ChatGPT is a bullshit machine

The idea of ChatGPT as a bullshit machine is a helpful one when combined with the distinction between hard and soft bullshit. Reaching again for the example of the dodgy student paper: we’ve all, I take it, marked papers where it was obvious that a dictionary or thesaurus had been deployed with a crushing lack of subtlety; where fifty-dollar words are used not because they’re the best choice, nor even because they serve to obfuscate the truth, but simply because the author wants to convey...

 The Printing Press and Dictionaries Crystallized Spelling

English spelling was at first practically fonetic, like the spelling of Latin, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and most other languages, and changed as pronunciation changed. In its case, however, various causes com- bined to interfere with this orderly process. Among them wer the variations in the early dialects, the dif- ferent spelling sistems of the Norman conquerors, the later different spelling sistem of the imported Dutch printers, the bungling attempts during the Renaissance to mak...

 There is a Cloud Floating in a Sheet of Paper

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in [a] sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. . . . “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb, inter-be. W...