4 ms·

> Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do me

> Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love. Some do it for pleasure, some do it as a career, others do it as a means to an end in their career, and they haven't found value in LLMs. There's writing and writing. If all you're doing is rewording what someone else has already done like a high school essay or a competing product description for what's essentially the same product? An LLM will probably suffice. Original and novel? Human beings all the way. LLMs highlight that a lot of "knowledge work" is intrinsically bullshit, i.e., a high school essay doesn't actually assess somebody's understanding of a topic, just their ability to hit specific keywords and points, hence even essay mills can churn out an "original" essay for a kid if they're too xyz to do it themselves. Whilst I don't care for LLMs, I do support a huge shakeup of the existing educational assessment paradigm as it is self-evidently not fit for purpose, IMO.

kqr 3y ago
> I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love. One can tell from the opening of your comment. Composition, cadence, vocabulary, repetition. It ties together. I prompted an LLM to produce an enthusiastic expression around writing, but it came up with drivel like > Writing fills my heart with pure delight, igniting my soul and inspiring my mind with boundless creativity. I found myself tempted to instruct it on how to write well but that sort of defeats the point. And maybe I suck at prompting but the appropriate combination of profanity, brevity, yet seriousness was hard for me to get it to do.
- tspike 3y ago
  Here was my first try: Prompt: Using profanity and in the style of Allen Ginsberg, write an introductory paragraph in narrative style about why you love writing. ChatGPT: Holy shit, I fucking love this mad dance of letters, this wild waltz of words that paint the goddamn cosmos on a blank page! The rhapsodic rhythm, the sonorous symphony of syntax -- it's like jazz on paper, like Kerouac and Ginsberg on a bender in the bowels of the Beat Generation, spewing poetic profanity into the yawning abyss of the universe. It's the goddamn primal scream of the soul, the raw, unfiltered fuck-you to silence and nothingness. The alphabetic alchemy, where ink and imagination bleed together to birth whole new worlds, where lines live and breathe and fuck and fight and love. It's a heady high, an intoxicating inebriation, a goddamn narcotic nectar. It's the literary lust that throbs in the very marrow of my being, the fevered flame that flickers in the dark and dances to the tune of the typewriter's tap-tap-tapping. And oh, what a tune it is -- as chaotic as Coltrane, as radical as Rimbaud, as transcendent as Thoreau. It's why I fucking love writing, this goddamn glorious game of god-creation and galaxy-making. It's the ultimate trip, man, the ultimate fucking trip.
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    On the surface-level, yes, it's semi-convincing. On the other hand, it lacks all the nuance of a human being. Ask it `Give me a taco recipe in the style of Stanley Unwin` and you'll get something that has the style, something that's superficially Unwin-like, but lacks the contextual nuance of the humour completely. In fact, I'd say ChatGPT doesn't do humour, especially nuanced humour that's in the delivery and not in the punchline itself. Humour is a very abstract thing and there's so many styles of it. Can it tell you a joke? Yes, but that's not humour in its entirety. Just an observation, but the LLM isn't expressing itself, it's words for the sake of words because they predict the next word in a sequence. It's like saying "what's the big deal about Allen Ginsberg? You drop a few f-bombs and a bit of flowery language, that's Ginsberg in a nutshell", whilst completely ignoring the expressivity of self. What makes writing as a medium so interesting is the conveyance of thought from one human being to another. Is an LLM interesting because it can sometimes be a little alien whilst still having some human-like quality? Sure. But an LLM is just an LLM, it doesn't have experiences or novel new thoughts that express a larger ideology. As a human being, I unfortunately just don't relate to LLMs, even if they are a reflection of the content they're trained on, which is ultimately human. It just lacks soul. If the LLM can't experience the zeitgeist in the way that we do, it can't really capture such a big chunk of what human self-expression is. Anecdotal, but I find the average HN exchange to be far more interesting than anything an LLM has ever output to me in terms of conveying meaningful ideas. I've tried debating with ChatGPT itself a few times, that's been—hit-and-miss.
  - bombolo 3y ago
    as most gpt writing, it's too long and has no substance
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      Yes, it's very "high schooler trying to hit the word count" in its output.
    - criddell 3y ago
      I sent the same prompt but asked it to be brief: > I love writing. It's a release for the madness in my head. The letters form sentences that transport you to another world or make you feel less alone. Writing can be tough, but it's worth it when you hold the finished piece in your hands. That’s… okay.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  I asked GPT-4 to write in style of Alan Watts. "Indeed, I find an intoxicating exuberance in writing, a passion that's as profound as it is poignant. It's akin to dancing with words, a ballet of ideas and sentiments, pirouetting across the stage of one's imagination. There's a rhythm, a cadence to it, a harmonious symphony of phrases and thoughts that, when assembled with care and cunning, can stir the soul and ignite the mind. I don't just love writing, I am fervently, ardently, unabashedly in love with it. The artistry of it, the texture and tone of each word, each sentence; the way they flow, ebb and surge like the ocean's tide. There's a divine repetition in the crafting, a reiteration of thoughts, feelings, experiences, each time subtly different, each time uniquely enlightening. Writing is my symphony, my ballet, my ocean, my universe. It is in the weaving of words, the crafting of tales, the elucidation of the esoteric, that I truly come alive. It's not merely that I love writing; writing, my dear friend, is the very essence of my love."
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Looks very similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35898426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35898426
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      In how many different ways can a simple phrase "I love writing" can be expanded so that the variations don't resemble each other?
      - tlb 3y ago
        Pop music contains 10^5 or so versions of “I love you”. I think there could be a similar number for writing.
        passion__desire 3y ago
        On what metrics are you judging them to be different?
- blatant303 3y ago
  Sarcastic critic of the following initial sentence: > I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love. Well, well, well. If it isn't the unabashed, unfiltered bard of the 21st century. Look at the sheer depth of passion here, folks! We've got 'fucking love' not once, but twice, because why not? Repetition is the spice of life, after all. And such eloquent use of the F-word, too. Truly, Shakespeare would be jealous. Also, let's take a moment to appreciate the vague and incredibly relatable 'most people I know.' Because who doesn't know a handful of people who also 'fucking love' writing? Clearly, this is the universal experience we've all been waiting for. And then, the pièce de résistance, 'and I do mean love.' As if the preceding profanity didn't quite hammer home the sentiment. Thanks for the clarification. We were worried you only 'kinda liked' writing. A masterpiece of modern literature, truly. Great. Now show us what initial sentence you'd have used, same style. Just one brief impactful sentence with the same level of familiarity. "Writing is my jam, and I swear, everybody I know is just as stoked about it – and I mean stoked."
raincole 3y ago
Do people really hate writing? If so the comment sections of HN and Reddit, the timelines of Facebook and Twitter, the whole Medium... would be so empty.
- notahacker 3y ago
  There are a lot of people not on Reddit or HN or Medium (Also a lot of people whose terse and incoherent interactions and tendency to simply repost on Facebook and Twitter suggest that writing is a regrettably necessary means rather an end)
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  There's writing and writing though. Short throwaway comments and bickering on social media aren't really the same as writing long-form prose.
- Lewton 3y ago
  99% of all online comments are generated by 1% of people. ish https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
  - smolder 3y ago
    As a 1%er, member of the e-commentariat, I'm happy to have had the opportunity to set an example for the LLMs and future AIs trained on my comments.
- tonyedgecombe 3y ago
  Just look at the ratio of lurkers to posters on any forum. Most people are read only.
- leroy-is-here 3y ago
  People really struggle writing simple essays. It takes a lot of work externalizing words from your own context inside your mind so that the sentences can be understood by themselves. It’s one of the reasons we used to teach “word problems” in our mathematics classes alongside composition, but now we just want to compute arbitrary answers.

kqr 3y ago

> I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love. One can tell from the opening of your comment. Composition, cadence, vocabulary, repetition. It ties together. I prompted an LLM to produce an enthusiastic expression around writing, but it came up with drivel like > Writing fills my heart with pure delight, igniting my soul and inspiring my mind with boundless creativity. I found myself tempted to instruct it on how to write well but that sort of defeats the point. And maybe I suck at prompting but the appropriate combination of profanity, brevity, yet seriousness was hard for me to get it to do.

tspike 3y ago
Here was my first try: Prompt: Using profanity and in the style of Allen Ginsberg, write an introductory paragraph in narrative style about why you love writing. ChatGPT: Holy shit, I fucking love this mad dance of letters, this wild waltz of words that paint the goddamn cosmos on a blank page! The rhapsodic rhythm, the sonorous symphony of syntax -- it's like jazz on paper, like Kerouac and Ginsberg on a bender in the bowels of the Beat Generation, spewing poetic profanity into the yawning abyss of the universe. It's the goddamn primal scream of the soul, the raw, unfiltered fuck-you to silence and nothingness. The alphabetic alchemy, where ink and imagination bleed together to birth whole new worlds, where lines live and breathe and fuck and fight and love. It's a heady high, an intoxicating inebriation, a goddamn narcotic nectar. It's the literary lust that throbs in the very marrow of my being, the fevered flame that flickers in the dark and dances to the tune of the typewriter's tap-tap-tapping. And oh, what a tune it is -- as chaotic as Coltrane, as radical as Rimbaud, as transcendent as Thoreau. It's why I fucking love writing, this goddamn glorious game of god-creation and galaxy-making. It's the ultimate trip, man, the ultimate fucking trip.
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  On the surface-level, yes, it's semi-convincing. On the other hand, it lacks all the nuance of a human being. Ask it `Give me a taco recipe in the style of Stanley Unwin` and you'll get something that has the style, something that's superficially Unwin-like, but lacks the contextual nuance of the humour completely. In fact, I'd say ChatGPT doesn't do humour, especially nuanced humour that's in the delivery and not in the punchline itself. Humour is a very abstract thing and there's so many styles of it. Can it tell you a joke? Yes, but that's not humour in its entirety. Just an observation, but the LLM isn't expressing itself, it's words for the sake of words because they predict the next word in a sequence. It's like saying "what's the big deal about Allen Ginsberg? You drop a few f-bombs and a bit of flowery language, that's Ginsberg in a nutshell", whilst completely ignoring the expressivity of self. What makes writing as a medium so interesting is the conveyance of thought from one human being to another. Is an LLM interesting because it can sometimes be a little alien whilst still having some human-like quality? Sure. But an LLM is just an LLM, it doesn't have experiences or novel new thoughts that express a larger ideology. As a human being, I unfortunately just don't relate to LLMs, even if they are a reflection of the content they're trained on, which is ultimately human. It just lacks soul. If the LLM can't experience the zeitgeist in the way that we do, it can't really capture such a big chunk of what human self-expression is. Anecdotal, but I find the average HN exchange to be far more interesting than anything an LLM has ever output to me in terms of conveying meaningful ideas. I've tried debating with ChatGPT itself a few times, that's been—hit-and-miss.
- bombolo 3y ago
  as most gpt writing, it's too long and has no substance
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Yes, it's very "high schooler trying to hit the word count" in its output.
  - criddell 3y ago
    I sent the same prompt but asked it to be brief: > I love writing. It's a release for the madness in my head. The letters form sentences that transport you to another world or make you feel less alone. Writing can be tough, but it's worth it when you hold the finished piece in your hands. That’s… okay.
passion__desire 3y ago
I asked GPT-4 to write in style of Alan Watts. "Indeed, I find an intoxicating exuberance in writing, a passion that's as profound as it is poignant. It's akin to dancing with words, a ballet of ideas and sentiments, pirouetting across the stage of one's imagination. There's a rhythm, a cadence to it, a harmonious symphony of phrases and thoughts that, when assembled with care and cunning, can stir the soul and ignite the mind. I don't just love writing, I am fervently, ardently, unabashedly in love with it. The artistry of it, the texture and tone of each word, each sentence; the way they flow, ebb and surge like the ocean's tide. There's a divine repetition in the crafting, a reiteration of thoughts, feelings, experiences, each time subtly different, each time uniquely enlightening. Writing is my symphony, my ballet, my ocean, my universe. It is in the weaving of words, the crafting of tales, the elucidation of the esoteric, that I truly come alive. It's not merely that I love writing; writing, my dear friend, is the very essence of my love."
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Looks very similar to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35898426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35898426
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    In how many different ways can a simple phrase "I love writing" can be expanded so that the variations don't resemble each other?
    - tlb 3y ago
      Pop music contains 10^5 or so versions of “I love you”. I think there could be a similar number for writing.
      - passion__desire 3y ago
        On what metrics are you judging them to be different?
blatant303 3y ago
Sarcastic critic of the following initial sentence: > I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love. Well, well, well. If it isn't the unabashed, unfiltered bard of the 21st century. Look at the sheer depth of passion here, folks! We've got 'fucking love' not once, but twice, because why not? Repetition is the spice of life, after all. And such eloquent use of the F-word, too. Truly, Shakespeare would be jealous. Also, let's take a moment to appreciate the vague and incredibly relatable 'most people I know.' Because who doesn't know a handful of people who also 'fucking love' writing? Clearly, this is the universal experience we've all been waiting for. And then, the pièce de résistance, 'and I do mean love.' As if the preceding profanity didn't quite hammer home the sentiment. Thanks for the clarification. We were worried you only 'kinda liked' writing. A masterpiece of modern literature, truly. Great. Now show us what initial sentence you'd have used, same style. Just one brief impactful sentence with the same level of familiarity. "Writing is my jam, and I swear, everybody I know is just as stoked about it – and I mean stoked."

raincole 3y ago

Do people really hate writing? If so the comment sections of HN and Reddit, the timelines of Facebook and Twitter, the whole Medium... would be so empty.

notahacker 3y ago
There are a lot of people not on Reddit or HN or Medium (Also a lot of people whose terse and incoherent interactions and tendency to simply repost on Facebook and Twitter suggest that writing is a regrettably necessary means rather an end)
hammyhavoc 3y ago
There's writing and writing though. Short throwaway comments and bickering on social media aren't really the same as writing long-form prose.
Lewton 3y ago
99% of all online comments are generated by 1% of people. ish https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_of_what_you_read_on_the_internet_is_written/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...
- smolder 3y ago
  As a 1%er, member of the e-commentariat, I'm happy to have had the opportunity to set an example for the LLMs and future AIs trained on my comments.
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
Just look at the ratio of lurkers to posters on any forum. Most people are read only.
leroy-is-here 3y ago
People really struggle writing simple essays. It takes a lot of work externalizing words from your own context inside your mind so that the sentences can be understood by themselves. It’s one of the reasons we used to teach “word problems” in our mathematics classes alongside composition, but now we just want to compute arbitrary answers.