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The revolt of the reader

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Re: The revolt of the reader

#231

Post by rpdillon »

jodrellblank wrote: post #213
kierangill wrote: post #65

My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. A trope typically indicates I’m in for an uphill read. I recently read this William Zinsser quote that inspired a nickname for this: Clotted Claude [1]. > Nobody has made the point better than George Orwell in his translation into modern bureaucratic fuzz of this famous verse from Ecclesiastes: > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is…

> " My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. " I saw a comment on HN that that was roughly "re: ChatGPT, when I write one sentence and I get back three screens of lecture, I don't consider that a 'chat'". I consider that comment often when prompting Claude and hoping for a two line response and getting an "it's important to note that ". At some point it may as well be the teacher in a Char…

Telling LLMs to be concise works.

> Reword this concisely:

> I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

> Ultra-concise: Talent and effort don't guarantee success; luck and timing happen to everyone.

> Punchy: The best don't always win—chance rules us all.

> Modernized: Skill, speed, and wisdom don't decide the outcome; everyone is at the mercy of time and circumstance.

I feel like it did pretty well, and made the point more clearly than either the original or Orwell's rework (Gemini 3.8 Flash).

Or, as the version I've used for 30 years goes: "It's better to be lucky than good." I do like Reagan's addition, though: "But I find the harder I work, the luckier I get."

Re: The revolt of the reader

#232

Post by esjeon »

mpalmer wrote: post #227
esjeon wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I just read through it. That’s was a fun read. > This is a parody, but not a very gross one. … So, Orwell wrote the second sentence as a parody of the first sentence, using the modern English that he was criticizing in the essay. > … in the middle the concrete illustrations – race, battle, bread – dissolve into the vague phrase ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. … > … The whole tendency of modern pro…

He tried to argue that the second one is worse, but, unfortunately, he successfully simulated one possible interpretation of the original All in all, Orwell simply failed to properly simulate what he was trying to criticize If I was going to read "Orwell was wrong about English" anywhere, I guess it was always going to be HN. The sheer pomposity of your remarks here is the biggest clue that you are not writing them y…

No, my view is more like that he was too good at English to write bad English that he was criticizing. The examples he wrote are simply too sharp to fit well into his own criticisms. They are formulated so well that you can just “welp, my intention was different”.

EDIT: This kinda reminds me of the musical theory of harmony. There are strict rules to follow in music composition, but when you go against every single rule in major scale, and keep your work sound nice, you eventually get a minor scale piece that keeps every rule that you tried to break through.

Same here. He probably wrote a disgusting piece in his standards, but kept the writing sane, and eventually it became a proper prose — simply with disgusting intention in his standard.

That’s what I think happened here.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#233

Post by armchairhacker »

ahepp wrote: post #160

I was so optimistic about using LLMs for "write once, read many" English language documents, but the more I've used the tools, the more pessimistic I get. More and more, I try to ask it for low prose responses because its writing just seems like such a low signal to noise ratio I'm curious about why LLM writing fails. Particularly whether LLM writing is fundamentally flawed, or if it's just distinctive and since it o…

Maybe ask it to summarize, improve phrasing, and remove tropes a couple times? Otherwise you have the LLM analogue of a first draft.

I doubt it will be as good as humans, because LLMs don't seem to have "taste" (RVLR doesn't work, RHLF is unreliable and inconsistent because the graders don't have your taste or really know what they prefer themselves, especially when overworked and rushed). But I expect it to be better.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#234

Post by jimmaswell »

tudelo wrote: post #125
jimmaswell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be shortened to "success does not belong to the skillful, for time and chance befalls all" with no meaning lost. It's self-indulgent fluff. Meanwhile, Orwell's actually adds more to the statement - much better signal to noise.

Writing is fluff. What do you want, a list of bullet points? There would be no books. Maybe you have a career in writing 2 page books?

I like books but I don't find KJV's writing style engaging at all. The Hobbit was much better IMO

Re: The revolt of the reader

#235

Post by sersi »

OroPla wrote: post #166
masswerk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

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.

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.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#236

Post by patrickmay »

> A confession: with particularly egregious pieces, I have fantasized about sentencing the author to read them aloud, certain that they themselves will be unable to endure the slop that they are foisting upon the rest of us.

I would subscribe to a YouTube channel that did this.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#237

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

esjeon wrote: post #120
kierangill wrote: post #65

My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. A trope typically indicates I’m in for an uphill read. I recently read this William Zinsser quote that inspired a nickname for this: Clotted Claude [1]. > Nobody has made the point better than George Orwell in his translation into modern bureaucratic fuzz of this famous verse from Ecclesiastes: > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is…

I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from the very first word. It leaves little room for roaming and guessing, as it firmly nails elements one by one, and, by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I get the full meaning almost immediately. This sentence is not randomly written; this is crafted with…

To be gentle, that some here are impressed by Orwell's intentionally bad sentence indicates that they need to improve their reading and writing skills. Using complex words where they don't introduce additional precision or meaning to fake intellectualism is something basic that writing classes warn against.

Fun fact for the day, someone coined a word for this type of puffed up, fake intellectual writing: lexiphanicism ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lexiphanicism )

Re: The revolt of the reader

#238

Post by mpalmer »

esjeon wrote: post #232
mpalmer wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He tried to argue that the second one is worse, but, unfortunately, he successfully simulated one possible interpretation of the original All in all, Orwell simply failed to properly simulate what he was trying to criticize If I was going to read "Orwell was wrong about English" anywhere, I guess it was always going to be HN. The sheer pomposity of your remarks here is the biggest clue that you are not writing them y…

No, my view is more like that he was too good at English to write bad English that he was criticizing. The examples he wrote are simply too sharp to fit well into his own criticisms. They are formulated so well that you can just “welp, my intention was different”. EDIT: This kinda reminds me of the musical theory of harmony. There are strict rules to follow in music composition, but when you go against every single r…

    No, my view is more like that he was too good at English to write bad English that he was criticizing.
Are you sure it's not more likely that we are all way worse at reading compared to the average mid-20th centry reader?

    The examples he wrote are simply too sharp to fit well into his own criticisms.
So he's an overeducated dolt who thinks he's making a good point, and you - and no one else in the hundred years since - found his fatal mistake?

    They are formulated so well that you can just “welp, my intention was different”.
This is not even a sentence.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#239

Post by caidan »

esjeon wrote: post #120
kierangill wrote: post #65

My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. A trope typically indicates I’m in for an uphill read. I recently read this William Zinsser quote that inspired a nickname for this: Clotted Claude [1]. > Nobody has made the point better than George Orwell in his translation into modern bureaucratic fuzz of this famous verse from Ecclesiastes: > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is…

I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from the very first word. It leaves little room for roaming and guessing, as it firmly nails elements one by one, and, by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I get the full meaning almost immediately. This sentence is not randomly written; this is crafted with…

My god, to read this thread is to gaze into the abyss.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#240

Post by patrickmay »

ofjcihen wrote: post #31

Look, in the future we may get to a point where LLMs are indistinguishable from humans in writing style. Even then, I would say that using an LLM is robbing you of the process of writing, a process that is crucial to developing and understanding your own ideas. Think about the last time you wrote something for consumption and the sentence to sentence thought processes you’re going through. I bet a lot of that was “is…

"Writing is nature’s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is." -- Guindon
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