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Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

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Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#201

Post by wild_egg »

keiferski wrote: post #180
lordnacho wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what we all did in school, didn't we? Nobody did any original research, you didn't discover gravity, and you didn't participate in any historically significant events. Yet we say that people who have been through education know about such things.

That is descriptive knowledge. Not firsthand qualia. You may know every detail of the American Civil War, from every book ever written on the topic. You may read every journal from every person that wrote one about it. You do not have firsthand knowledge of what it was like to participate in the war. Any assumption of that knowledge is a (false) generalization of what you think a person “would have thought or felt” b…

So only people who have fought in wars can write novels about fighting in wars?

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#202

Post by gwbas1c »

diego_moita wrote: post #196

When I see lists like this I am surprised that they always live out school textbooks. School textbooks are the kind of books that have the very precise purpose of giving you a foundation and roadmap to explore and understand a whole field of knowledge. And they're an industry that has been improving them on successive iterations to produce highly organized, comprehensive and accessible reading material through years.

School textbooks also have a lot of bias, and may oversimplify issues in ways that are necessary with children, but lead to longing misconceptions.

IE: Was the US Civil War fought over slavery or states' rights? Someone's answer may come from the biases of the textbooks they grew up with.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#204

Post by everdrive »

keiferski wrote: post #172
rahimnathwani wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT has had more conversations than you or I have. And it's conversed with people from a wider range of backgrounds in a wider range of situations.

And? Can you tell me what it feels like to eat a hamburger by asking a thousand people about it?

I think this is actually a tough one. Yes, I agree that an LLM can never experience this. But -- when a real human needs to translate that experience back into words, it can actually do so just fine.

In other words, when a real human needs to translate an experience into words to share it, A LOT of information is lost. The LLM might actually be better-suited for the the task in your example, even if the point you were driving at stands.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#205

Post by keiferski »

wild_egg wrote: post #201
keiferski wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is descriptive knowledge. Not firsthand qualia. You may know every detail of the American Civil War, from every book ever written on the topic. You may read every journal from every person that wrote one about it. You do not have firsthand knowledge of what it was like to participate in the war. Any assumption of that knowledge is a (false) generalization of what you think a person “would have thought or felt” b…

So only people who have fought in wars can write novels about fighting in wars?

If the aim is to have actual knowledge of the experience, then yes.

Of course not all works need to be this way, and many, many books are written about war by people that haven't been in it.

The broader point is that LLMs cannot have original experiences.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#206

Post by keiferski »

everdrive wrote: post #204
keiferski wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Can you tell me what it feels like to eat a hamburger by asking a thousand people about it?

I think this is actually a tough one. Yes, I agree that an LLM can never experience this. But -- when a real human needs to translate that experience back into words, it can actually do so just fine. In other words, when a real human needs to translate an experience into words to share it, A LOT of information is lost. The LLM might actually be better-suited for the the task in your example, even if the point you wer…

I don't think it's all that difficult. Language is not a 1-1 match to reality. Ergo any entity which is inherently language-only, will fail to accurately describe the experience.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#207

Post by rahimnathwani »

keiferski wrote: post #200
rahimnathwani wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked for a description: "Can you tell me what it feels like to eat a hamburger" I am sure I Fable (or GPT-5.6-Sol) could answer this question very well. It can probably even tell us what it feels like to eat a hamburger for the first time when you spent the first 18 years of your life as a vegetarian.

I don't think you understand the premise of the question. Asking another person or Fable what it feels like to eat a hamburger will give you a description of what it feels like. It will not give you the actual feeling. You are merely repeating words that someone else has told you. The description of something is not equivalent to the experience that comes from doing it yourself, as an experiencing subject. Reading a…

I understand the premise. My answer was meant to illustrate that, no, the 'original experience' is not needed, and that AI can produce a good answer relying only on '"data that mirrors" experiences'.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#208

Post by keiferski »

jackbrookes wrote: post #155
keiferski wrote: post #138

Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I have thought a lot about this: I think good fiction is actually the antithesis of AI, fundamentally. LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output. This can give you some creative results, but it is ultimately kind of limited. I cannot imagine that prompting an AI a thousand times would give you something truly original in the way many high-quality fi…

> LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output > The magic and absurdity of life is a necessary thing to create such works. These two points seem slightly conflicting. Why if a human is truly more creative than AI, must it experience "the magic and absurdity of life" if it can be creative without "combining things into output"? Is a creative human then just not splicing and recombining their…

Is a creative human then just not splicing and recombining their experiences into their creative output?

No, they aren't. I'm not sure why it's such a popular narrative that all art is just some kind of recombination of existing things; it's not. Actual lived experiences are unique and impact what is created. Novels written by people in post-Revolutionary France are not the same as novels written by post-WW1 France. Events in history shape culture and introduce new ideas and experiences that weren't there before.

The gap is that the data humans have access to is much more analogue, emotional, and grounded in the real world compared to the data that AI is currently trained on.

That's the problem with your argument, right here. Emotions are not merely portable "data," and framing this way is a problem from the start.

I don't think you get human experiences without actually being human. The most perfect LLM copy of a mind is just the copy of externalized output.

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#209

Post by jmye »

awongh wrote: post #167
keiferski wrote: post #138

Not to be intentionally contrarian, but I have thought a lot about this: I think good fiction is actually the antithesis of AI, fundamentally. LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output. This can give you some creative results, but it is ultimately kind of limited. I cannot imagine that prompting an AI a thousand times would give you something truly original in the way many high-quality fi…

> LLMs are really only capable of combining different things into output In terms of how writers think about creativity this doesn’t reflect reality- there’s the old writer’s saying that there are only 7 stories (and other variations of this idea) and that writing is about creatively remixing these well-worn ideas. The LLM’s capability to write acceptable fiction and nonfiction is coming soon if it’s not already here…

[dead]

Re: Quality non-fiction books are the antithesis of AI slop

#210

Post by weird-eye-issue »

Sweet, I think I found a few to read

> And before you wonder, yes this is actually free. I am paying for the hosting and the API costs entirely because I just want people to find and read more good non-fiction books.

Just to note, you do have affiliate links so it isn't 100% out of the goodness of your heart ;) Not blaming you or anything, just saying...

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