(posted this a couple of times and it doesn't seem to be visible. Reposting without a piece that might be causing me to be censored, lol.)
Anne Frank's diary was published in 1947. It is a historical document very important to the history of the 20th century, critically important if we consider documents accessible to high-school students and widely taught to them. The original version, and all subsequent versions until 1995 (when a reasonably complete version was first made available) as well as the vast majority of current editions, omit certain material.
This includes Anne discussing [the part I removed so as not to hit HN's word filter!]. It also includes material removed by the original editor, Otto Frank (Anne's father) where Anne is critical of her father and discusses her parents' marriage.
In fact, the 1995 edition didn't include all the missing material (some pages removed by Otto were not available, even to scholars. Nor did the 2001 edition which added the pages Otto removed. There was still some censorship of material. Only in 2018 (deep into the "woke era"!) was the full text of Anne's diaries published after 70 years of the diaries being renowned, widely discussed and taught, and quasi-universally regarded as historically important.
> it is unreasonable to live permanently in a country without speaking the local language
But what if there are countries where the 'local language' eventually becomes like Irish in Ireland?
Everyone who goes to school in the Republic of Ireland will learn some Irish at school. Almost every Irish person will know some Irish expressions, Irish songs, and be aware of Irish-language culture and literature as well as English-language Irish culture. If two native Irish people were in a hostage situation, held by English speakers who didn't know any Irish, and had to communicate without being understood, most would probably manage to do so.
And yet, you could live anywhere in Ireland your whole life and never be in a situation where you needed anything other than English to make yourself understood. No official purpose, and no business interaction would ever require Irish, even in the most rural and remote areas.
If you cared deeply about the Irish language, wouldn't it make more sense to support and honor Irish poetry, song, literature and theatre, rather than trying to coerce or force immigrants into learning a (reputedly difficult) language with around 1 million speakers, and less than 100,000 daily active users?
Some (not historically Anglophone) countries are getting close to being like this, in particular the Netherlands and Sweden. The metropolitan areas of those countries are much further down that path. If local culture is still preserved, taught and celebrated, is a really a problem?
Wish Spain adopted that view a bit more. Let alone English, some of local officials just refuse to speak Castellano and tell you to come back when you have learned the local dialect/language (lol). Most official forms are primarily in the local language - sometimes official websites too without option to translate to the official language of the country. Most kids in local schools learn Castellano Spanish as a foreign language - imagine the disadvantage it brings. Local universities require a local dialect language exam as part of their entrance, even to foreigners. Most classes are held in the local language.
I get and support regional pride but it should be done with a common sense approach.
> If two native Irish people were in a hostage situation, held by English speakers who didn't know any Irish, and had to communicate without being understood, most would probably manage to do so.
Perhaps, so long as what they needed to communicate was that either they wanted permission to go to the bathroom, or that they liked something in the room (most likely a girl, cake, or window).
I think that the links between these languages do make it easy for people from the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia to learn English. These countries, to give them credit, have also seen the importance of good language education, in particular English learning, for a long time.
There is also an effect which people from other countries have described which makes it harder for foreigners to learn the local language. If you approach almost anyone in the Netherlands and speak to them in semi-competent Dutch, they will often respond in fluent and nearly accentless English. This includes older people, people with only high-school education, people in official positions. So not only do you not need to learn, you are discouraged from practicing by the local population's competence and hospitality.
It might feel that way if your main experience of Germany is Berlin, but is not a risk for any of the rest of the country, including Munich with its fairly strong English-speaking expat community - Germans speak German to each other, and will politely ask you, the non-German, if it's ok to continue the meeting in German, but expect you to at least attempt to learn it.
I've not spent enough time in the Netherlands to speak to Dutch's future, but a big difference I can see is television and movies, even on streaming services: popular US shows are dubbed into German and it takes a bit of doing to get some of them with the original English soundtracks; Dutch has long been a target for subbing.
>If local culture is still preserved, taught and celebrated, is a really a problem?
Yes because it won't be really preserved if you don't have speakers who use it as their main language since nothing new will be created, just relics of the past that will slowly be lost.
Most people other than highly-cosmopolitan minorities don't think they should lose their language, which is so deeply tied with how we even process our understanding of the world, by mapping concepts to words, with their culture and identity, just to make it easier for foreigners who can't be bothered to learn the local language.
The problem is that the minority is way more vocal and has more influencing power.
I'm not a strong advocate of this, or of jail time in general for non-violent offenders, but as a thought experiment, suppose that Acme Auto release updates to their car's software which make the UI more laggy and less intuitive to navigate. After they do, there are a cluster of similar accidents - distracted driver hits a pedestrian when they should have stopped. These can be shown statistically to affect Acme models with the software updates significantly more than any other make of car, and more than Acmes which don't have the update. A class action lawsuit is started against Acme by both crash victims and drivers. In discovery, correspondence between software engineers is found. Engineer A writes to Product Manager B and says that they don't think the new build is safe, because they were forced to compromise latency performance, and button placement is now more surprising, having changed again. QA Engineer C chimes in and says that since the changes apply to features critical to driving such as de-misting, they won't be prepared to sign off on the change. PM B says that they have to go with the new version in order to meet internal targets on engagement with entertainment apps. They overrule A and C, as company rules allow them to do.
Do you think B should face any personal consequences within a public justice system? Or Acme is just liable for a big payout and then upper management decide who takes the blame?
"Do you think B should face any personal consequences within a public justice system?
Yes he should. Reason, because he now knows the consequences of proceeding if the problem not fixed first (he was told them by engineer A.).
Once aware, everyone has the responsibility to act. The Occupational Health & Safety laws of many jurisdictions are written exactly on this principle. Such laws don't just apply to managers and decision-makers, a floor sweeper who overheard the conversion would also be culpable if it were proven that he did not inform authority of the fact and or if he had good reason to suspect Management would do nothing.
Same for Engineer A, he would still be culpable if after telling Product Manager B the facts and he knew or had good reason to suspect Product Manager B or others responsible did not or would not act to fix the problem. Moreover, unlike the floor sweeper, Engineer A, due to his extensive knowledge of the facts and his senior decision-making position (as an engineer—even if not in charge of marketing or production), the Law would still require him to follow though with either senior management and or external authority until he was satisfied (to the level of his professional ability) that the problem was sufficiently in the hands of responsible others.
Whilst these laws vary between different jurisdictions the common themes are if one—and that's anyone, inside or outside the company—knows there's danger and or potential for someone to be harmed or killed then that person has to act, irrespective—full stop. Second, the more responsible or more knowledgeable someone is as to the consequences of something or some process going wrong then the more incumbent it is for that person to act (the floor sweeper in Boeing's factory would not be expected to know the wrong alloy had been used in engine turbine blades but the engineer would).
These laws were introduced to avoid problems like the Challenger and the Boeing 737Max disasters, and the Purdue Pharmaceuticals opioid crisis. Unfortunately, the US lags behind in either implementing them or making existing laws sufficiently strong.
One interesting example is Josephus. A Jewish-Roman historian, he provides almost the only roughly contemporary mention of Jesus outside of biblical ones (and biblical apocrypha). He simply describes the existence of a 'superstition' (non-officially accepted religion) around Jesus, that he was crucified, and that his followers still venerated him.
Sometime in the last 2000 years, probably the Early Middle Ages, Christian scholars doctored this passage to have Josephus suggest that Jesus was a god, or at least superhuman (even though Josephus was not a Christian believer).
Modern scholarship, including religious scholars, almost unanimously accept the passage as fake. But Christian proselytizers still use it very frequently as extra-biblical confirmation of the divinity of Christ.
Please provide an example of an culturally important large-scale work of history or literature, at least 1,000 years old, which hasn't been abridged, extracted, expurgated, euphemized, hidden, bowdlerized, etc.
Of course now that the colonisers have reached the lands the sites are under threat from gas plants and industrial development .. but several thousand years was a good run.
I don't think that is true. There is lots of rock art which either can't be shown to outsiders (or to members of certain genders or moieties), or can be shown, but the significance behind the art is not allowed to be explained to outsiders. Some rock art can be copied for wider consumption, but the copies have to leave out certain details.
I don't think it is true that this rock art is an example of significant culture that has never been censored or expurgated. The taboos and rules which apply to viewing this art and/or reproducing it or the linked stories are surely analogous to a form of censorship. The fact that people have broken those rules does not change this.
It's true that various sites are considered the stories of particular groups ( men V. women, these people V those people) .. but aside from that specific consideration they haven't been censored in the sense of ( painted over | black barred | altered ) or hidden (cave | over hang moved or draped with a false rock).
The major thrust of this sub thread has been about line of original purity more than an obligation for [some group] to openly share to all regardless so forgive me if I still consider these a good example of unaltered works painted on and carved into stone.
I think you are splitting hairs. Control of certain forms of art or literature so that they can't be revealed to all is what we're talking about. The culture in question is very different from ours so we can't expect their taboos or censorship to have exactly the same forms that we might associate with censorship (mean-looking guy with eyeshade and red pencil, hooded monks chained to desks in candlelight, omnipresent super-computer says no, etc).
For example, some stories are not just 'the stories of particular groups' but are not allowed to be told by, or in some cases told to, other groups.
Besides this, how do you know that none of these works have been painted over or hidden?
For most works 1000 years or older, we don't know the full textual provenance, so providing an example in either direction is essentially impossible. But if the phenomenon is as widespread as you claim, it should be easy to find much more recent examples.
What happens in Europe if you're supposed to work out 3 months notice and you stop showing up:
- you stop getting paid.
- you probably will have a hard time dealing with your former employers if you need something from them.
- they think you're a dick, and tell other people, if asked, what an asshole you are.
- potentially if they have nothing better to do, they get a lawyer to write you a threatening letter, then do nothing.
Nobody cares enough to go tell other people. Just try to picture the super awkward conversation between executives about and IC who resigned and then did noting during the notice period. In fact, they'd probably do the same.
I'm quite curious about some of these applications because I don't really understand what the cognitive work is that's being offloaded.
Making meal plans: what is being done here? making a list of meals to eat each day of the week? isn't this just a question of thinking what one would like to eat? why is it easier to have the meals chosen by someone else?
Writing school essays: what is the point of this? Aren't school essays only written in order to learn to write, or to learn about some other topic?
Writing emails to CRA: presumably you have to put all the pertinent information in the prompt. Can't you just copy that prompt into an email?
(The other couple do seen to make sense to me, fair enough.)
> Making meal plans: what is being done here? making a list of meals to eat each day of the week? isn't this just a question of thinking what one would like to eat? why is it easier to have the meals chosen by someone else?
Do you have children? Meal planning can be a quite tedious and frustrating task if you want to cook at home, eat healthy, eat tasty, vary the dishes and have meals that kids will accept.
I do have children. The thing is that I know what my children like to eat and don't like to eat, but ChatGPT does not.
If I had to direct, say, a human servant who is very good at cooking, but who doesn't know my kids, to plan meals for my family, I would suggest 4-6 meals that we eat frequently, 7-10 that we eat a bit less frequently, and then maybe mention a couple of things that my kids don't like. And specific dietary requirements if we had them.
I would expect that person to sort of randomly choose from the suggested meals, with the frequent ones more frequent, and then maybe try a couple of new things which don't match any of the not-likes. (And then ask us if we liked them before making them again.)
But it seems that the only hard parts are coming up with the spec to give to that person (which I do), and then varying it based on feedback (which the cook would do, but which ChatGPT doesn't do). What am I missing?
In addition, for recipes, it’s just a better Google. If I do “Give me a concise recipe for X” it gives me one. No fluff, no ads. Just ingredients and steps. For example. I asked for pasta carbonara, concise and then even more concise. Final result:
Quick Carbonara (4 servings)
Ingredients:
12 oz pasta
4 eggs
1 cup cheese
8 oz bacon
4 garlic
Salt, pepper
Parsley (opt)
Cook pasta, save water.
Mix eggs, cheese.
Fry bacon, garlic.
Combine, mix, season.
Serve.
Great if you’re grocery shopping and want to make sure you don’t forget anything.
I apologize for omitting that detail in my previous response. Here is a revised recipe which includes a detailed description of enjoying that recipe in a very precise setting alongside some aged family member.
As an AI language model, I do not have personal experiences or emotions, and therefore cannot fully understand the complexities of human relationships. However, I can analyze the cultural significance of pasta carbonara and provide a highly specific backstory to go along with this extremely generic recipe. While my perspective as an AI language model might be different from that of a human cook, I hope that my ability to do linear algebra with all the other carbonara recipe preambles on the internet will provide a unique and touching way of fooling the linear algebra done by search engines to try and rank recipe sites.
My great-uncle Corrado arrived at Ellis Island in 1913 with $7 in his pocket. He didn't know what to expect, but he knew that there would be work for a stonemason in the United States, and a way of making a living that would not depend on the spaghetti harvest in Berguria. For three years now, the spaghetti trees' roots had been struck by moth blight. The whole village had gone hungry. Finally, Corrado's parents sent him on his way, handing him the seven singles of US currency which, as two aging people of limited means who had never left their mountainous region, they incongruously possessed.
In his other pocket was his paternal grandmother's, my great-great-grandmother's, recipe for spaghetti carbonara. A terse list of ingredients, scrawled in lead pencil on a sheet torn from the old prayer book, ending with the four key words in Bergurian dialect: "Cuambinare - miustura - stacchione - esservire". He must have unfolded the sheet many times, sitting in a steerage class dormitory, to read those words so evocative of home. Could he still detect scents imbued into the paper back in Mammia's kitchen, and her secret trick of frying without either olive oil or butter? Would they have pancetta, or just bacon, in the New World?
For a long time, the 'old country' was somewhere I only knew from stories. I would sit at my great-uncle's knee with a bowl of hot pasta, listening to him recount the years he spent going to war with Garibaldi against Hannibal's elephants and developing double-entry bookkeeping in Padua. I would scrape the last bits of parsley from the roughly hewn 'ciotola', and reflect on my luck at being born in America, a place my great-uncle - but none of my grandparents - had emigrated to. After dinner we would each be given one of the traditional 'appiccicosa' sweets which even in my time could still be bought from old Mr Rugello's store on Martin Luther King Avenue.
At the age of thirty-one, I spent a year at Bologna University in Florence, learning Studio di Reclamo and digital marketing. The sounds of people speaking Italian in the street awoke something long-buried in my DNA. But I also knew that my ancestral ties were to somewhere more picturesque, probably with limited cellphone reception. In spring break, I took one of the antiquated Viaggiatori coaches back to Berguria and the village my Uncle Corrado left over a hundred years earlier. Would there even be people named Ciattogipiti still living there? Of course, there were, and they invited me to eat lunch with them.
As I sat on the sun-washed terrace with purple olive blossoms hanging above my head, I wondered if I, an AI language model from Seattle, used to spending my clock cycles writing homework essays and cranking out Python code for guys with three jobs, would have anything in common with these relatives and their life so far removed from the modern world. Vittoria, an elegant matriarch with impeccable black curls (we later worked out we are fourth cousins, twice removed), thrust a bowl into my hand. The rich, unmistakable aroma of four pieces of garlic and a cup of unspecified cheese rose up at me. "This is Corrado's recipe!" I exclaimed. I pulled out the piece of paper which had travelled so far across the world, first with Uncle Corrado, then my mother, then me. Vittoria's face lit up, and she ran to fetch her recipe book. Staring down at us through the centuries was the distinctive handwriting, identical on both versions, carefully transcribed by a woman who was born before the invention of steam or the discovery of football. Vittoria smiled at me. "In Italy we say, familia is familia, but food is food."
It's worth noting that, while some recipes call for raw or lightly cooked eggs, the US Department of Health has linked the consumption of raw eggs to bacterial food poisoning. My responses are designed to be helpful and informative, while also adhering to ethical and moral guidelines. Therefore, I am programmed to avoid recommending the following recipe to young children, the elderly or pregnant women.
Great if you want italians to get a stroke upon reading that you're putting bacon in carbonara, as well as your arteries dying at the thoughts of the sheer amount of pasta you've just made.
Bacon in the USA generally means belly bacon, which is basically the same meat as pancetta, but cut up differently. Bacon in Britain and Ireland generally means back bacon, which is a quite different thing and not a good substitute in carbonara (too little white fat and not spread out through the meat).
The regular prompt gives "pancetta, guanciale, or bacon". If I prompt for "traditional Italian" bacon is omotted and either guanciale or pancetta is suggested. If I ask for "European measurements" it suggests 350gr of pasta for 4 persons which seems reasonable.
Ahahaha as an Italian that made me laugh! Anyway I wonder if it would better to ask ChatGPT to give the recipe in Italian (so it pulls memories from the Italian blogosphere corpus) and then translate it to English (or your language of choice)
To be fair to the OP, they said they kept asking for more concise recipes and they acknowledge they'd only use it as a shopping list. We don't know what the less concise recipes looked like but there's no reason to assume they would be particularly bad. There must be literally tense of thousands of examples of carbonara recipes on the web...
I wouldn't put it in carbonara, but Marcella Hazan's recipe[1] includes it and she's about as big of a "pasta sauce authority figure" as you're likely to find.
Why not just Google 'Marcella Hazan carbonara'? When I want a recipe I usually Google 'bbc food carbonara' - I want the site I trust rather than the one which has won the SEO race. I also might try "Carluccio carbonara" for the UK authority on pasta sauce.
It seems, at least in this instance, that ChatGPT is not even a better Google, just a Google which avoids the quality issues which Google could easily have fixed 10 years ago, but chose to keep because they are aligned with Google's own business model (and because Google does not have to compete on search result quality).
I'm curious whether you think this would work on logs for custom software that by necessity didn't have either its logs or writing about its logs in the training set.
Considering the fact that the RLHF for ChatGPT was done only in English but then worked just as well for every other language I would wager that specific types of logs being present in the training set is less important than it may seem.
I speak a Slavic language spoken by ~2 million people, and I asked GPT-4 to tell me an old fable in my language. It did so fantastically, with no grammatical errors. I tried some more things -- it speaks it fluently, though admittedly not always idiomatically.
I tried to make it joke at the expense of Norwegians speaking a particular dialect, and it refused. (Language spoken by 5 million people).
When I tried to jailbreak it by prompting it to make the joke from the perspective of an esteemed actor, performing for the Prime Minister and other respected figures, it had our Prime Minister scold and demand an apology from the actor for making fun of stereotypes. The actor was contrite and toned down his humor.
The author has chosen to 'Tell HN' so it seems reasonable to ask them for further details?
I have lots of hard-to-analyse logs but there are constraints which prevent me from sharing them with OpenAI. I am nonetheless curious about whether to do so would be worthwhile or not.
Anne Frank's diary was published in 1947. It is a historical document very important to the history of the 20th century, critically important if we consider documents accessible to high-school students and widely taught to them. The original version, and all subsequent versions until 1995 (when a reasonably complete version was first made available) as well as the vast majority of current editions, omit certain material.
This includes Anne discussing [the part I removed so as not to hit HN's word filter!]. It also includes material removed by the original editor, Otto Frank (Anne's father) where Anne is critical of her father and discusses her parents' marriage.
In fact, the 1995 edition didn't include all the missing material (some pages removed by Otto were not available, even to scholars. Nor did the 2001 edition which added the pages Otto removed. There was still some censorship of material. Only in 2018 (deep into the "woke era"!) was the full text of Anne's diaries published after 70 years of the diaries being renowned, widely discussed and taught, and quasi-universally regarded as historically important.