[HN Gopher] Writing for Snobs
___________________________________________________________________
Writing for Snobs
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 41 points
Date : 2020-09-15 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (russelldavies.typepad.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (russelldavies.typepad.com)
| echelon wrote:
| It just occurred to me that GPT-3 could become an existential
| threat to Google.
|
| If the SERPs are filled with garbage, their search algorithm
| loses competitive edge. We may need to go back to a reputation
| graph-based system. That sort of thing doesn't scale, and Google
| isn't doing this at all.
|
| In fact, all of the platforms may suffer. How will Facebook keep
| out GPT-3 spam?
| bserge wrote:
| > If the SERPs are filled with garbage
|
| That's already the case. GPT-3 might be faster, but there's
| literally millions of humans producing absolute garbage for
| pennies. I'm talking 1000 word, quite readable articles (that
| make little sense if you pay close attention) for $5 or less.
|
| Used to be a time when it was really easy to rank at the top
| with just that kind of content.
|
| But Google managed to filter all that out, for the most part.
| Pretty sure they can deal with computer generated text, too.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I guess one way Google filters out the junk articles is that
| people who read them don't end their search, and keep looking
| for the same information after visiting the useless, wordy
| stuff.
| bserge wrote:
| Yeah they used to track time on site (with Google Analytics
| or if the user clicks the "back" button), probably still
| do.
|
| Hyperlinks still play an important role - if someone links
| to the article's URL, that automatically increases its
| rank. No one links to trash. Links from known spam websites
| will downrank the article or the whole website really fast.
|
| Timestamps used to be abused back when Google preferred the
| newest stuff - just update it every day or hour and it's
| the freshest article in the world in Googlebot's eyes.
|
| It's a really impressive piece of technology, and they have
| a ton of experience fighting abuse on their SERPs - it's
| happening constantly and it will continue to as long as
| search engines exist.
| csomar wrote:
| GPT-3 is more of an existential threat to Google because of its
| bias. It could be a much more efficient search engine than
| Google.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Why would they want to keep out GPT-3 spam? They're probably
| already looking at how they can drive engagement by having
| human users argue with bots they run.
| Zippogriff wrote:
| Exactly, I think it's a problem _only if_ it leads to lower
| "engagement" by humans. I kinda doubt it will. Most reading
| and writing that occurs on the Web, by a large margin, is
| already very low-value, not noticeably better than a near-
| future "AI" will very likely be able to produce.
|
| If ad impressions & clicks don't drop, Google, FB, and others
| won't give a shit where the content's coming from. If
| impressions & clicks _go up_ (not an unlikely outcome, I 'd
| say) they'll even encourage it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Because their users don 't want to read GPT-3 spam._ If
| that's the dominant form of content on those platforms,
| people are going to use those platforms less.
|
| I mean, for a while Facebook may get paid for presenting ads
| to GPT-3 spam bots, but eventually advertisers will catch on
| that the _people_ are gone.
| echelon wrote:
| I can't wait for us to train models on user browser
| behavior.
|
| Maybe we can unleash bots that appear exactly as humans,
| ruining the advertiser gravy train forever.
| [deleted]
| Zippogriff wrote:
| Mark my words: if that even looks like that _might_
| happen, the advertising behemoths (chiefly Google and
| Facebook) will spend every last dollar trying to get some
| kind of human Internet ID program passed into law.
|
| If our weapons (programs, scripts, "AI") become half as
| effective as theirs (the advertising giants'), they'll
| drop nine-plus figures paying to have ours outlawed,
| guaranteed. The only thing that might save us from that
| in the US is that national ID of any sort is pretty
| unpopular across party lines, and that's effectively what
| it'd be.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if they're already quietly laying
| the groundwork for such an effort.
| war1025 wrote:
| > Japanese and British cultures are so hierarchical and
| stratified, in such long-lasting and subtle ways, that they've
| become incredibly good at discerning status from tiny signals.
|
| The topic of the article wasn't all that interesting to me, but I
| thought this quip was interesting.
|
| Does anyone have any references that expand on the merit of it?
|
| Or thoughts on the idea in general?
| ddellacosta wrote:
| It's nonsense, for Japan certainly, if not also wrt the English
| (which I don't know enough about to comment on, but I'm
| skeptical).
|
| When Japanese people are purchasing foreign products at least,
| they are responding to the same pressures and cultural biases
| that guide their purchase of Japanese products and services. In
| my experience this is stuff like age and legacy of the company,
| how much other Japanese people like and trust the brand, and
| all the other arbitrary things that shape the ebb and flow of
| product and service popularity in a given culture.
|
| This is not to say that there aren't unique aspects to how
| Japanese people choose products which maybe overlap with the
| English, but in and of itself the markers of status in Japan
| are distinct from those in the U.S. (for example), so it
| doesn't seem likely that Japanese people somehow have some
| sophisticated notion of not just how to find products that have
| high status but high status according to _U.S. consumers_. It
| 's silly simply taken at face value.
|
| I do think the question of whether the English and Japanese
| share similarities because they are island nations with a royal
| family (and more) is interesting, though.
|
| EDIT: I should be clear that I'm responding to the entire
| section of the piece, not just what you highlighted:
|
| _It 's something like: if you want to know what's good about
| what your country makes look at what the Japanese and British
| import. (I can't find the actual quote). And his reasoning is
| something like: Japanese and British cultures are so
| hierarchical and stratified, in such long-lasting and subtle
| ways, that they've become incredibly good at discerning status
| from tiny signals._
|
| Also worth stating that "what's good" != high-status, so the
| whole thing seems confused to me.
| onion2k wrote:
| Only _very_ rich people in the UK wear red trousers.
|
| I am not joking.
| privong wrote:
| In the US, I've seen that referred to as "go to hell pants":
| https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/go-to-hell-pants/
| arethuza wrote:
| I tend to associate strikingly coloured trousers on older
| gentlemen with a military background in one of the posher
| regiments.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Should you desperately want to go down this rabbit hole:
|
| "Look at my fucking red trousers" blog ->
| http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com/
|
| followed by a piece in The Guardian "in defense of red
| trousers" which cites a YouGov poll saying that almost half
| of Britains hate them ->
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/01/in-
| def...
|
| followed by a piece in The Telegraph about how that blog
| ruined the ultimate upper-class fashion statement ->
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/style/look-at-my-fing-red-
| tr...
| mdiesel wrote:
| It's a sure sign of a public school boy, which I associate
| more with being posh than being very rich.
|
| I wouldn't expect someone from "new" money to wear red
| chinos.
| mdiesel wrote:
| Youd spot someone missing an apostrophe missing commas, not
| making things uppercase, or some other, like, bad english.
|
| There's then "Standard" English, where one is expected to
| utilise the language correctly.
|
| Beyond that, you get into demonstrating a classical education,
| with the inference that knowledge of Latin phrases ipso facto
| means intelligence.
|
| I'm much more likely to trust a source written in Standard
| English as you'd find in a newspaper, as opposed to a poorly
| written FB post.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I was watching The Boys (rewatching series 1) and Karl Urban
| goes to the Superhero AA meeting. And halfway through he loses
| it, calls them all c#nts (of course) and shouts "where is your
| rage".
|
| This is a pretty good (if not perfect) allegory for working
| classes / middle classes and upper classes. Those with power
| want to hold on to it - so entry to power is gatewayed through
| things like birth obviously but also a series of educational
| and life choices that prove you are not here to burn it all
| down.
|
| Social hierarchies exist to both keep the powerful in power,
| but also as a contract against anarchy. After Brutus murdered
| caesar he expected to be greeted as a saviour of the republic
| by the populace of Rome. Instead they all shut their doors and
| withdrew from the streets for days as they knew what was coming
| - the chaos and destruction of anarchy and power fighting for a
| vacuum.
|
| But we should still have our rage. even in the face of anarchy.
| I think.
| _jal wrote:
| Everyone reads nonverbal signals, even when they're not aware
| of doing it.
|
| In stratified cultures, it means "rich-looking person is
| important", but also can convey more meaning, as the small
| variances that are allowed take on meaning.
|
| In less stratified cultures, you get jokes about the sales
| schmuck who lost a sale because he assumed the man was buying
| the car.
| mhh__ wrote:
| One thing that I've heard from international students that is
| hard to pick up on this is that a lot of British people will
| inflect a different accent to emphasize a certain point.
|
| Another anecdote: In the 1950s the KGB thoroughly infiltrated
| the British government and security services, but their assets
| would send back would be public school English so convoluted it
| literally could not be read by their handlers at times.
| Swizec wrote:
| You can clearly tell someone status by what kind of tracksuit
| they wear and when, for example. Or the subtle differences
| between a man with a $20 haircut and a man with a $150 haircut.
|
| Even black t-shirts are not all the same if you know where to
| look.
|
| Hell, if we both have a Porsche 911, but I share it on
| instagram as my wonderful car and you just never mention it
| because a Porsche 911 is a normal car to you ... which of us is
| higher class?
|
| Then there are shibboleths. We use this in professional
| contexts. If you're a Fortune500 person and I say I will
| consult my lawyer, you know I'm a schmuck and a small vendor.
| Otherwise I'd have a department and would say I will "talk to
| legal"
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If an expensive track suit, not sharing your Porsche on the
| 'gram and referring to your lawyer as "legal" are all it
| takes to seem legit then getting swindled by a "vendor" in
| Uzbekistan might be in your future.
|
| Edit: the point was that shallow things easily copied with
| minimal investment make bad signals.
| Swizec wrote:
| It's an example and the rules are always shifting. Same as
| how the kids know whether you're cool or not.
|
| If you're not part of the in crowd you'll never know what
| glaringly obvious signal makes you stand out.
| hrktb wrote:
| I think he might be refering to tendencies some people have to
| look at accessories to get hints at a person.
|
| For instance it is an old people's saying in Japan to look at
| someone's shoes to know if they are rich/value good objects
| (the basis of that was that poor/undiscerning people would have
| poor shoes maintenance, or plain bad shoes).
|
| Or you would tell someone's rank in a company by the amount of
| stuff he (was about men, yes) was carrying every morning (basis
| was higher ranked people would have less manual roles)
|
| Of course these saying become pointless and people find other
| stupid stuff to look at to rank other people on a scale. But
| yeah, in my short experience it's a thing people train to do,
| and is valued as useful skill.
|
| Also as people tend to dress rather uniformly, so you need a
| decent amount of effort to stand out without being flashy,
| which means trying to prove good taste with exotic and
| expensive but plain looking goods, that you justify owning by
| touting their good quality and not their high price.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Social signalling is important. I fully admit that. I wear
| completely different clothes when I'm meeting a minister of
| Canada than when I'm hanging out at a think tank beers night.
|
| That said, I think there is a correlation between the amount
| of social signalling one must do to be successful in a
| society and the amount of wealth that that society allocates
| to those that are capable of navigating organizations. It's
| one of the reasons I think the tech sector is mostly jeans
| and sneakers.
|
| Fancy shoes don't mean you're capable of knowing what a gin
| index is or when to use it.
|
| While I have many qualms with modern tech, this is not one of
| them.
| watwut wrote:
| You can wear jeans and sneakers in tech, but suit and
| cravate makes you suspect.
| Zippogriff wrote:
| The _right_ jeans and sneakers (and hoodie, and "tech
| pants", et c., et c.) can even help. There's definitely a
| techie look, and it's not the same as poor-people/low-
| class clothes (which some of the same categories of items
| can fall into, like jeans and sneakers).
| hrktb wrote:
| I'd say we shifted our signaling to laptop stickers, Vessi
| snickers or "life long" classic style worker boots that
| were only used to go from and to the office in the old
| times. I kinda like some attention is still on shoes,
| somewhat.
| bserge wrote:
| I've worked in Britain and what I noticed was that working
| class Brits consider themselves apart from the "posh" middle
| class and of course, the upper class.
|
| They seem to think they will be working class for the rest of
| their lives and there's noticeable hate/resent for the rich.
|
| Being an immigrant, I didn't notice any of this stuff. I didn't
| notice the dismissive polite attitude, I thought it was just
| politeness. You know, when someone wealthier talks to you,
| they're polite but there's subtle signals that they consider
| you "inferior".
|
| I only saw the opportunities, of which there are plenty. I
| didn't see classes, I just saw that it is possible to go from
| working class to upper class, much easier than in most other EU
| countries.
|
| I did start noticing these "subtle signals" after a year and a
| half or so, but honestly I just decided to ignore them. Since I
| would always be a foreigner, people would just cut me some
| slack for not understanding stuff (this also happens in Japan
| afaik).
|
| Clothes play an important role, surprisingly (OK, maybe not
| that surprising). If you're in dirty workwear and a hi-vis
| vest, you're pretty much considered bottom of the barrel. With
| the right clothes, you can turn into anything from a "chav" or
| a middle class manager to a millionaire (though you also need
| the attitude - no slouching, make eye contact, etc).
|
| Just some of my thoughts.
| brnt wrote:
| The whole point of 'peacefull' stratification is is that
| everyone internalizes it 'voluntarily'. If they (the
| underclass) didn't, and realized their power, saw it was
| nothing more than custom holding them back, it wouldn't work
| and other methods would be invented. There is a reason
| Britons proclaim to be non revolutionaries, that is very much
| in support of their stratification.
|
| Your observation that the subtle cues seem to be the only
| thing keeping the classes apart is precisely the goal. This
| way it costs minimal effort to keep the stratification in
| tact.
| Zippogriff wrote:
| > They seem to think they will be working class for the rest
| of their lives and there's noticeable hate/resent for the
| rich.
|
| Told to me by an Irish person:
|
| You know the difference between an Irishman and an American?
| The American looks up at that big, shining mansion on the
| hill, and says, "someday... someday... I'm gonna be that
| guy". The Irishman looks up at that big, shining mansion on
| the hill, and says, "someday... someday... I'm gonna get that
| bastard".
| nerdponx wrote:
| On the other hand, it's hard not to feel like the
| American's reaction is the result of propaganda and a
| distraction from the fact that, today, he lives in a
| dilapidated trailer park and has no access to healthcare.
| dbtc wrote:
| America has excelled in the manufacture of many things,
| but perhaps especially dreams.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Hah.
|
| As an American living in Ireland 8 years now....
|
| Yup.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Foreigners are in a special class in the UK, so you were
| already pigeon-holed.
|
| The subtle signals are about who your parents are, which of
| the different educational streams you went through, and -
| more than anything - who you know. Clothes will display all
| of that indirectly, but the core is always about families and
| networks.
|
| The idea that opportunities exist is very much a middle class
| mindset, and anyone who pursues it will inevitably run into
| the class ceiling. You can make a huge pile of money but it
| won't buy you entry into the upper classes. At best you'll be
| a nouveau "someone we can do business with" - or the
| technical help.
|
| Under the considerable surface polish and politeness the
| defining characteristics of the upper classes are effortless
| social - not just professional - confidence, personal
| entitlement, and exceptionalism. Members are strongly
| encouraged to believe in all of the above from birth, and
| it's very hard for outsiders to understand this. There's also
| a curious affinity with more successful - let's say almost
| managerial - working class criminals.
|
| I used to live in an upper class enclave, and it was quite
| astonishing how much time these people spent trying to screw
| each other over with disputes over family inheritances,
| property and land rights, various investment scams, and so
| on.
| arethuza wrote:
| _it is possible to go from working class to upper class_
|
| You can't really do that for "traditional" definitions of
| upper class (which isn't based on anything as simple as
| having loads of money).
|
| And anyway - everyone is middle class these days. Nobody
| claims to be working class and there are so few actually
| upper class people that most people will never meet one.
| war1025 wrote:
| > Nobody claims to be working class
|
| I think "Working class" is a distinct thing from "Lower
| class."
|
| At least here in the US, I know a fair number of people
| that would claim the label "Working class", though I doubt
| any of them would claim to be "Lower class."
|
| "Working class" is a synonym for "Blue collar" to many
| people.
|
| "Middle class" is less of a synonym for "White collar", but
| I think that distinction exists for some people.
| the_af wrote:
| > _If you 're in dirty workwear and a hi-vis vest, you're
| pretty much considered bottom of the barrel_
|
| Disclaimer: my knowledge of British culture is horribly
| outdated, and mostly draws from George Mikes' "How to be an
| alien" and TV shows.
|
| I always thought that truly high society in Britain sometimes
| wears rags, and the neat clothing was a sign of either
| working class or "new riches". George Mikes makes fun of
| this:
|
| > _On Sundays on the Continent even the poorest person puts
| on his best suit, tries to look respectable, and at the same
| time the life of the country becomes gay and cheerful; in
| England even the richest peer or motor-manufacturer dresses
| in some peculiar rags, does not shave, and the country
| becomes dull and dreary._
|
| But it's not just his opinion; for example in the TV show
| "Traitors", set in postwar London, a character coming from a
| high society family derides someone for dressing "too well",
| signalling lower class/new riches, and because of how he
| pronounces "opera" (according to her, it's "opera" for the
| lower classes, and "op'ra" for the higher classes).
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" One lesson that GPT-3 might be teaching us: the tell-tale
| signature artifact of simulation is not the spiky glitch, it's
| the smooth, shallow, facile surface. It's not the errors, it's a
| certain kind of boring flawlessness, that's what we should be on
| the lookout for."_
|
| These models could be trained on any arbitrary corpus of writing,
| from any one author or combinations of authors.
|
| Let's see the the critics complain about "boring flawlessness"
| when the model is trained on the works of Shakespeare, Voltaire,
| Buckowski, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, or Hunter S Thompson... or
| some combination of the above.
| masswerk wrote:
| > _" the tell-tale signature artifact of simulation is not the
| spiky glitch, it's the smooth, shallow, facile surface"_
|
| Notably, this has been true for visual content from the
| beginning, compare the original "TRON" movie. It had been
| especially true in times, when smooth gradients and perfect lines
| had been a luxury, which were hard to achieve in analog media
| technology, and became the tell-tale signature of computer
| generated visual content. After an intermezzo in the uncanny
| valley and with embraceable pixels, we seem to be right back
| where we started. - It's somewhat logical that what is true for
| visual content should also be true for textual content.
|
| [Edit] We may add a definition: "Interesting" is the artful
| deviation from the smooth and perfect.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom#Production
|
| hard to achieve as a practical effect, but still cheaper than
| digital.
| masswerk wrote:
| Max Headroom is somewhat special, since it's a crossover of
| digital and video. The later has always been signaled by
| glitches and artifacts (as in color, unstable vertical and/or
| horizontal hold, overly expressed scanlines, lately also by
| exaggerated cushion distortion, etc).
| keenmaster wrote:
| The premise is that GPT-3 has a certain style, but it doesn't. It
| is almost defined by its ability to readily adopt linguistic
| idiosyncracies. That includes the OP's example of using
| colloquialisms like "dang."
|
| GPT-3 will reduce the premium on style compared to substance.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Substance has a style all its own.
|
| You can make GPT-3 affect any writing style. But you can't make
| it actually have something to say. That feeling - of reading
| something that's wasting my time, because it doesn't actually
| have anything to say - is not going to go away just because
| what I'm reading says "dang" every so often.
| Zippogriff wrote:
| The value of much writing, especially on the Web, is being what
| the reader happens to have found rather than whatever better
| thing they might instead be reading on the same topic. That is,
| if your cheap knock-off article is what people end up reading,
| for whatever reason, instead of the better one(s) you cribbed
| from, you win. Because the barriers to entry on reading are so
| low (click link, start reading) and most of the writing's low-
| value to begin with, people don't exactly shop around for their
| idle Web reading.
|
| These articles may have substance, but simply be far from the
| best presentation of that substance. I think GPT-3 and similar
| projects will do a fine job at subpar regurgitation of existing
| info that's better covered elsewhere but still manages to
| capture eyeballs, which describes, I expect, something like 99%
| of all writing on the Web, including, and perhaps especially,
| message board posts like this, as people often remark when yet
| another 300-post thread hits the front page on [some tired
| topic the discussion of which plays out the same every time].
| Long-form print isn't perfect but is somewhat better, since
| there are some barriers both to publishing and to reading and
| you're not giving the writing away for free so simply holding a
| passing reader's interest for two minutes means nothing. The
| web, though, and maybe even magazines? I wouldn't bet against
| machines doing much or even most of that writing within a
| decade. Consider: how much of an issue of, say, Cosmo consists
| of light re-workings of earlier, recurring articles? People
| already joke about that kind of thing. Machines can probably do
| that work, very soon.
| keenmaster wrote:
| We're playing a sequential game. No one is going to happily
| lap up GPT-3/4/5 generated articles in the long run as their
| _primary reading_ unless they only read articles that take
| the form of "X happened, then Y, and A said B" (which
| actually is a lot of people, but they're not really readers
| anyway).
|
| GPT will serve as intellectual humiliation. Some people will
| be embarrassed to find out that most of their reading
| materials can be generated by robots. On the margins, that
| can lead to people deliberately seeking out more intellectual
| content. That includes long format materials such as books.
| On the labor side, writing talent will be allocated away from
| shallow topics. That's a plus to me.
| NortySpock wrote:
| If GPT could produce something intellectually interesting,
| wouldn't that pass the Turing test?
|
| Seems like all GPT can produce is an infinite supply of
| shaggy dog stories. I don't know if I'd call that
| intellectual humiliation, just a lack of a point or
| punchline.
|
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story)
| keenmaster wrote:
| To rephrase: it will humiliate people who consume non-
| intellectually interesting material but don't really
| think about what they're doing. E.g. Someone whose daily
| reading consists of the top articles on Yahoo News. I
| don't think they'll continue to do so if Yahoo and its
| partners switch to GPT-X. So either Yahoo will source
| better material, or its readership will decline.
| NortySpock wrote:
| In GPT's current iteration, I agree.
|
| If GPT produces better output and is carefully mixed in
| with existing stories, I don't think anyone will notice.
|
| What percentage of stock price stories are generated by a
| bot? Off the cuff and totally guessing, I'd say 50%. Do
| you know the exact number? Could you tell? Would the
| headline service tell you? (probably not)
| keenmaster wrote:
| Ethos matters, especially when there's money involved and
| you're taking advice from someone. You'd be disturbed if
| that someone is a bot. Maybe you shouldn't be, because
| sometimes financial advisors are worse than bots, but
| people don't know that.
|
| As for the stories that merely describe stock movements
| without any real analysis, I myself would read those. I'm
| completely fine with that as long as there's reliable QA
| on the output.
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(page generated 2020-09-15 23:00 UTC)