4 ms·
In what pre-ChatGPT world did "write clearly and provide ample information" include such familiar and long-known tips as: * Ask the model to adopt a persona *
by diydsp 3y ago
In what pre-ChatGPT world did "write clearly and provide ample information" include such familiar and long-known tips as:
* Ask the model to adopt a persona
* Use delimiters to clearly indicate distinct parts of the input
* Specify the desired length of the output
> others' poor experience is a result of their more layman writing style.
I guess we'll have to pass the hat around for those wretched souls. In the meantime, someone needs to tell the English teacher that "layman" is not an adjective.
> sentence structure and word flow
In my experience ChatGPT doesn't care about those. It's able to infer through quite a large amount of sloppiness. The much larger gains come from guiding it into a model of the world, as opposed to direct it to respond to lean perspectives like, "What do I eat to be better?"
- chowells 3y agoIt's perfectly acceptable to use nouns to modify nouns in English. "Beach house". "Stone hearth". "Microphone stand". Go looking for more, I bet you can find a lot. The distinguishing feature of an adjective isn't that it modifies a noun. It's that it has no other use, at least in standard American English.
- foobarbecue 3y agoMany nouns are also adjectives. Layman is not one of them.
- chowells 3y agoThat analysis is incongruent with modern linguistic descriptions. > We can say: "A noun functions as a modifier. An adjective functions as a modifier." But not: "A noun used as an adjective." https://www.grammar-quizzes.com/adj_nounmodifiers.html https://www.grammar-quizzes.com/adj_nounmodifiers.html https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/nouns-that-look-like-adjectives https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/nouns-that-loo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_adjunct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_adjunct The fact that everyone knows what a "layman writing style" means that the only place it's failing is your personal list of acceptable attributive nouns. But English isn't static. It runs on consensus. And consensus here that there's nothing weird about that use.
- da39a3ee 3y agoConsensus where? In your chair? It's obviously weird if by that you mean non-standard.
- chowells 3y agoI was trying very hard to educate you without insulting you, but you're clearly resistant to that. Sorry.
- SQueeeeeL 3y agoThis is an incredibly amusing hacker news interaction. You are 100% in the right in terms of having a breadth of accurate and passionate knowledge about your topic and it being relevant to the discussion @chowells
- foobarbecue 3y agoor, equivalently "breadth of accurate and passion knowledge"
- da39a3ee 3y agoDude... an argument can certainly be made that English evolves by consensus; you're right about that. At the same time, that doesn't mean anything goes! It perhaps would be going too far to say that something is "correct" or "incorrect" English. But we can certainly give a proposed fragment of English a score measuring how well it matches the current consensus regarding what is a valid sentence in the language. Now, > while others' poor experience is a result of their more layman writing style. would receive a low score: "Layman" is not a noun commonly used as an adjective where common is relative to the overall usage of "layman". The adjective is "lay".
- dizhn 3y agoWhile I am aware that there's prior use (centuries ago even) "layman writing" jumps at me a lot less than current use of things like ask, spend etc as nouns.
- ReverseCold 3y ago> * Use delimiters to clearly indicate distinct parts of the input > * Specify the desired length of the output You should do this if you ask a human to write something too, given no other context. Splitting things up with delimiters helps humans understand text. The desired length of the output is also very clearly useful information. > * Ask the model to adopt a persona This is maybe a bit more of a stretch but if you hired a writer to write for you, you would tell them who you are so they can have some context right? That’s basically what this is.
- smeagull 3y ago> * Ask the model to adopt a persona This is bad advice. In my experience asking it to take on a persona can muddy the text that it writes as that persona. I have told it to be a biographer persona, for it to write a biography that then claims the person was a biographer. It's best to treat it as a Language Model, and set it up to complete the text you've provided. All this chat model stuff is a waste of time that degrades text quality.
- kbenson 3y agoHonestly, those seem like the guidelines that SAT/ACT question writers probably use to remove the most ambiguity when trying to reduce the ambiguity and provide clear and consistent directions, so my guess is that they've been best practices for those that care about clearly defining a task for a long time.
- bobsmooth 3y ago>someone needs to tell the English teacher that "layman" is not an adjective. Anything can be an adjective if you try hard enough. You very much write in a hackernews style.