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AI as a tool to kickstart your own imagination is fine; but despite the author's claims that he's not excited about AI-as-author, it seems like they're mostly j

• benbreen 3y ago
  Not factually wrong at all - the dosages, ingredients, diagnosis and even the language are all strikingly accurate. Naturally, the "fake" 1680s doctor didn't write the same prescription as the real one (Sydenham). But a different real life doctor would've disagreed with Sydenham, too. In other words, if you had 100 physicians in the 1680s write out a prescription for hysteria and "hypochondriacal passion," this would be (IMO) indistinguishable from the real ones. What's different is that this is interactive, so you can change elements at will. Again, this isn't reflective of historical fact. It also isn't simply fan fiction. This text isn't an end point, but a starting point for jumpstarting your own thinking about the affordances of a past world. In other words, I think this is a new method for thinking creatively about history -- one among many that already existed, like historical fiction, historical re-enactment, various forms of experiential learning like debates and roleplaying, etc. But it's cool that there's a new one!