That Thread Written by ChatGPT

[emjay]

Hey Neo, I'm just curious what your intent is with this this thread, ie is it meant in good faith as basically a conversation starter (and/or maintainer) on Swedenborg... or is it just a prank/some sort of satire... basically gaslighting? I hope it's the former, because as amazing as ChatGPT is, I do fear it will bring out the worst in people.

As to Swedenborg I don't have much to say really. Obviously I would or could never take it literally, and to the extent that it is considered symbolic then personally I'm not a great fan of that in any area of life. Ie for instance if I was looking for a therapist I would never choose a Freudian, finding that sort of vague symbolism unhelpful. But that's just me... each to their own.

[Fake Messiah]

Emanuel Swedenborg was nothing more than 18th-century George Adamski.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hey Neo, I'm just curious what your intent is with this this thread, ie is it meant in good faith as basically a conversation starter (and/or maintainer) on Swedenborg... or is it just a prank/some sort of satire... basically gaslighting? I hope it's the former, because as amazing as ChatGPT is, I do fear it will bring out the worst in people.

As to Swedenborg I don't have much to say really. Obviously I would or could never take it literally, and to the extent that it is considered symbolic then personally I'm not a great fan of that in any area of life. Ie for instance if I was looking for a therapist I would never choose a Freudian, finding that sort of vague symbolism unhelpful. But that's just me... each to their own.

"It's symbolic" is a religious euphemism for "bullshit". Ala, god "symbolically" created the earth...which is to say god did not create the earth, but I want to say something else so I lead in with god shit as a primer and authority pump. Ultimately, any of the "symbolic" truths that the afflicted wish to advocate for could be advocated for without a single reference to a god, if those references are..in fact.."symbolic".

As far as trying to rehabilitate loons like swedenborg, he wasn't being symbolic. He was nuts, and calling it symbolism is just laundering that reality. Ultimately, I think that christianity offended his relativistic moral sense. A morally conflicted nut, searching for hidden meanings in magic books to assuage his own inner turmoil. Still he offers an alternative to christianity, which is becoming more and more of interest to christians - and so their retconning this nut is pretty much inevitable.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Real me...

I simply asked ChatGPT to write a post for atheistforums.org from the perspective of Swedenborg. Then I asked it to ridicule the first first post. For the reply to Fake Messiah, I asked for reply that explains Swedenborg's belief in life on other planets in terms of alchemical symbolism. I really did not have any overt intentions by creating the thread other than being transparent by 1) posting in "Off Topic", 2) putting ChatGPT in the title, and 3) posting the uneditted text.
Kinda just wanted to see what would happen. Perhaps some people would share their own generated text for replies. Or their own experiences with ChatGPT.

@Bel, there is a desktop version that does not require a phone.

@Fake, the "cut and paste" rule IMHO would not apply since the generated text was prompted by my own seed text and not publicly available. That said, I could see a rule against entirely AI generated text, since that undermines the social aspect of social media although how the mods would detect and enforce such a rule IDK.


One thing I have noticed is that ChatGPT tends to be very wordy.

@emjay, ChatGPT interpreted my initial request to produce an atheistic take on Swedenborg. I had asked for a post for atheist forums from a Swedenborgian perspective. It assumed I was an atheist. Also curious is how the ChatGPT has better manners than either Fake or Nudge, even when it was asked to ridicule.

[emjay]

Real me...

I simply asked ChatGPT to write a post for atheistforums.org from the perspective of Swedenborg. Then I asked it to ridicule the first first post. For the reply to Fake Messiah, I asked for reply that explains Swedenborg's belief in life on other planets in terms of alchemical symbolism. I really did not have any overt intentions by creating the thread other than being transparent by 1) posting in "Off Topic", 2) putting ChatGPT in the title, and 3) posting the uneditted text.
Kinda just wanted to see what would happen. Perhaps some people would share their own generated text for replies. Or their own experiences with ChatGPT.

@Bel, there is a desktop version that does not require a phone.

@Fake, the "cut and paste" rule IMHO would not apply since the generated text was prompted by my own seed text and not publicly available. That said, I could see a rule against entirely AI generated text, since that undermines the social aspect of social media although how the mods would detect and enforce such a rule IDK.


One thing I have noticed is that ChatGPT tends to be very wordy.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean that to come off as bad as it sounded. I guess I'm just not that comfortable with ChatGPT yet, which is odd really I admit given how much I've always appreciated neural networks etc, but nonetheless I'm just more worried about its negative applications, like trolling, scamming etc, than it's positive applications. So I really just didn't know how to approach a thread like this.

[emjay]

[...]
@emjay, ChatGPT interpreted my initial request to produce an atheistic take on Swedenborg. I had asked for a post for atheist forums from a Swedenborgian perspective. It assumed I was an atheist. Also curious is how the ChatGPT has better manners than either Fake or Nudge, even when it was asked to ridicule.

Right, I was gonna ask about that but I forgot. I was surprised that it would take a stance on atheism vs theism, it being such a contentious issue, so wondered if you'd prompted it with something like 'summarise Swedenborg from an atheist perspective'. So that's interesting that you didn't specify that and it instead made assumptions.

[Neo-Scholastic]

My own take is that ChatGPT is a decent first draft tool. I am not seeing much value as a final product yet. And I only know how to do text. Professionally, I used it to make Amazon listings for some of my products. For ad copy, ChatGPT works surprisingly well, compared to the content created by professional copywriters. My brotherinlaw used it to write code and was similarly impressed with the first draft.

[Belacqua]

Real me...

I simply asked ChatGPT to write a post for atheistforums.org from the perspective of Swedenborg. Then I asked it to ridicule the first first post.  For the reply to Fake Messiah, I asked for reply that explains Swedenborg's belief in life on other planets in terms of alchemical symbolism. I really did not have any overt intentions by creating the thread other than being transparent by 1) posting in "Off Topic", 2) putting ChatGPT in the title, and 3) posting the uneditted text.
Kinda just wanted to see what would happen. Perhaps some people would share their own generated text for replies. Or their own experiences with ChatGPT.

@Bel, there is a desktop version that does not require a phone.

@Fake, the "cut and paste" rule IMHO would not apply since the generated text was prompted by my own seed text and not publicly available. That said, I could see a rule against entirely AI generated text, since that undermines the social aspect of social media although how the mods would detect and enforce such a rule IDK.


One thing I have noticed is that ChatGPT tends to be very wordy.

@emjay, ChatGPT interpreted my initial request to produce an atheistic take on Swedenborg. I had asked for a post for atheist forums from a Swedenborgian perspective. It assumed I was an atheist. 

It's amazing to me that it could generate such clear, coherent texts, with impressive detail, from such simple prompts. I actually don't know enough about Swedenborg to know if what it said is correct. One article I read, after seeing the OP, said that AI is good at appearing confident about asserting things that are wrong. 

My first reaction is that this is going to take over certain practical uses for writing text. No doubt there is, or soon will be, a version in which a researcher can input a series of facts and the AI will provide him with a paper in a publishable format. Papers reporting research results published in medical journals, which discourage creativity and demand adherence to formula, seem very suitable to automatic generation. And why not? As long as the researcher checks the results, why not get the computer to do the labor of writing it out? 

Maybe we can make an analogy with photography. Cheaply reproduced photos, as you know, took over certain jobs from artists. Picture postcards replaced engravings as souvenirs for tourists. Really good engravings are far superior, aesthetically, to picture postcards, but the easier option is more affordable. 

When I use G-mail the computer brain often suggests how I should finish the sentence I'm writing. No doubt this would be useful if I were sending business letters, but I am always careful NOT to use the language the computer suggests. If we want to have any pretense at a prose style, or original thought, that seems important to me. 

Likewise I think of stylists like Nabokov, who have such a horror of cliché. He never ever wrote a sentence that contained the predictable expression. I do not think that an AI is going to approach his level of wit, multi-level irony, and subtle allusion -- not for a very long time. So maybe that's an analogy to utilitarian photos vs. creative painting. 

Also curious is how the ChatGPT has better manners than either Fake or Nudge, even when it was asked to ridicule.

This makes me wonder how much the AI follows guidelines installed by its programmers. Surely it could be programmed to be nasty...? Although effective nastiness requires knowing what (you think) would be personally hurtful to the reader. 

Anyway, it's a fascinating experiment. I'm glad you did it.

[emjay]

Hey Neo, I'm just curious what your intent is with this this thread, ie is it meant in good faith as basically a conversation starter (and/or maintainer) on Swedenborg... or is it just a prank/some sort of satire... basically gaslighting? I hope it's the former, because as amazing as ChatGPT is, I do fear it will bring out the worst in people.

As to Swedenborg I don't have much to say really. Obviously I would or could never take it literally, and to the extent that it is considered symbolic then personally I'm not a great fan of that in any area of life. Ie for instance if I was looking for a therapist I would never choose a Freudian, finding that sort of vague symbolism unhelpful. But that's just me... each to their own.

"It's symbolic" is a religious euphemism for "bullshit".  Ala, god "symbolically" created the earth...which is to say god did not create the earth, but I want to say something else so I lead in with god shit as a primer and authority pump.  Ultimately, any of the "symbolic" truths that the afflicted wish to advocate for could be advocated for without a single reference to a god, if those references are..in fact.."symbolic".  

As far as trying to rehabilitate loons like swedenborg, he wasn't being symbolic.  He was nuts, and calling it symbolism is just laundering that reality.  Ultimately, I think that christianity offended his relativistic moral sense.  A morally conflicted nut, searching for hidden meanings in magic books to assuage his own inner turmoil.  Still he offers an alternative to christianity, which is becoming more and more of interest to christians - and so their retconning this nut is pretty much inevitable.

I was meaning that more in a sort of personal symbolism sense, rather than what the author intended, whatever that may be. Ie I was not taking Neo to be saying it was necessarily written with this intent, just that that was one (of potentially many) interesting ways of looking at it. And in my case saying that in general in my life I don't put much stock in symbolism, but should probably have added that that doesn't mean it's not valuable, even to me, sometimes, just not in general. Ie reading about Greek gods for instance would be full of interesting symbolism, and perhaps an interesting intellectual/entertainment endeavour in its own right, but that would be an exception rather than a rule for me.

[Neo-Scholastic]

@Fake Messiah has a cliche tactic: be a dick then complain that the critics who call him out are trying to derail the thread.