Now, for something completely different: https://notes.pault.ag/why-write/
while not my usual programming (or RF) fare, this post has been in the back of my head for a while now. I have finally put some words down after re-reading some 1940s era philosophical writing I couldn't let go of.
please enjoy with post with the love and intent I have imparted on it.
@paul really good essay. I'm glad I spent the time ... in the act of reading it.
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@paul Thanks for writing. This, to me, is part of why it matters to keep trying to keep Wikipedia human-written, even though it's extremely difficult to do that in practice.
Great writing, thanks!
I have noticed myself getting what I judged as unreasonably angry reading “that which was not written”, I think I understand better now why that response is actually incredibly healthy and appropriate.
@stepheneb in the spirit of being honest with myself, it's probably not a *great* sign I had to lean on existentialism to articulate my feelings.
It's hard to not feel anger at the rows of GPU polishing the human creativity off of every summary of a book, email, poem shielding a generation from thought with an "you're absolutely right!"
I have an old friend who has always made delightful things, the last couple of years he’s gone all in on using AI and hasn’t made anything. I shared a piece looking at the huge increase in work for instance admins and moderators dealing with reviewing new account requests generated by AI bots. I thought it was an interesting and disturbing example of secondary and tertiary damage occurring because of the widespread availability of AI systems.
He wondered why I thought blocking AI accounts from a social network is important and useful. I explained that I care about authentic communication and allowing AI accounts makes that harder.
He said that shouldn’t be a problem in a couple of years … I wondered WTF … he thinks by then the AI accounts will be able to have authentic conversations.
I care about talking with people and I have no interest in talking to a computer program … “reading that which was not written”
I love being “right” and I’ve found the best way for me is to be wrong as often as possible in the most useful and interesting ways … which is so existentially antithetical to “you’re absolutely right!”
> writing, therefore, only exists to be read – it can serve no other purpose.
I'm not convinced by this
Writing can be a good way of forcing you to organise and structure your thoughts about a topic, which you can learn from. A form of philosophical rubber duck debugging, as it were
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
But also, I think it can be used as catharsis. Writing an angry reply/letter to someone, with the intention from the start of deleting it, in order to write something calmer later
@aspragg those are Sartre's words, not mine, he's a man of a particular viewpoint :)
@paul Yeah, I didn’t have enough characters to attribute the quote properly and make the points I wanted to!