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Fake Books

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Re: Fake Books

#31

Post by masklinn »

andreyk wrote: post #25
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16

I think there’s a good chance it was ghost written by a content farm for someone who wanted to publish a book in a popular category to make a quick buck. I recently learned that this is a soft-scam technique advocated for by a couple of guys called the Mikkelson Twins. They say you can make money by publishing audiobooks on audible by finding a popular topic on audible, then hiring a ghost writing service to write yo…

I've watched the video as well and wholeheartedly agree! His 'Line Goes Up' documentary about crypto is also exceptional; very critical but in educated and actually nuanced ways ( https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g ).

If you haven’t gone through the entire Olsonverse yet, don’t sleep on “in search of a flat earth”. That was my gateway video to Folding Ideas and it remains stellar.

Re: Fake Books

#32

Post by HWR_14 »

ipeev wrote: post #22

What actually surprises me is that the author bought 11 paper books from Amazon about NFTs. You really need 11 books to understand or write about a single concept? It is a highly controversial ongoing topic. Those 11 books most likely become obsolete exactly on the day after they were written. Good catch on the one fake book! But I am surprised it was only one. Maybe the author started from that one and will write ab…

The author bought 11 paper books because they wanted to make money posting a meta-review of the literature analyzing the arguments from all of them together. While they probably understood the points after a single book, they would have lacked the complete coverage (and the marketing hook).

I would expect someone writing that to have read the 11 most popular books.

Re: Fake Books

#33

Post by beardyw »

beardyw wrote: post #28

Time to produce a book about fake books ... click.

Seriously, I knew someone involved in "published as remainder" business in the 70s. First get good photos, pay someone to write some text, put on sale at inflated price, then put on sale at amazing discount.

Re: Fake Books

#34

Post by HWR_14 »

colordrops wrote: post #18
tommica wrote: post #13

Its a scary concept - internet and books being nothing but generated content is going to be a sad world.

Or maybe people will start paying attention to references and provenance, and start looking into sources of information - maybe even more widespread use of cryptographic signatures. Misinformation has always been out there, and so there are tools to deal with it. Perhaps now is our chance to make these tools wide spread.

I don't see how references and providence will solve that problem. References are trivial for machine-generated content to add. And the providence of a new author and a new AI are the exact same.

Unless your plan is to require a PhD to publish a book on Amazon on something.

Re: Fake Books

#35

Post by jcynix »

Every so often in the last n years I stumbled over "books" which simply contain regurgitated wikipedia content.

And, of course, all those web pages collecting amazon reviews which simulate product review pages. Or, before that, just link farms to products so people could collect referer compensation.

All this is some form of spam, which simply uses search engines to spread instead of email. So the "books" reported here (while somehow "fascinating" just look like the next step of spam/scam evolution to me.

And yes, I see that they are more problematic the "better" they get generated, because more people will think they are genuine works.

Re: Fake Books

#36

Post by planetsprite »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #16

I think there’s a good chance it was ghost written by a content farm for someone who wanted to publish a book in a popular category to make a quick buck. I recently learned that this is a soft-scam technique advocated for by a couple of guys called the Mikkelson Twins. They say you can make money by publishing audiobooks on audible by finding a popular topic on audible, then hiring a ghost writing service to write yo…

I get the feeling it was outsourced to a content farm, which outsourced itself to GPT-3

Re: Fake Books

#37

Post by dang »

deviation wrote: post #3

#1 on HN and no comments? I'm curious how the ranking system here works... Posts with the greatest # of upvotes per minute?

See How are stories ranked? in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Note that "number of comments" is not a factor.

It's common on HN for submissions to get upvoted before comments come in. It's a good sign, actually, if people aren't rushing to post reflexive things. Good comments are reflective, which means they happen after people have had time to process information—such as by reading an article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33303565

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Fake Books

#38

Post by protontorpedo »

gzer0 wrote: post #30
colordrops wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe people will start paying attention to references and provenance, and start looking into sources of information - maybe even more widespread use of cryptographic signatures. Misinformation has always been out there, and so there are tools to deal with it. Perhaps now is our chance to make these tools wide spread.

In an ideal world, I would hope for your statement to be correct. However, our society has changed the value of recognizing duty to recognizing choice. As long as individuals are aware of the choice they are making, they are justified. The fear of truth is caused by the following dilemma: either you choose for yourself or someone else will choose for you. Because of this fear, choosing correctly becomes less importan…

I'm pretty sure this comment was generated by a language model. If that's the case, congratulations.

Re: Fake Books

#39

Post by TaylorAlexander »

masklinn wrote: post #31
andreyk wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've watched the video as well and wholeheartedly agree! His 'Line Goes Up' documentary about crypto is also exceptional; very critical but in educated and actually nuanced ways ( https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g ).

If you haven’t gone through the entire Olsonverse yet, don’t sleep on “in search of a flat earth”. That was my gateway video to Folding Ideas and it remains stellar.

That was my first too! Really wonderful creator and I did find myself going through his whole back catalog after that! And I agree with the comment upstream, “Line Goes Up” is a masterpiece.

Re: Fake Books

#40

Post by mypastself »

Alarmingly enough, not even the one- or two-star Amazon reviews caught the garbled nonsense, indicating that not even real people bothered to read the book in detail.

I’m wondering if any person on the planet other than the author of the article read this best-selling book in its entirety. Because even the book’s purported author likely didn’t.

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