3 ms·

This paper is almost a parody of philosophical writing. It's pages and pages of telling you what it's not going to tell you, contrasting it with other things it

This paper is almost a parody of philosophical writing. It's pages and pages of telling you what it's not going to tell you, contrasting it with other things it could tell but chooses not to, mentioning other things others have told you (which will not be repeated here), disagreeing with the claims of other writers (without quite explaining the refutations), telling you what it intends to tell you, telling you in what form it will tell you what it intends to tell you, and then reminding that it told you. I admit I was skimming a bit by the end, but I seemed to have overlooked the part where it actually said anything.

sdwr 3y ago
I see it as a small dog trying to pick up a big stick - he's making all the right motions but nothing's coming off the ground. I have to believe it's written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic. But yeah, difficult to read, my eyes glanced off like I was trying to read wallpaper.
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  I see it as someone who wishes they were special.
  - mry2048 3y ago
    What’s wrong with that?
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  >written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic So basically an LLM, which by its nature (and often also by external controls) can't say anything non-trivial about love, sex, money, or death. Or even politics. Because that requires a point of view narrower than Wikipedia's and at least half as stable as nitroglycerin
batch12 3y ago
Thanks for the heads up. I would give it a shot out of curiosity following your comments if it were html, but the pdf format is a little annoying.
DiscourseFan 3y ago
I was trying to see if there were any references to major works on discomfort from a philosophical perspective that I was familiar with, but I couldn't find any. I think its constitutive: here we have a field of thought that has spent the last however many years attempting to understand the mind in a sort of isolated, atomized way, now having to grapple with the social reality of thinking, and having little to no resources to draw from, and presumably the author is some poor Master's or PhD student who is only familiar with the small segment of materials that their professors and advisors have to offer them. The so-called field of "analytic philosophy," if such a distinction is even important anymore, has produced numerous studies on Heidegger[0], for instance, who takes the feelings of Anxiety (and boredom) as the ground of Being. Less frequently cited in Philosophy, but common in cognitive science, is Freud--specifically I'm thinking of his essay "The 'Uncanny'."[1] I can think of others who would be more controversial, since they, being, perhaps, too heavily influenced, made such feelings of discomfort and confusion constitutive in their writing, and so many criticize them as being "nonsensical" without realizing how facile such criticisms are... In any case, just as I am familiar with Heidegger and Freud, simply because of who I've come into association with, there is always a universe of thought that I am excluded from in one way or another, so its good to see, regardless, other takes on these subjects. But I agree, this lacks the kind of depth you'd like to see out of research that addresses this topic. [0]https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heid... [1]https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf
kazinator 3y ago
> then reminding that it told you. You dropped the excellent play there: should be "reminding you of what it was not going to tell you, and didn't."
- munificent 3y ago
  Oh, that is very good.

sdwr 3y ago

I see it as a small dog trying to pick up a big stick - he's making all the right motions but nothing's coming off the ground. I have to believe it's written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic. But yeah, difficult to read, my eyes glanced off like I was trying to read wallpaper.

rufus_foreman 3y ago
I see it as someone who wishes they were special.
- mry2048 3y ago
  What’s wrong with that?
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
>written by a young person who knows what papers should look like, but doesn't have the life experience to get any leverage on the topic So basically an LLM, which by its nature (and often also by external controls) can't say anything non-trivial about love, sex, money, or death. Or even politics. Because that requires a point of view narrower than Wikipedia's and at least half as stable as nitroglycerin

batch12 3y ago

Thanks for the heads up. I would give it a shot out of curiosity following your comments if it were html, but the pdf format is a little annoying.

DiscourseFan 3y ago

I was trying to see if there were any references to major works on discomfort from a philosophical perspective that I was familiar with, but I couldn't find any. I think its constitutive: here we have a field of thought that has spent the last however many years attempting to understand the mind in a sort of isolated, atomized way, now having to grapple with the social reality of thinking, and having little to no resources to draw from, and presumably the author is some poor Master's or PhD student who is only familiar with the small segment of materials that their professors and advisors have to offer them. The so-called field of "analytic philosophy," if such a distinction is even important anymore, has produced numerous studies on Heidegger[0], for instance, who takes the feelings of Anxiety (and boredom) as the ground of Being. Less frequently cited in Philosophy, but common in cognitive science, is Freud--specifically I'm thinking of his essay "The 'Uncanny'."[1] I can think of others who would be more controversial, since they, being, perhaps, too heavily influenced, made such feelings of discomfort and confusion constitutive in their writing, and so many criticize them as being "nonsensical" without realizing how facile such criticisms are... In any case, just as I am familiar with Heidegger and Freud, simply because of who I've come into association with, there is always a universe of thought that I am excluded from in one way or another, so its good to see, regardless, other takes on these subjects. But I agree, this lacks the kind of depth you'd like to see out of research that addresses this topic. [0]https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heid... [1]https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf

kazinator 3y ago

> then reminding that it told you. You dropped the excellent play there: should be "reminding you of what it was not going to tell you, and didn't."

munificent 3y ago
Oh, that is very good.