People always seem to think I'm kidding when I say I've lost any and all hope for humanity's future. But then I point them to shit like this.
Fuck AI
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use
-~~ernest hemingway~~ ChatGPT
After getting past the initial horror, I think I'm coming around on this. This is very likely only going to be used by people that wouldn't otherwise read the book.
If this gets more people to actually read books then I'm on board.
My immediate thought was having a simplified book for young readers. When I was around 9 or 10, my grandma had me read simplified versions of classics like Huckleberry Finn. I liked the book enough that I eventually read the actual book when I was at the appropriate age.
"Gave me advice" is not equivalent to "told me something", but the rest of it looks about right. The original sounds nicer, but I can also appreciate efficient communication. If they fix the inaccuracies and make it a 1:1 translation, I'm ok with both forms existing.
It even seems like it would be fun to read both versions side by side and compare each passage. Like the thought of long paragraphs that say very little being replaced by single sentences seems hilarious to me. Also the cases where the simple version ends up being longer because harder words can convey more. As long as they don't do that bullshit mentioned above where they don't just simplify the way it's said but also dumb down the content itself.
Book summary as I vaguely remember any detail of it:
Rich guy with new money did bad things and never got caught until the day he ran over someone.
It was like being rich and driving a Tesla. The only difference was that he didn't have the car in self driving mode because there was no such thing back then.
Wasn't it someone else driving his car? Also he still wasn't caught. He was killed the very next day.
Language-teaching books such as the Pearson English Readers series have been doing this for decades, and if you are a native speaker of reasonable age, you should not be using these books unless the language is indeed so ancient it needs explanations. However, nobody will be stopping you...
“I’m addicted to reading, which explains how I ended up being a writer.”
“Oh, yeah?” says SBF. “I would never read a book.”
I’m not sure what to say. I’ve read a book a week for my entire adult life and have written three of my own.
“I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that,” explains SBF. “I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”
https://lithub.com/crypto-nerd-sam-bankman-fried-who-just-lost-16-billion-would-never-read-a-book/
I wouldn't read it, but my native language isn't English and this might have been useful when learning English in my teens.
I read one of the Harry Potter books in English when it came out as it hadn't been translated to my language yet, and i could only understand about half of it. This would've helped me read the book, and practice the vocabulary.
Exactly. Simple language is a thing. And for some people it's actually important.
If you're learning a language or have some form of learning disability, you simply can't understand "real" books.
Hell, there are books in my native language that I can barely read (Kant is about as nice as the name implies).
The real question is: how good is it? If 80% of nuance and details are lost, it may not be of use.
"Look at that sign with a big picture of eyes. It makes me think about stuff."
When I was a young boy my father took me to a city to see the marching band.