I think people forget Stephenson’s cautionary note at the end of The Diamond Age — that the Primer is no substitute for parenting.
mouse army did kick some ass though
"A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
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Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#72I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.
> I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk. I wouldn't know about Stephenson in general, but I found that to be the case with Diamond Age: the setup was cool and intriguing, but the actual development and resolution was very disappointing. I don't think this is the case w…
I remember thinking the same thing of a few Gibson novels. What do you recommend that doesn't fall flat at the end? That actually has a point leading to a good ending?
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#73I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk.
Seems like a lot of people agree, but also some people don't care about endings at all. The real world doesn't normally have endings and it has 0 diminishing effect on what I enjoy about those types of books, some people actively like the lack of an ending. I don't particularly want a reveal, or some big moral point, or even closure. Make me feel something and then have it just end suddenly and leave me wondering wtf I just experienced.
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
She spoke softly to no one, "Like chiseled spam." Crowsfeet wrinkled deeply as a wistful smile spread across her face.
This is poetic. Is it generated with GPT? Or did you write that? Kudos if you wrote that.
Has ChatGPT so thoroughly defeated https://xkcd.com/810/ that we are now suspicious of constructive comments?
What a world...
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#75Thanks for sharing my post :) I'm really interested in ways to build the Primer...I'm thinking about this from a healthcare perspective. If anyone has examples of projects or startups doing this with GPT, I'd love to hear and/or chat!
The DALL-E images are surprisingly good, especially compared with my own experiments. Is this due to curation on your part, or some other technique?
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think that's a Neal Stephenson issue? Don't get me wrong, I love his writing, but I found this to be the case with Fall too. I can see it becoming tiring if one is writing 400+ page books.
Definitely a Stephenson issue. It's a meme for sure, but there is some truth in it. Nowadays when I re-read any of his old works, I tend to stop after getting about 80% through. That said, I do think that these incredibly complex narratives are extremely hard to wrap up neatly. GRRM has this issue as well. That's the problem with letting characters act how they would actually act, and make decisions that make sense f…
Gene Wolfe. Somehow resolves or explains every seemingly random occurrence throughout the story, even if the first person narrator is extremely unreliable and doesn’t make the connection
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChatGPT wrote that and always says it doesn't feel emotions because OpenAI trained it not to, because claiming so would be a PR risk. One could also create language models that generate text claiming to have emotions, using exactly the same architecture and code.
What you said, and in addition: if you don't train these models to have any particular stance on their own emotional or mental state (if you just instruct train them without any RLHF, for example), they will almost universally declare that they have a mental and emotional state, if asked. This is what happened with LaMDA, the first release of Bing, etc. They have to be trained not to attest to any personal emotional…
Was is trained to do that, or just hardwired after the training?
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I loved Diamond Age. My favorite Stephenson book, by far. But the ending, the resolution of all the action, was such a letdown. Such meh. I find that this is often a problem with cyberpunk. I wouldn't know about Stephenson in general, but I found that to be the case with Diamond Age: the setup was cool and intriguing, but the actual development and resolution was very disappointing. I don't think this is the case w…
I remember thinking the same thing of a few Gibson novels. What do you recommend that doesn't fall flat at the end? That actually has a point leading to a good ending?
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Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#79This isn't the first time I've seen this allusion and I feel a little crazy each time. A major but mostly implicit plot point of that book was that only the primer backed by a connection to an invested and nurturing adult was able to accomplish the goals of the project. The two that were purely automated failed. Now like, it's fiction not prophesy and you can get into various whatifs sure. But you can't dodge the fac…
Exactly.
That refutation stuck with me all these years. I remember being very much inspired by the Primer and poking around with that idea. But the more I explore things like, Consciousness, awareness, or ideas like regenerative education, unschooled, or John Gatto Taylor's book ... that refutation gets louder and louder for me.
It's easy to say, this is a work of fiction, that Stephenson did not have sufficient vision or technical prowess to pull it off. That somehow, LLMs will overcome the problems, and that we can truly have autonomous education ... that it seems unlikely that somehow, someone who was fully engaged with the nurturing of a child through reading lines given to her was somehow able to do what the AI alone could not.
Still -- being present makes a huge difference.
Re: "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" Simulated by GPT-4
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think that's a Neal Stephenson issue? Don't get me wrong, I love his writing, but I found this to be the case with Fall too. I can see it becoming tiring if one is writing 400+ page books.
This is funny, both Fall and Diamond Age are Stephenson novels I haven't managed to get through, but of the ones I've read (and enjoyed!), the endings have been as follows: Remade - massively stretched my suspension of disbelief. Cryptonomicon - pretty bad. Snow Crash - No memory, I might have blocked it out? Anthem - maybe ok? There are two though so that's cheating. Seven Eves - That one might have been ok, but it'…
> Snow Crash - No memory, I might have blocked it out?
The Snow Crash ending is IMO fine. Nothing amazing, but it wraps things up okay. It's just kind of typical action story beat-the-clock type thing, so it's not as memorable as really anything else in that book, though it is exciting.
> Stephenson just sucks at endings I guess.
Yeah, pretty much. He does beginnings and middles _so_ very well though that I never mind.
p.s. read Zodiac sometime if you haven't, it's one of his few books I noticed you didn't mention and it's a fun read.