3 ms·

In contemporary YouTube-script wording: > The Ecclasiast looked under the sun, but there was something he didn't understand. Something that wasn't right. Somet

In contemporary YouTube-script wording: > The Ecclasiast looked under the sun, but there was something he didn't understand. Something that wasn't right. Something that was not as it was supposed to be. And here is what the Ecclesiast didn't understand. Here is what nobody understood. Not then. Not in the years that followed. Not now. It was not the swift who won the race. Not the strong who won the battle. Not the wise who earned the bread. Not the men of understanding who gained the riches. Not the men of skill who gained the favor. And here is what I found: to any story of success, there is an element of unpredictability and chance. (There are really just two possible outcomes: either the article is right or in, say, two years, we will be all writing and talking like this, as in humans learning from mediamatically reinforced human feedback.)

vogelke 28d ago
> in, say, two years, we will be all writing and talking like this Shoot me now.
- hansvm 28d ago
  Quietly
- ryandrake 28d ago
  > Shoot me now. I'm sorry, I can't generate that because the request violates our content policies.
somat 28d ago
Very depressing, and I believe it. I am a bit of a luddite in this domain and have so far managed to resist the lure of using the generator to expand my thoughts, and I still catch myself writing "it's not just an X it's a Y" and other generator type tells. If it infecting my patterns it is totally entering the wider subconscious as "How to write" (Sighs)
- jbeninger 28d ago
  That's not a generator tell when used judiciously. It's a genuinely useful construction that's been poisoned by overgeneration.
  - masswerk 28d ago
    That's the flaw in RLHF: constructs tagged as effective or sophisticated speech become templates, are increasingly used out of context (e.g., "not just A, not just B, but C" is usually meant to provide some synthesis and further the progress of the text) and suffer from significant overexposure. (And gone is the em-dash…)
    - knollimar 28d ago
      I think the grating one is that it's constructed to sound effective when it shouldn't! Good points should be rewarded confidence. I read so many not X it's Y where the distinction beteeen X and Y isn't relevant to the discussion!
  - pessimizer 28d ago
    It's bad in and of itself the way LLMs use it. They separate it into a weird declaration when it's usually something you'd say at the beginning and/or end of a paragraph or passage where you're making a case for that statement. It's part of how LLMs often seem to repeat the same thing over and over again. Most arguments are X is Y (and the others are X is not Y, or X is likely Y), and LLMs lean on "X is Y" because it is the most distilled form of that argument - a thesis minus the meat. Also "This is not a Y, this is a Z." They're just thesis sentences inserted in inappropriate locations. The reason it makes them overdramatic is because separated from the argument, they seem like they should be premises. Conclusions without premises have the feeling of demands.
- alan-crowe 28d ago
  The question is: how did your test reader respond to the version without the "It's not just an X, it's a Y." ? Perhaps the discussion went: Test Reader: I got confused when you started talking about X as though it were a Y. Author: But it is a Y. I should flag that up, where I introduce it. Alternatively, the test reader comments The villains monologue wasn't unhinged enough. He says that making himself universal dictator is democratic because he gives people what they secretly desire. I feel he would express himself with more empty rhetoric. Author: Agreed. I'll add "It's not just democratic, it's not just super-democratic, it's ultra-democratic!!!" Test Reader: Scary! The error lies in using "It's not just an X it's a Y." for emphasis rather than to ward off a likely misreading.
OroPla 28d ago
I already notice LLM speech patterns in people that use them a whole lot. If you speak more than one language I recommend talking to LLMs in a language that you don't use when speaking to people.
- knollimar 28d ago
  The most frustrating one is when it does the papering over analysis and adding pushback to seem helpful. No, there shouldn't be a spot "where you pushback" unless it makes sense and responds to someone's concern! Like with an LLM I would rewind the conversation. What do I do, shame them?
- sersi 28d ago
  I have a tendency to switch between different languages when interacting with LLM depending on the language of the most likely sources the LLM will pull. It's interesting because the llm speech patterns vary from language to language. And I am much faster at noticing LLM generated text in English (which I use 70% of the time) than in French or Spanish.
  - cgio 28d ago
    In Greek they are still atrociously bad, still feels like they translate an English thought. Nevertheless, the etymological insights they can give on words or Ancient Greek passages is making reading the ancients really fun.
- deanishe 27d ago
  How does someone end up knowing an extra language they don't need anymore?
  - arrowleaf 26d ago
    Language learning is a fun hobby for some people.
andai 28d ago
Isn't that just ChatGPT?
armchairhacker 28d ago
That one starts with a glaring hallucination "he didn't understand, nobody understood, not then or now...". But the second part is IMO better than the Ecclasiast, which has outdated phrasing ("nor yet riches to men of understanding"). > When I look under the sun, it's not the swift who win races, nor the strong who win battles, nor the wise who earn bread, nor the smart who gain riches, nor the skilled who gain favor. Ultimately, it's the lucky; every contest has a degree of unpredictability and chance.
- masswerk 28d ago
  The construction of meaning is totally distorted, though. In the original, the first part is entirely motivated by the conclusion, and puts emphasis to this by a crescendo of counterintuitive observations. This is what made this memorable phrasing. In the version suggested here, there's just an incompetence attributed to the original author, underlined by repetitive phrasing, so that the supposed speaker may claim all the glory by uttering an observation, which is in and by itself rather banal. You wont think about this twice. Thus, the entire construct ends in a whimper (so it may fit the template) and there isn't really any reason to put it that way, or to say this, in the first place. Its perceived purpose may be rather to occupy space and time (at the cost of the recipient.)
Frieren 28d ago
> two years, we will be all writing and talking like this I have seen kids talking like youtubers: the top 10 things I like, or what I need to do before I die (the kids is 9 years old), ... not great (like repeating ad tunes or slogans) but not as bad as AI bullshit-talk. My only hope is that AI bullshit-talk is so boring and predictable that it has low impact in our speech. And looking at what other commenters say boring and insufferable seems to be the case.
demibabs 27d ago
Oh my god, this is unbelievably accurate. Do you practice this?
- masswerk 27d ago
  Of course. As we're told to prepare for the new times… :-) On a more serious note, I think, if we're going to criticise the kind of distortions LLMs do to language and the construction of meaning, we should be able to come up with similar productions, just to demonstrate where and how this goes wrong. (Much like the early Wittgenstein pointed out some constructs and declared, this is not a meaningful sentence, in fact, it's not a sentence, at all. And went on to define the limits for what a meaningful proposition may convey and what it can not, what we may expect and hope for in an expression and what we may not. In other words, is there even enough in the toolset of LLMs to construct meaning? Is traversing a semantic field in an apparently well-formed sentence already meaning or is it not?)

vogelke 28d ago

> in, say, two years, we will be all writing and talking like this Shoot me now.

hansvm 28d ago
Quietly
ryandrake 28d ago
> Shoot me now. I'm sorry, I can't generate that because the request violates our content policies.

somat 28d ago

Very depressing, and I believe it. I am a bit of a luddite in this domain and have so far managed to resist the lure of using the generator to expand my thoughts, and I still catch myself writing "it's not just an X it's a Y" and other generator type tells. If it infecting my patterns it is totally entering the wider subconscious as "How to write" (Sighs)

jbeninger 28d ago
That's not a generator tell when used judiciously. It's a genuinely useful construction that's been poisoned by overgeneration.
- masswerk 28d ago
  That's the flaw in RLHF: constructs tagged as effective or sophisticated speech become templates, are increasingly used out of context (e.g., "not just A, not just B, but C" is usually meant to provide some synthesis and further the progress of the text) and suffer from significant overexposure. (And gone is the em-dash…)
  - knollimar 28d ago
    I think the grating one is that it's constructed to sound effective when it shouldn't! Good points should be rewarded confidence. I read so many not X it's Y where the distinction beteeen X and Y isn't relevant to the discussion!
- pessimizer 28d ago
  It's bad in and of itself the way LLMs use it. They separate it into a weird declaration when it's usually something you'd say at the beginning and/or end of a paragraph or passage where you're making a case for that statement. It's part of how LLMs often seem to repeat the same thing over and over again. Most arguments are X is Y (and the others are X is not Y, or X is likely Y), and LLMs lean on "X is Y" because it is the most distilled form of that argument - a thesis minus the meat. Also "This is not a Y, this is a Z." They're just thesis sentences inserted in inappropriate locations. The reason it makes them overdramatic is because separated from the argument, they seem like they should be premises. Conclusions without premises have the feeling of demands.
alan-crowe 28d ago
The question is: how did your test reader respond to the version without the "It's not just an X, it's a Y." ? Perhaps the discussion went: Test Reader: I got confused when you started talking about X as though it were a Y. Author: But it is a Y. I should flag that up, where I introduce it. Alternatively, the test reader comments The villains monologue wasn't unhinged enough. He says that making himself universal dictator is democratic because he gives people what they secretly desire. I feel he would express himself with more empty rhetoric. Author: Agreed. I'll add "It's not just democratic, it's not just super-democratic, it's ultra-democratic!!!" Test Reader: Scary! The error lies in using "It's not just an X it's a Y." for emphasis rather than to ward off a likely misreading.

OroPla 28d ago

I already notice LLM speech patterns in people that use them a whole lot. If you speak more than one language I recommend talking to LLMs in a language that you don't use when speaking to people.

knollimar 28d ago
The most frustrating one is when it does the papering over analysis and adding pushback to seem helpful. No, there shouldn't be a spot "where you pushback" unless it makes sense and responds to someone's concern! Like with an LLM I would rewind the conversation. What do I do, shame them?
sersi 28d ago
I have a tendency to switch between different languages when interacting with LLM depending on the language of the most likely sources the LLM will pull. It's interesting because the llm speech patterns vary from language to language. And I am much faster at noticing LLM generated text in English (which I use 70% of the time) than in French or Spanish.
- cgio 28d ago
  In Greek they are still atrociously bad, still feels like they translate an English thought. Nevertheless, the etymological insights they can give on words or Ancient Greek passages is making reading the ancients really fun.
deanishe 27d ago
How does someone end up knowing an extra language they don't need anymore?
- arrowleaf 26d ago
  Language learning is a fun hobby for some people.

andai 28d ago

Isn't that just ChatGPT?

armchairhacker 28d ago

That one starts with a glaring hallucination "he didn't understand, nobody understood, not then or now...". But the second part is IMO better than the Ecclasiast, which has outdated phrasing ("nor yet riches to men of understanding"). > When I look under the sun, it's not the swift who win races, nor the strong who win battles, nor the wise who earn bread, nor the smart who gain riches, nor the skilled who gain favor. Ultimately, it's the lucky; every contest has a degree of unpredictability and chance.

masswerk 28d ago
The construction of meaning is totally distorted, though. In the original, the first part is entirely motivated by the conclusion, and puts emphasis to this by a crescendo of counterintuitive observations. This is what made this memorable phrasing. In the version suggested here, there's just an incompetence attributed to the original author, underlined by repetitive phrasing, so that the supposed speaker may claim all the glory by uttering an observation, which is in and by itself rather banal. You wont think about this twice. Thus, the entire construct ends in a whimper (so it may fit the template) and there isn't really any reason to put it that way, or to say this, in the first place. Its perceived purpose may be rather to occupy space and time (at the cost of the recipient.)

Frieren 28d ago

> two years, we will be all writing and talking like this I have seen kids talking like youtubers: the top 10 things I like, or what I need to do before I die (the kids is 9 years old), ... not great (like repeating ad tunes or slogans) but not as bad as AI bullshit-talk. My only hope is that AI bullshit-talk is so boring and predictable that it has low impact in our speech. And looking at what other commenters say boring and insufferable seems to be the case.

demibabs 27d ago

Oh my god, this is unbelievably accurate. Do you practice this?

masswerk 27d ago
Of course. As we're told to prepare for the new times… :-) On a more serious note, I think, if we're going to criticise the kind of distortions LLMs do to language and the construction of meaning, we should be able to come up with similar productions, just to demonstrate where and how this goes wrong. (Much like the early Wittgenstein pointed out some constructs and declared, this is not a meaningful sentence, in fact, it's not a sentence, at all. And went on to define the limits for what a meaningful proposition may convey and what it can not, what we may expect and hope for in an expression and what we may not. In other words, is there even enough in the toolset of LLMs to construct meaning? Is traversing a semantic field in an apparently well-formed sentence already meaning or is it not?)