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I noticed there seemed to be unnecessary use of jargon in the abstract. I asked ChatGPT to rewrite it in plain English and I think it did a pretty good job: Th

by _qua 4y ago

I noticed there seemed to be unnecessary use of jargon in the abstract. I asked ChatGPT to rewrite it in plain English and I think it did a pretty good job: The sharp-edged stone flakes and flaked pieces that our ancestors intentionally made are important evidence of the development of technology in our lineage. This evidence helps us understand how early humans behaved, thought, and survived. In this study, we talk about a large collection of sharp-edged stones found near areas where long-tailed macaques were foraging for food. These stones are almost identical to the ones early humans made, which suggests that the macaques unintentionally produced them while searching for food. When we compare these stones to ones made by early humans millions of years ago, we find that they are very similar. If we didn't know that the macaques made these stones accidentally, we might think that they were made by early humans.

unclesaamm 4y ago
that's great, thanks for sharing! (though I'm not enough of a domain expert to know if it's accurate) another solution to this would be if Science Advances were to require submissions to provide a "Significance Statement", like PNAS does, which would be essentially at the level of readability you provided.
t-3 4y ago
I feel like the detail of "conchoidal edges" is important for the abstract, as it gives a good idea of how the edges look and why/how they are being unintentionally made. A search/replace of "lithic assemblage" to "stone tools" would accomplish much the same as your summary without losing any of the details.
Retric 4y ago
It’s interesting just how bad of a summery that is compared to the human created abstract included in the text. “It is now clear that the production of unintentional conchoidal sharp-edged flakes can result from tool-assisted foraging in nonhominin primates. Comparisons with Plio-Pleistocene lithic assemblages, dating from 3.3 to 1.56 million years ago, show that flakes produced by macaques fall within the technological range of artifacts made by early hominins. In the absence of behavioral observations, the assemblage produced by monkeys would likely be identified as anthropogenic in origin and interpreted as evidence of intentional tool production.”
- haneul 4y ago
  That’s not plain English though, and I’m not seeing why that makes the plain English chatgpt attempt poor?
  - Retric 4y ago
    It’s both wrong and misleading. Think about this sentence literally: “These stones are almost identical to the ones early humans made, which suggests that the macaques unintentionally produced them while searching for food.” First the similarities between these tools doesn’t suggest they were unintentionally created by the macaques. Next foraging and searching for food suggest different things, the macaques were breaking apart nuts with stones not looking for nuts the way “searching for food” implies. etc Anyway, the “almost identical” bit is ignoring what’s actually being described. The stones created by macaques are quite distinct from what our ancestors made. So the similarities can help refine our understanding of those artifacts and possibly what may have kick started this kind of tool creation/use, but the differences make it clear which archaeological examples are of actual tool creation. At the same time current methods don’t account for the similarities and may conceivably misidentify some sites.
    - carlmr 4y ago
      ChatGPT made some mistakes in simplifying the language, but I think a lot of humans might make the same mistakes because the article is just badly written. The "unintentional" part is of course a ChatGPT hallucination that implies something that isn't there in the original.
      - Retric 4y ago
        In my opinion the article is great meanwhile ChatGPT made 4 significant mistakes in a single sentence. “almost identical” “early humans” “, which suggests” and “searching for food” I don’t think that says as much about the algorithm as way people are doing evaluations. So yes people might mistakenly use “early human” when describing what was around 3.3 to 1.6 million years ago but that doesn’t somehow make it correct to do so.

by _qua 4y ago

unclesaamm 4y ago

that's great, thanks for sharing! (though I'm not enough of a domain expert to know if it's accurate) another solution to this would be if Science Advances were to require submissions to provide a "Significance Statement", like PNAS does, which would be essentially at the level of readability you provided.

t-3 4y ago

I feel like the detail of "conchoidal edges" is important for the abstract, as it gives a good idea of how the edges look and why/how they are being unintentionally made. A search/replace of "lithic assemblage" to "stone tools" would accomplish much the same as your summary without losing any of the details.

Retric 4y ago

It’s interesting just how bad of a summery that is compared to the human created abstract included in the text. “It is now clear that the production of unintentional conchoidal sharp-edged flakes can result from tool-assisted foraging in nonhominin primates. Comparisons with Plio-Pleistocene lithic assemblages, dating from 3.3 to 1.56 million years ago, show that flakes produced by macaques fall within the technological range of artifacts made by early hominins. In the absence of behavioral observations, the assemblage produced by monkeys would likely be identified as anthropogenic in origin and interpreted as evidence of intentional tool production.”

haneul 4y ago
That’s not plain English though, and I’m not seeing why that makes the plain English chatgpt attempt poor?
- Retric 4y ago
  It’s both wrong and misleading. Think about this sentence literally: “These stones are almost identical to the ones early humans made, which suggests that the macaques unintentionally produced them while searching for food.” First the similarities between these tools doesn’t suggest they were unintentionally created by the macaques. Next foraging and searching for food suggest different things, the macaques were breaking apart nuts with stones not looking for nuts the way “searching for food” implies. etc Anyway, the “almost identical” bit is ignoring what’s actually being described. The stones created by macaques are quite distinct from what our ancestors made. So the similarities can help refine our understanding of those artifacts and possibly what may have kick started this kind of tool creation/use, but the differences make it clear which archaeological examples are of actual tool creation. At the same time current methods don’t account for the similarities and may conceivably misidentify some sites.
  - carlmr 4y ago
    ChatGPT made some mistakes in simplifying the language, but I think a lot of humans might make the same mistakes because the article is just badly written. The "unintentional" part is of course a ChatGPT hallucination that implies something that isn't there in the original.
    - Retric 4y ago
      In my opinion the article is great meanwhile ChatGPT made 4 significant mistakes in a single sentence. “almost identical” “early humans” “, which suggests” and “searching for food” I don’t think that says as much about the algorithm as way people are doing evaluations. So yes people might mistakenly use “early human” when describing what was around 3.3 to 1.6 million years ago but that doesn’t somehow make it correct to do so.