familiar, as I'm not an American and therefore don't read The Washington Post. Very Americo-centric list.
Out of curiosity (I don't know how popular UK media is wherever you live), do you know Charles Moore, Theodore Dalrymple, David Starkey, Nigel Lawson, or Paul Dacre? Without Googling.
Of course I know of Charles Moore (just not personally), and have deeply studied and benefited from his work since I was a teenager, and I've written many many Forth and English words in and about his language.
I've never met him myself, but I know people who've worked with Charles Moore directly on really interesting historic pioneering projects, and I've shared their story on Hacker News before:
>Coco Conn and Paul Rother wrote this up about what they did with FORTH at HOMER & Assoc, who made some really classic music videos including Atomic Dog, and hired Charles Moore himself! Here's what Coco Conn posted about it, and some discussion and links about it that I'm including with her permission: [...]
The rest of those people I've never heard of, but what does that prove? The real question is why do you brag about not having ever heard of people in order to support your point? What kind of a point is that, which you can only support by embodying or feigning ignorance? That's like Argument from Lack of Education. You can just google those people or ask an LLM to find out who they are. Why the obsession with "Without Googling"?
> Of course I know of Charles Moore (just not personally), and have deeply studied and benefited from his work since I was a teenager, and I've written many many Forth and English words in and about his language.
> The rest of those people I've never heard of, but what does that prove? The real question is why do you brag about not having ever heard of people in order to support your point? What kind of a point is that, which you can only support by embodying or feigning ignorance? That's like Argument from Lack of Education. You can just google those people or ask an LLM to find out who they are. Why the obsession with "Without Googling"?
Because they're the British versions of your own examples.
You don't get to be high-and-mighty with me about American journalists I've barely heard of when you've not heard of these people.
What's "Wrong" with the inventor of FORTH? What do you have against Charles Moore and his programming language? Have you actually tried learning and programming in FORTH? Do you even know what FORTH is, and who Charles Moore is?
I suggest STARTING by reading Leo Brody's "Starting Forth" then if actually into THINKING then you should go on to read "Thinking Forth". But since reading's not really your thing, I get it that you're not actually qualified to say what's "Wrong" with Charles Moore or FORTH.
Would you tell Charles Moore to his face that he's the "Wrong" Charles Moore? Who owns the definition of the "Right" Charles Moore, you? Sounds like you're pretty high and mighty to be so presumptuous about defining who's "Right" and who's "Wrong" while stubbornly refusing to read.
It's not that I'm getting high and mighty (at least not the latter), it's that you're intentionally performatively getting low and ignorant. You're perpetrating a textbook example of sealioning.
Did you or did you not read what the LLOOOOMM simulation of Hunter S Thompson had to say directly to and about you, in response to your posts?
Your response? Or are you too high and mighty to read it? How can you claim to have a valid opinion about LLM generated content that you refuse to read?
He is the Baron Moore of Etchingham, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, and The Sunday Telegraph; he still writes for all three. He is known for his authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher, published in three volumes (2013, 2016 and 2019). Under the government of Boris Johnson, Moore was given a peerage in July 2020, thus becoming a member of the House of Lords.
> It's not that I'm getting high and mighty (at least not the latter), it's that you're intentionally performatively getting low and ignorant. You're perpetrating a textbook example of sealioning
Here's the thing, I actually read the original Wondermark comic when it was fresh.
It's a metaphor for racism, with a racist living in a world with sentient talking sealions, who says they don't like sealions, gets overheard by a sealion, and that sealion tries to force them to justify themselves. The sealion in that was also a dick about it because this was styled as them being in the house of the racist, but on the internet the equivalent is "replying", not "trespassing in someone's own home".
I also find it amusing that a comic whose art style is cutting up and copy-pasting victorian copperplate art is the go-to reference of someone complaining that AI is, what, too low-brow?
And the fact that I can say all this is because I am actually able to perform analysis of the things I consume and do not limit myself to simply parroting clichés as if this constitutes rhetorical skill.
Also, but not only.
> Did you or did you not read what the LLOOOOMM simulation of Hunter S Thompson had to say directly to and about you, in response to your posts?
Says the guy who clearly didn't read my sim of Thompson being critical of your use of a LLM rather than your own brain to make your point.
But yes, I did. It illuminated nothing — was this the point?
I already know *that* you like these authors and did not need to see an AI-generated rant to know this. I do not know *why* you like them, or which specific critical aspects of the real thing appeals to you over the fake. Nor even have you once suggested why they're the bar to pass (and worse, made it increasingly ambiguous if you meant it as a high bar or a low bar). The AI may as well have said "because they are somewhat famous" for all it added.
Now, I can (and have) done this kind of analysis with LLM-mimicry of authors that I do actually enjoy, so apparently unlike you I can say things like "Half the Douglas Adams style jokes miss the point as hard as Ford Prefect choosing his own name".
Have I misunderstood? Did you list them because they're *bad* writers?
Because everything you've written gave me the impression you thought they were good. It totally changes things if you think this is a low bar that AI is failing to cross.
Regardless of how you rank those writers: being in the top 10k of living people today means being in the top 0.0001% of the population. It means being amongst the best 3 or 4 in the city I live in, which is the largest city in Europe. Now, I don't know where you live, but considering the nearest million people around you, do you know who amongst them is the best writer? Or best anything else? Because for writers, I don't. YouTubers perhaps (there I can at least name some), but I think they (a German language course) are mostly interviewing people and I'm not clear how much writing of scripts they do.
And I don't expect current AI to be as good as even the top percentile, let alone award winners.
If I googled for those people you suggested, what would I gain? To know the biography and bibliography of a writer someone else puts on a pedestal. Out of curiosity, I did in fact later search for these names, but that doesn't make them relevant or give me a sense of why their writing is something you hold in such esteem that they are your standard against which the AI is judged — though it does increase the sense that they're what I think you think is a high bar (so why be upset AI isn't there yet?) rather than a low bar (where it actually makes sense to say it's not worth it). I can see why of those four George Will wasn't familiar, as I'm not an American and therefore don't read The Washington Post. Very Americo-centric list.
Out of curiosity (I don't know how popular UK media is wherever you live), do you know Charles Moore, Theodore Dalrymple, David Starkey, Nigel Lawson, or Paul Dacre? Without Googling.