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POETRY IS COMPRESSION William Goldman, the guy who wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride among other things, claimed that this realization exposed the e

POETRY IS COMPRESSION William Goldman, the guy who wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride among other things, claimed that this realization exposed the extraordinarily simple mechanism at work behind the most subjectively satisfying writing he had encountered of any form, though closest to the surface in the best poetry. further reminds me of another observation, not from Goldman but someone else I can't recall, to the effect that a poem is "a machine made of words."

fennecbutt 3y ago
Interpretation is an extremely lossy mechanism, though
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Very true, but it's an informed and curated loss. Necessarily so, because our couple kilograms lump of nerve tissue is completely unequal to the task of losslessly comprehending all of its own experiences, to say nothing of those of others, and infinitesimally so in comparison to the universe as a whole. We take points and interpolate a silhouette of reality from them. I am strongly on board with the notion that everything that we call knowledge or the human experience is all a lossy compression algorithm, a predatory consciousness imagining itself consuming the solid reality on which it presently floats an existence as a massless, insubstantial ghost.
spookybones 3y ago
Where does he talk about this? I’m interested in reading it
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  The book itself is called Which lie did I Tell? And although this bit comes quite early in the text (I should disclose it's been a couple decades since I've read it), the book is mainly biographical. Its a fun and smart read, but doesn't devote more than maybe a chapter reflecting on this revelation, even though Goldman, who wrote it in all caps in the book (which is why I wrote it that way in my post), considered it his most important or influential observation.
kianlocke 3y ago
which is why a sufficiently advanced prompt is indistinguishable from poetry ;)

fennecbutt 3y ago

Interpretation is an extremely lossy mechanism, though

ChainOfFools 3y ago
Very true, but it's an informed and curated loss. Necessarily so, because our couple kilograms lump of nerve tissue is completely unequal to the task of losslessly comprehending all of its own experiences, to say nothing of those of others, and infinitesimally so in comparison to the universe as a whole. We take points and interpolate a silhouette of reality from them. I am strongly on board with the notion that everything that we call knowledge or the human experience is all a lossy compression algorithm, a predatory consciousness imagining itself consuming the solid reality on which it presently floats an existence as a massless, insubstantial ghost.

spookybones 3y ago

Where does he talk about this? I’m interested in reading it

ChainOfFools 3y ago
The book itself is called Which lie did I Tell? And although this bit comes quite early in the text (I should disclose it's been a couple decades since I've read it), the book is mainly biographical. Its a fun and smart read, but doesn't devote more than maybe a chapter reflecting on this revelation, even though Goldman, who wrote it in all caps in the book (which is why I wrote it that way in my post), considered it his most important or influential observation.

kianlocke 3y ago

which is why a sufficiently advanced prompt is indistinguishable from poetry ;)