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Is this your first day on planet Adam Curtis? ;) I love his stuff but you really need to treat it as "thought provoking but utterly lacking in rigour". Treat

Is this your first day on planet Adam Curtis? ;) I love his stuff but you really need to treat it as "thought provoking but utterly lacking in rigour". Treat it as a jumping off point for topics that might be new to you and as a nudge to view things from a different angle.

Animats 2y ago
In the post-LLM era, that just isn't good enough. Now that we have well-written automated probabilistic meandering text generation, "thought provoking but utterly lacking in rigour" copy is everywhere. Usually followed by a clickbait link. It's the end of a whole second-tier literary genre.
- andybak 2y ago
  I disagree. AI will be able to do "rigour" before it can do "thought provoking". Part of Adam's appeal is the fact that behind it is a human being struggling to understand the world and struggling to explain it. LLMs are incredible but nobody cares what a hyper-evolved Markov chain pretends to say about culture.
  - Animats 2y ago
    > AI will be able to do "rigour" before it can do "thought provoking". I wish. Right now, thought provoking LLMs exist, but rigorously correct ones do not. Which is a big problem if you want to use them beyond blithering.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  Llm output is not thought provoking.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
chefandy 2y ago
Yeah new to me, and I think I've had my fill. There are people saying things just as interesting that aren't shamelessly glib about it. As I said in my reply to your sibling comment: I'm an art school guy, so I'm well-versed in the idea of imprecise conceptual thinking and conveying how things feel rather than how they actually are-- that's art. But presenting how things feel as how they are isn't called art, it's called bullshit.
- andybak 2y ago
  To be honest, his forte isn't the written word. Watch a documentary or two. He has a fascinating style and is eminently (maybe too eminently) watchable. "New Adam Curtis documentary just dropped" was really a thing for a fair while in the UK.

Animats 2y ago

In the post-LLM era, that just isn't good enough. Now that we have well-written automated probabilistic meandering text generation, "thought provoking but utterly lacking in rigour" copy is everywhere. Usually followed by a clickbait link. It's the end of a whole second-tier literary genre.

andybak 2y ago
I disagree. AI will be able to do "rigour" before it can do "thought provoking". Part of Adam's appeal is the fact that behind it is a human being struggling to understand the world and struggling to explain it. LLMs are incredible but nobody cares what a hyper-evolved Markov chain pretends to say about culture.
- Animats 2y ago
  > AI will be able to do "rigour" before it can do "thought provoking". I wish. Right now, thought provoking LLMs exist, but rigorously correct ones do not. Which is a big problem if you want to use them beyond blithering.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
Llm output is not thought provoking.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

chefandy 2y ago

Yeah new to me, and I think I've had my fill. There are people saying things just as interesting that aren't shamelessly glib about it. As I said in my reply to your sibling comment: I'm an art school guy, so I'm well-versed in the idea of imprecise conceptual thinking and conveying how things feel rather than how they actually are-- that's art. But presenting how things feel as how they are isn't called art, it's called bullshit.

andybak 2y ago
To be honest, his forte isn't the written word. Watch a documentary or two. He has a fascinating style and is eminently (maybe too eminently) watchable. "New Adam Curtis documentary just dropped" was really a thing for a fair while in the UK.