My bad then.

Did you edit your comment so that mine doesn’t make sense?

That’s skeevy.

You write essays at your job?

Good for you buddy.

Edit: sorry that was harsh. I’m just dealing with “every comment is a contrarian comment” day.

Sure, GPT is good at basic search functionality for obvious things, but why choose that when there are infinitely better and more reliable sources of information?

There’s a false sense of security couple to a notion of “asking” an entity.

Why not engage in a community that can support answers? I’ve found the Linux community (in general) to be really supportive and asking questions is one way of becoming part of that community.

The forums of the older internet were great at this… Creating community out of commonality. Plus, they were largely self correcting I’m a way in which LLMs are not.

So not only are folk being fed gibberish, it is robbing them of the potential to connect with similar humans.

And sure, it works for some cases, but they seem to be suboptimal, infrequent or very basic.

Spent this morning reading a thread where someone was following chatGPT instructions to install “Linux” and couldn’t understand why it was failing.

Meanwhile reporting on the BBC… A short segment that said “thousands” of people were protesting. Technically not a lie, but still.

I’m not sure calling Gorbechev an idiot is right though.

Just because he was a victim of external interests, as you describe. Feels a bit victim-blamey.

“Look what you made the US do to you”.

Yeltsin, maybe though.

Which bit of history does this represent?

At first I thought it might be the break up of the USSR, but that doesn’t really work here. So that leaves me at a loss.

I just can’t see how Gorbachev and Trump, or their actions, are similar.

Hello, I’m from Hell Recruiting. We just saw your comment and wondered if you’d be willing to consider a position in our ironic punishment department.

and recorded a video before returning to his boat

Did it for clout.

What a prick.

Classic bully behaviour.

Stupid and self defeating.

Says regime that is displaying Nazi Germany.

Not a serious man, by his own admission.

Yep. Cool. There’s a place for them, certainly.

Still don’t think that’s reading though.

I say unpopular because those that do think audiobook are “books” tend to be very, very vocal about how wrong I am when I express that opinion… As if I’m somehow undermining their enjoyment or the legitimacy of their consumption.

The 52% on my side are just sat quietly reading books and minding their own business.

I think you make some interesting points… Content is important.

Although I think there’s such a desperation to get people into the reading habit that anything is considered good enough.

Remember the Harry Potter book when they first came out. I seem to remember a lot of chat about how those books were low effort, but that they encouraged a lot of life-long readers.

I know that here, in the UK, our education system tends to make people resent reading. Furthermore it instills some awful habits… Like feeling you have to finish a book even if you aren’t enjoying it (which usually means you stop reading altogether).

Anyway. That’s a long way of saying I think you are right.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but listening to audio books isn’t reading.

It is a different sensory experience. It uses different parts of the brain and imagination too.

It is far closer to listening to a radio play.

I’m not saying it is any worse or better, just different.

I’m not sure that conflating the two is useful, particularly when talking about reading habits.

Prompt to hallucinating?

Do you mean “Prone”?

That is the sort of mistake an Llm would make.

But let’s not forget the time the US dragged the world into a horrible war on terror just so it could maintain oil prices too.

Yes, that was what I joking about.