6 ms·
Yeah, I miss Terry Pratchett too, but what I miss even most is reading an article and not wondering how much of it was written by AI. Imagine if Terry Pratchett
by YeGoblynQueenne 5mo ago
Yeah, I miss Terry Pratchett too, but what I miss even most is reading an article and not wondering how much of it was written by AI. Imagine if Terry Pratchett was born in the 2000's and wrote in the 2020's. Well, he wouldn't. That's the thing. Imagine all the future Discworlds we'll never read because nobody ever writes anything anymore, because they've given up, and even if they did write there's so few chances to publish anyway, even before AI.
When there is clearly a huge demand for great stories and writing like Terry Pratchett's then why is it so hard to make a living out of it? And what happens now we made it even harder?
- singpolyma3 5mo agoWe've not had an economy that rewarded doing things people want or need within my lifetime. Possibly we never did
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5mo agoWait, that doesn't make sense. Are you saying you don't want or need any man-made thing? I assure you, many, many people were rewarded for designing, building, and selling the things you need and want to live your modern life.
- pastel8739 5mo agoHowever, I think it’s true that many more people were rewarded (likely even more) for things that people do not want. Facebook, etc
- singpolyma3 5mo agoIndeed I do need such things. The fact that reward does not accrue to those who provide it feels strange
- atrus 5mo agoIs the next Terry Pratchett not writing because AI exists, or because they'll just get accused of being AI? This is a little like saying no one will ever paint anymore because cameras exist. It might be harder to make a living off art now (which...debatable), but at no point, ever, was it easy.
- chongli 5mo ago"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." -- Yogi Berra Writing is hard now, not because AI exists, but because there are so many writers out there and everyone's competing for attention, not just with other writers, nor with books from the past, but with all forms of media. Loads of people today, who might otherwise be reading novels for entertainment, are too busy scrolling their phones or watching TikToks or playing video games. We don't have another Terry Pratchett because all the would-be Terry Pratchetts are toiling in obscurity, and possibly giving up on writing as a result.
- noir_lord 5mo agoThere are some writers around who capture some (at least in the humour side) of the essence of what made Pratchett my favourite writer. The Clovenhoof Series by Heide Goody and Iain Grant gets to Good Omens.
- yw3410 5mo agoPratchett himself spent years as a journalist for a local newspaper before Colour of Magic. These writing jobs in print media have mostly disappeared in the UK. It's certainly harder to make a living as a writer today than it was in the 70's and 80's.
- flir 5mo agoThere was a great story about a helicopter a couple of years ago and the author was basically hounded out of the SFF community. These days, for anything that's written it seems like there's a specially tailored mob waiting to pounce on it. Very hard to go pearl fishing in your own psyche in that environment - best to get a sensitivity reader instead, I wouldn't want to dip my toe in such toxic waters.
- saghm 5mo agoI've seen this point before, and it's a reasonable one, but I think there's an important distinction: some people are interested in seeing paintings in a museum but not photos, and others might be the opposite, and this is fine because it's pretty easy to distinguish between them and people who are operating in one of the missing mediums rarely try to pretend to be producing something from the other. The consensus view on "is this a painting or a photograph" is way more uniform than "is this piece of writing from AI or not", and I think that changes things. You could totally argue that if people can't tell the difference, it's irrational for them to care which one they get, and I don't totally disagree with that either, but it's not like personal tastes have ever really been a rational thing either. Our ability to enjoy something is the result of a bunch of signals in our brains, and it's not that crazy that adding another signal (or removing one) can change that result in a way that makes it more or less desirable to seek out. Some people might literally like a piece of writing more if they have reason to believe it's from a human than they would if they read the same exact thing but had reason to believe it's from an AI, and while I would find a study showing that as fascinating, I wouldn't see that as an argument that people like the wrong things, because "right" or "wrong" don't really seem like they apply to that sort of thing. If someone told me that knowing there's a human on the other end and that having some sort of indirect, one-way emotional connection to them is an important part of what makes them enjoy it, who am I to tell them that's wrong?
- aaron695 5mo ago[dead]
- veidr 5mo agoi miss smart people writing blog posts that stopped after twitter and went asymptotically downhill from there approaching, but never quite literally getting to the point of eating a dog shit sandwich (despite the same nauseous feeling and bad taste in your mouth)
- throwaway27448 5mo agoSubstack is thriving, btw. Curiously I simply have less desire to read the thoughts of "smart" people than ever. Either write a proper book or distract me from the horrors of the world.
- veidr 5mo agoyeah, but substack is mostly just another twitter low-engagement farm also, your last-line worldview... i mean i get it, but... just basically sounds like the twitter origin story (T_T)
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- st3phvee 5mo ago> but substack is mostly just another twitter low-engagement farm That, plus it's also full to the brim with LinkedIn-esque AI slop. There are still some decent writers there, for sure, but Substack is going downhill fast as more grifters join the platform in the hopes of making a quick, easy buck.
- throwaway27448 5mo agoHow are you using it such that you even encounter writers you don't know?
- st3phvee 5mo agoVia Substack's own recommendation algorithm, Substack Notes, and by perusing the leaderboards, both of which have been a thing on the platform for a while now. Substack's social media side is very Twitter-esque. Writers you follow "restack" publications (some of which are full of AI slop, unbeknownst to the restacker) and the algorithm also inserts "writers" you haven't encountered into your feed. ("Writers" is in scare quotes for a reason.)
- gorgmah 5mo agoI apologize for making you sad, seeing all the comments made me realize that I should have been way less aggressive with the AI proofreading ; I wanted the sentences to feel a bit more Terry Pratchetty and thought a lot of Claude's suggestions were really better than what I had made. I actually agree to your point too
- mohamedkoubaa 5mo agoI write science fiction as a hobby and am in writing critique groups. One of the first rules of critiquing writing is not to suggest how to say things, but only to say what a certain phrase made you feel (confusion, boredom, etc). LLMs harnesses try to make them useful to suggest things, but this is the most destructive thing you can do to a writer. You can work around it by just feeding Claude a writing critique skill.
- gyomu 5mo ago> way less aggressive with the AI proofreading It’s funny how anytime an article gets called out for being AI slop on HN, the author’s reaction is something like that: “oh yeah sorry I used AI but just for proofreading I swear, I should’ve done just a tiny bit less”. No one seems to get the message that relying on AI at all is what makes writing shit. Good writers have confidence in what they produce. The fact that you’re willing to incorporate any AI suggestion at all means you’ve already lost the battle.
- probably_wrong 5mo agoI'm not a writer but I do write quite a bit for scientific reasons. I'd like to add a small tweak to your comment. The people I know have no confidence whatsoever in their writing, rewriting and rephrasing the same paragraph over and over until they either run out of time or give up. They also circulate their drafts among colleagues and ask for their opinions too. It's not the confidence what makes good writing, but rather putting in the work.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5mo ago
- booleandilemma 5mo agoStop, you're making me sad :(
- YeGoblynQueenne 5mo ago:(
- gessha 5mo agoJust like how the small web never disappeared, people writing will not disappear. Your ability to find them will be impeded but it won’t be impossible.