Anyone Willing to Give Me Feedback on My Novel?

[Alesia_BH]

If you expect Chat to be an over mind or an artistic genius you’ll be disappointed. It’s more like an easily confused underling with some savant like abilities. You always need to check its work but there are somethings it’s good at. I’d file it in the useful tool category, assuming you know how to use it. Using it is a skill set all its own. Whether it’s worth learning that skill set varies from individual to individual.

I’ve integrated it into my workflow. That’s been a natural process for me. In grad school I was a math modeler. I worked with Mathematica on a daily basis. There were some things Mathematica could do for me and some things it couldn’t. I learned what it could and couldn’t do and used it accordingly. Chat is no different.

The process has been especially smooth in my case because of the context in which I work. I spend a lot of time in digital nomad co-working spaces. The software engineers use it all the time, as do many if not all of the writers. That’s made the learning curve especially gentle.

As for what it’s good at, I’m still exploring the contours there. I have a test group of human readers who are a representative sample of my target audience. Chat is surprisingly good a anticipating my test group’s reactions, at least in some domains. It’s also good at identifying pacing and structure issues. I usually concur with its judgement on those points, although, like all feedback, you need to critically evaluate what it says.

What it isn’t good at is producing artistically compelling text. I haven’t used a single sentence that its churned out. JustKneller mentioned that he asked Chat to produce a poem on liberty in the style of Walt Whitman and that it was a mess. That tracks. It’s really bad at tasks like that. The more colorful the voice is, the harder Chat fails. If you ask it to write a paragraph in the style of Neil Gaiman it may do an ok-ish job. If you ask it to write like Tom Robbins I can pretty much guarantee a full fledged face plant.

 

[Alesia_BH]

The more I think about what is required for drawing single page, the more overhelming it seems. And that's just art size. The amount of research, knowledge and skill needed to actually write the story is also overwhelming. Add those things up and it feels nearly impossible to start.

Marcel Duchamp once said: “I like living, breathing better than working: my art is that of living.”

I agree. I’d never take on a major project unless it felt like living and breathing instead of working. If it’s the first thing you want to do in the morning and the last thing you want to do at night, the scale problem isn’t a problem. Time solves it.

If your project is work, then, well, all I can say is good luck. I can’t help you there. Work isn’t my thing. I don’t know anything about that

 

[m7600]

I'm not going to quote everything that you just said, @Alesia_BH . I'm just going to say that it's a joy to have you here at Tavernrpg.com, and I think I speak for many (all?) of the forum members on that specific point.

That doesn't mean that I agree with you, on nearly anything. I find the use of A.I. tools to be morally repulsive, even if it's for one's hobby. Yet I don't expect you to share this sentiment. I'm aware that it's an entirely personal feeling, which varies from individual to individual.

In other words, you speak as someone who would be neutral on at least some moral topics, such as the use of artificial intelligence in the work place. Because I would argue that you are working, even when it feels like living and breathing. But I could be wrong. It would be a philosophical conversation, I suppose, and I prefer not to multiply the number of philosophical conversations that I'm currently involved in, unless it were absolutely necessary for me to do so.

 

[JustKneller]

What did you expect? Walt Whitman is one of the greatest poets that humanity has ever produced. Did you really think that an A.I. could compete with him?

Is he though? Whitman tends to ramble on a bit. I've always been partial to Basho. That guy knew how to get to the fucking point.

 

[m7600]

Is he though? Whitman tends to ramble on a bit. I've always been partial to Basho. That guy knew how to get to the fucking point.

Why are you like this? What unfathomable incident caused you to be so morally corrupted? Sometimes I genuinely don't get you.

 

[Alesia_BH]

That doesn't mean that I agree with you, on nearly anything. I find the use of A.I. tools to be morally repulsive, even if it's for one's hobby.

I take it you haven’t used Chat much. In theory it isn’t AI. In practice it isn’t either. The more time you spend with it the clearer that becomes. It’s a janky but at time stunningly efficient way to leverage the training data. It’s not as big of a deal as some people make it out to be.

Actual AI is a different story. If that ever happens -and as reminder to date that possibility is only a hypothesis- I’d like to see us collectively agree on limits. That said, if unrestricted use of AI confers a substantive comparative advantage on the systems that wield it any agreement we reach will be an unstable equilibrium. We may have less control over the eventual outcome than we’d like to think.

 

[m7600]

Then I take it that you've improved my civic virtues by way of bringing my own ignorance to my attention, @Alesia_BH . And naturally, I owe you a thank you.

 

[m7600]

If it’s useless why feel threatened?

Alesia, being the smart person that you are, you already know that my answer to that question is the following one: "it's complicated". Now, if you're inviting me to challenge the assumption that underlies your question, to wit, that we should not feel threatened by that which is useless, then you're effectively inviting me to converse with you on issues of moral philosophy, psychology, and biology. And since this does not seem like something that you need with urgency, I see no point in discussing it at the moment.

 

[Alesia_BH]

Now would be a good time to circle back to the original subject: Feedback on our creative work.

M7600 has posted some pages for everyone to read. Feel free to comment.

As for my project, if you’re interested in being a reader, reach out in DM.

Cheers!

 

[JustKneller]

Why are you like this? What unfathomable incident caused you to be so morally corrupted? Sometimes I genuinely don't get you.

The journey is long
Autumn approaches swiftly
Do you have the time?

 

[Alesia_BH]

Alesia, being the smart person that you are, you already know that my answer to that question is the following one: "it's complicated

I deleted that comment because I decided it would be better to circle back.

 

[m7600]

The journey is long
Autumn approaches swiftly
Do you have the time?

I have nothing against that style of poetry. All I'm saying is that when you said "is he, though?", you were being so contrarian, to the point of questioning Whitman's greatness as a poet. That's all.

 

[m7600]

I deleted that comment because I decided it would be better to circle back.

Would you like me to delete my comment as well?

 

[JustKneller]

I have nothing against that style of poetry. All I'm saying is that when you said "is he, though?", you were being so contrarian, to the point of questioning Whitman's greatness as a poet. That's all.

I don't think I can respond to this without getting political (which I hate doing), so we can just let sleeping dogs lie.

 

[m7600]

I don't think I can respond to this without getting political (which I hate doing), so we can just let sleeping dogs lie.

You could codify your words, then. The problem here occurs when the codified language becomes obvious. So you codify it more. Now it looks cryptic. Just for added security, you add more layers on top.

The problem is that such a procedure goes both ways. Once you start to decrypt some of the terms of your common speech, you find elements that are themselves codifying something else, but the greatest shock comes when you meet someone else (and this will almost certainly happen at some point) who also speaks at that decrypted level, same as you.

 

[JustKneller]

I'll try, but subtle has never been a strong suit for me.

Walt Whitman had good ideas that were used to build a country that lost faith in those ideas and may not have ever really believed them to begin with. Putting Walt in the number one spot requires an panglossian abundance of faith in humanity. Basho focused only on that which synergized with nature. That's something you can depend on.

I think if Walt was alive today and saw what came of it all, he would probably write some really dark folk punk.

 

[Antimatter]

Hmmm... but you're thinking this from the perspective of Constitutional Law as an academic discipline that one studies in Law school IRL. And all I'm saying, humbly, is that there are some conceptual, epistemological limits to how Constitutional Law is understood today, in the real world, in 2024. Now, I'm not a lawyer, that's true. But I believe that I can humbly say that the letter of the law doesn't always coincide with the spirit of the law. Right? Otherwise we wouldn't need lawyers to interpret the spirit of the law. If everyone followed the letter of the law, there would be no room for interpretation. Am I right or wrong about that, in your opinion?

My feedback came from the angle of making your part more credible and trustworthy. You can always swap "Section 1" to "Section X" for ease of use. Not sure the question about the letter vs spirit of the law is appropriate when you want a legal document from your work to look like a legal document.

 

[m7600]

@JustKneller I'm intrigued by what you're saying. I'll PM you so we can speak clearly on this issue. You seem to be suggesting that Whitman, unlike Basho, didn't believe in nature. But this is exactly why I asked you, in our game, to explain Jefferson to me from Whitman's POV. In particular, the part where Jefferson says that liberty is a tree and that its natural manure is blood. Is Jefferson speaking literally or poetically there? I get the impression (and I might be wrong, here) that Jefferson is speaking literally when he says that. And, in my humble opinion, he was wrong on that specific point. Blood may be manure for plants, but liberty is not a tree. Of that I'm quite certain. Hence, it takes a poet, such as Whitman, to imbue a literal but ultimately wrong statement, with a poetic meaning that turns it into a true statement in the literal sense.

Does that make sense to you? PM me and speak clearly if not.

 

[m7600]

My feedback came from the angle of making your part more credible and trustworthy.

Yeah, I don't care about making it more credible and trustworthy. It's a work of fiction. I'm operating under the assumption that the reader has undergone suspension of disbelief by that point.

You can always swap "Section 1" to "Section X" for ease of use.

Yep, I'm aware of that.

Not sure the question about the letter vs spirit of the law is appropriate when you want a legal document from your work to look like a legal document.

But I want to know your opinion on that matter, @Antimatter (no pun intended). What's your answer to my question? I genuinely want to know. I'll repeat it here for your convenience: If everyone followed the letter of the law, there would be no room for interpretation. Am I right or wrong about that, in your opinion? Forget about my book project, just answer this question, please.

 

[Alesia_BH]

Would you like me to delete my comment as well?

No worries. It doesn’t matter. I just banana around the parts of life that I don’t find interesting. That was the subtext of the law school story