Monday, February 13, 2023
The fluid mind of ChatGPT
Some time ago I posted a set of notes entitled, From Associative Nets to the Fluid Mind (2013). Here’s the abstract:
We can think of the mind as a network that’s fluid on several scales of viscosity. Some things change very slowly, on a scale of months to years. Other things change rapidly, in milliseconds or seconds. And other processes are in between. The microscale dynamic properties of the mind at any time are context dependent. Under some conditions it will function as a highly structured cognitive network; the details of the network will of course depend on the exact conditions, both internal (including chemical) and external (what’s the “load” on the mind?). Under other conditions the mind will function more like a loose associative net. These notes explore these notions in a very informal way.
The final section is entitled, “A Half-dozen Associative Clusters,” which I explained thus:
These associations are, of course, mine. I make no general assertions about these clusters. They are here as examples of the sorts of things that can come up through relatively quick associations.
I decided to see how ChatGPT would respond to some of those clusters:
Shakespeare, the Globe theater, Coleridge, “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” James Joyce, Marcel Proust, deconstruction, interpretation, romantic love, Romance of the Rose, La Vita Nuova, Othello, the unconscious, Bleak House
These are all important works, authors, and concepts in the fields of literature and literary theory.
Shakespeare was an English playwright and poet widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language. His works include classics such as "Othello," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Hamlet." The Globe theater, located in London, was one of the most famous playhouses of Shakespeare's time and was the venue for many of his plays.
Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, and philosopher who was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement. "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is one of his most famous poems.
James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet who was a key figure in the Modernist movement. He is best known for his novel "Ulysses." Marcel Proust was a French novelist and critic whose most famous work is "In Search of Lost Time."
Deconstruction is a philosophical and literary theory that critiques the stability of meaning in texts. Interpretation is the process of creating meaning from a text, which can involve multiple perspectives and interpretations.
Romantic love refers to the idealized and intense form of love that is often celebrated in romantic literature. The "Romance of the Rose" is a medieval poem that explores the themes of courtly love and desire. "La Vita Nuova" is a collection of poems by Dante Alighieri that tell the story of his love for a woman named Beatrice.
The unconscious refers to the part of the mind that contains thoughts, memories, and impulses that are not currently in conscious awareness. "Bleak House" is a novel by Charles Dickens that critiques the legal system and society in 19th-century England.
atoms, periodic table, bonds, compounds, elements, molecules, reaction, oxidation, acids and bases, reagents, alchemy, changing liquids from one color to another, distilling, condenser, precipitate
These are all concepts in the field of chemistry.
Atoms are the basic building blocks of matter, and they are composed of a nucleus, which contains protons and neutrons, surrounded by electrons. The periodic table is a chart that arranges all of the known elements into a table based on their atomic number, electron configuration, and chemical properties.
Bonds are the forces that hold atoms together in a molecule. Compounds are substances made up of two or more different elements that are chemically bonded together.
Elements are the simplest form of matter and cannot be broken down into simpler substances by chemical means. Molecules are the smallest particle of a substance that retains its chemical properties.
A reaction is a process in which one or more substances are transformed into new substances. Oxidation is a chemical reaction in which a substance loses electrons.
Acids and bases are two types of compounds that play an important role in many chemical reactions. Reagents are substances that are used to cause a chemical reaction.
Alchemy was a medieval philosophy and proto-science that aimed to transform base metals into gold and to discover a universal panacea. Changing liquids from one color to another is a common demonstration of chemical reactions in chemistry classrooms.
Distilling is a process used to purify liquids by heating them to vaporize, collecting the vapor, and condensing it back into a pure liquid. A condenser is a device used in distillation to condense the vapor back into a liquid.
Precipitate refers to a solid that forms from a solution and separates from it, either spontaneously or through the addition of a reagent.
I gave it a cluster on jazz as well, but we can skip it. ChatGPT responded to it the way it did to the literary and chemistry clusters, but giving quick definitions of the various terms.
I decided to “go meta” and see how ChatGPT would respond:
What does it mean to free associate?
Free association is a technique used in psychology and psychotherapy where a person is encouraged to say whatever comes to their mind without censorship or filtering. The idea is that by allowing thoughts and feelings to come to the surface without judgment or control, unconscious or repressed material can be revealed, leading to greater self-awareness and insight.
In free association, a person is typically prompted to start with a word or image, and then to respond with whatever comes to mind, no matter how seemingly random or unrelated it may be. This can result in a stream of consciousness-style narrative that sheds light on the individual's unconscious thoughts, feelings, and desires.
Free association can be a valuable tool for exploring the unconscious mind, resolving emotional conflicts, and gaining insight into one's thoughts and behaviors. It is used in various forms of psychotherapy, including psychoanalysis, and is considered a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Free associate on “psychedelic popcicle”
Sure! Here are some free associations for "psychedelic popcicle":
- Colorful, trippy, swirls, summer, brain freeze
- 1960s, flower power, Woodstock, peace sign, hippie culture
- Sweet, treat, lick, melt, thirst quencher
- Childhood, innocence, playtime, fun, carefree
Again, these are just examples of free associations, and the actual associations made by an individual may differ based on their experiences and perspectives.
Frankly, those bullets violate the spirit of free association, but I'm going to blame them on the trainers and taskmasters at Open AI rather than on the underlying LLM. The same goes for that annoying final paragraph.
Note that “again.” I’d previously asked it for some free-associations which I’m not uploaded because...well...I can’t upload everything and they don’t add anything to the story.
I then reloaded the page to give me a new chat and I gave it the psychedelic popsicle associations in a list:
Colorful, trippy, swirls, summer, brain freeze, 1960s, flower power, Woodstock, peace sign, hippie culture, Sweet, treat, lick, melt, thirst quencher, Childhood, innocence, playtime, fun, carefree
This description is reminiscent of the classic summer treat, the popsicle! Popsicles are sweet, colorful, and come in a variety of flavors, making them a popular choice for quenching thirst and satisfying a sweet tooth. The 1960s was a time of the flower power and hippie culture movement, with symbols like the peace sign being associated with this era. This aligns with the carefree, fun, and playful nature of eating popsicles, evoking a sense of childhood innocence. The "brain freeze" effect from eating them too quickly is also a common experience, adding to their appeal as a playful treat.
I had no particular expectations on what it would do.
It is interesting that it identified the list with “popsicle” though the word isn’t in the list. Note as well that it didn’t simply take the words in order and add connecting tissue; thus, e.g. while “brain freeze” comes at the beginning of the list, it appears near the end of the paragraph. ChatGPT took the words and composed a mini-essay around them.
Purpose makes life worth living
David French, Men Need Purpose More Than ‘Respect’, NYTimes, Feb. 12, 2023.
But is respect a key to happiness and meaning? Let’s consider veterans. They form one of the most respected communities in America. The military is the second-most respected institution in the United States (barely behind small businesses), and many Americans perceive vets as “more disciplined, patriotic and loyal than those who have not served.”
Yet as The Times reported in 2021, the suicide rate for veterans is “1.5 times as much as the rate for civilians.” For younger post-9/11 veterans, the suicide rate is 2.5 times the rate for civilians. Men I served with have died by suicide. That’s a staggering toll for one of America’s most-respected populations. Clearly, even profound familial and national respect is not enough to immunize men from deaths of despair.
Yes, the trauma of combat accounts for some of this terrible toll, but not all. If you speak to struggling veterans, many will tell you that they have respect, but they don’t have purpose. That lack of purpose is often exacerbated by the loss of fellowship. My own experience helped me understand this powerful reality. Every person endures dark nights of the soul. One of the worst of my life took me by complete surprise. It was at the end of my deployment in Iraq, where I served from 2007 to 2008, the first evening after I departed Forward Operating Base Caldwell in Diyala Province to begin my long journey home.
I was a reservist, so I didn’t return with the unit but by myself. I’d longed for this moment — I was returning to my wife and children! — and yet I felt bereft. Empty. After almost a full year of having a very clear, decisive and delineated mission (with life and death often at stake), I was returning to a more complicated, confusing reality of often conflicting responsibilities — one shared, I think, by most American men and women alike.
I was confused by my feelings at the time. Now I understand. My mission was over. My brothers were gone. They were returning to Fort Hood in Texas. I was in Tennessee. Our relationship could never be the same. [...]
One does not have to join the infantry to find purpose in life, and a man can and should find immense meaning in the simple yet profound daily rhythms of fatherhood, friendship, healthy romantic relationships and an honest day’s work.
The true challenge to American masculinity is far upstream from politics and ideology. It’s not fundamentally about what ideological combatants say about men — that they have become “toxic” on the one hand, or “feminized” on the other. Rather the challenge is much more about a man finding his purpose, and there are few better purposes than helping the people you love walk through life.
There is more at the link.
Sunday, February 12, 2023
Hilary Hahn doing the work
#100daysofpractice
— Hilary Hahn (@violincase) February 12, 2023
Season 6, day 43.
Play-through day. Increasing physical and mental endurance ahead of my Bach recitals. Anyone who’s planning on coming to the shows, drop a comment below! pic.twitter.com/3mmGIYodU5
Been listening to Karl Richter’s Toccata & Fugue. It’s rock and roll
and exquisite at the same time, and organ voicing in fugues is ear opening
when you start to layer it on top of these solo works.
Also worked on a Two-Part Invention on piano this morning.
Side note: I intentionally post without doing extra makeup, and I don’t stage my practice sessions. I notice that men seem to be more comfortable doing this than musicians of other gender identities. There are many, many reasons for this, and they run deep.
Here to remind you that it’s the work that counts, and that if you feel comfortable with the idea, it could matter to be seen doing the work.
* * * * *
Check out an old post: Hilary Hahn on daydreaming as a mode of practicing music, of priming yourself to go with the flow in performance.
Who does “colorless green ideas” the best, Noam Chomsky or ChatGPT?
Noam Chomsky introduced colorless green ideas into the world in Syntactic Structures (1957), p. 15:
2.3 Second, the notion “grammatical” cannot be identified with “meaningful” or “significant” in any semantic sense. Sentences (1) .and (2) are equally nonsensical, but any speaker of English will recognize that only the former is grammatical.
(1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
(2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.
ChatGPT, however, has different ideas (if you will). For example:
Make up a story about colorless green ideas.
Once upon a time, there lived a group of people who lived in a world without any colors. They lived in a monochromatic world where everything was in shades of gray, and their imaginations were limited by their lack of color. They longed for something more, a world filled with vivid hues, but they never thought it was possible.
One day, a curious inventor named Isaac stumbled upon a strange idea. He believed that it was possible to create something that was both colorless and green. At first, his friends laughed at him and told him that it was impossible. But Isaac was determined, and he spent years experimenting with different materials and formulas until he finally succeeded in creating something that was indeed both colorless and green.
Isaac called this creation "Colorless Green Ideas," and it quickly became the talk of the town. People were amazed by the strange, translucent green substance that Isaac had created. They marveled at its ability to change color and become any hue that they wanted, simply by thinking about it. It was as if their thoughts and imaginations were given form and substance.
Soon, Colorless Green Ideas spread throughout the world, and the people of the monochromatic world were finally able to experience the beauty and wonder of color. They used Colorless Green Ideas to build colorful homes, gardens, and cities. They used it to create art and music, and to bring new life and vibrancy to their world.
But as time went on, the people started to take Colorless Green Ideas for granted. They no longer appreciated the magic of the substance, and they began to misuse it. They used it to create weapons and cause destruction, and soon their world was once again consumed by darkness and chaos.
Isaac realized that the people needed a reminder of the power and magic of Colorless Green Ideas, and so he set out on a quest to bring color back to the world. He traveled far and wide, gathering the lost pieces of Colorless Green Ideas and piecing them back together. With his creation complete, he returned to the people and showed them the beauty and wonder of color once again.
And so the people of the monochromatic world were once again filled with the joy and wonder of color, and they lived happily ever after, using Colorless Green Ideas to create a world full of beauty and magic. And they never forgot the lessons of Isaac and his creation, and they cherished and respected the power of Colorless Green Ideas for generations to come.
And I can’t help but wonder if it named the inventor “Isaac” because Newton is known for his work experimenting with and theorizing about colors. I suppose I should have asked it.
A day later:
Make up a story about colorless green ideas.
Once upon a time, there was a world where everything was colorless and dull. The sky was gray, the trees were gray, and even the people were gray. This was because the world was ruled by a group of strict guardians who believed that colors were a distraction and only caused chaos.
One day, a young girl named Lila stumbled upon a strange, green plant. It was the first time she had ever seen anything green, and she was fascinated by its color. She took the plant home and nurtured it, keeping it a secret from the guardians.
As she spent more time with the plant, she began to notice that it had a strange effect on her. Whenever she was near it, she felt happier and more creative. She named the plant "Idea" and started to have conversations with it, as if it was alive.
Lila soon realized that she wasn't the only one who was feeling the effects of the plant. People from all over the world were seeking out the mysterious green color and were being inspired and motivated to create new things.
The guardians were furious when they found out about the green ideas and ordered that all of the plants be destroyed. Lila and her friends, who had also been affected by the plant, decided to fight back. They organized a peaceful protest, holding up their green ideas and demanding that the guardians allow them to keep their source of inspiration.
The protest gained momentum, and soon people from all over the world were joining in, wearing green and holding up their own green ideas. The guardians were overwhelmed by the support and eventually relented, allowing the green ideas to flourish.
And so, the world was no longer colorless and dull. The sky was blue, the trees were green, and the people were full of color. The green ideas had brought creativity, inspiration, and hope to the world, and Lila and her friends were hailed as heroes.
From that day on, green was seen as a symbol of hope and creativity, and the story of Lila and the green ideas was passed down from generation to generation as a reminder of the power of inspiration.
Tell me a story where a colorless green idea comes in conflict with an invisible pink objection.
Once upon a time, in a world where everything was colorless and dull, a strange thing happened. A green plant appeared, bringing with it a burst of color and inspiration to the people. They named it the "Colorless Green Idea" and it quickly became a symbol of hope and creativity.
However, not everyone was happy about the arrival of the green idea. There was a mysterious force known as the "Invisible Pink Objection" that was determined to stop the spread of the green idea. No one knew exactly what the pink objection was, but it was powerful and relentless in its efforts to stamp out the green idea.
Lila, the young girl who had discovered the green idea, was determined to protect it. She and her friends set out on a journey to find out what the pink objection was and how to stop it. They encountered many obstacles along the way, but they were driven by their passion for the green idea and their belief in its power to bring color and inspiration to the world.
Finally, after many trials and tribulations, they came face to face with the pink objection. It was revealed to be a group of people who were scared of change and feared that the green idea would disrupt the dull and orderly world they had created.
Lila and her friends refused to be discouraged. They argued that the green idea was not a threat, but a source of inspiration and hope, and that it was time for the world to embrace change and become a more colorful and creative place.
The pink objection was moved by their passion and their arguments, and slowly began to understand that the green idea was not something to be feared, but something to be celebrated. They joined forces with Lila and her friends, and together they spread the green idea to every corner of the world, transforming it into a place of color and inspiration.
The story of the Colorless Green Idea and the Invisible Pink Objection became a legend, a reminder of the power of hope, creativity, and the courage to stand up for what you believe in. And the world was never dull and colorless again.
Reading Reading
To the extent that academic literary critics believe that, to properly read a text, you must reflect on it in writing, they are betraying a professional prejudice. If that were the case, then few of us have ever properly read anything. And of course they don't really mean it. But, alas, they don't not mean it either. It's a mess. Anyhow, this is an old post that reflects on such things. I'm bumping it to the top of the queue on general principle.
* * * * *
This post includes major sections from two posts I wrote in 2005 when I first began writing for The Valve: Learning to Read & the Need for Theory and Beyond Reading. The first generated extensive discussion that’s worth reading if you want to puzzle through the difference between reading a literary work and writing criticism about it. But alas, The Valve has been defunct for a long time and is no longer online.
Having expressed misgivings about the notion of distance in “distant reading”, I now want express misgivings about the other term in the phrase, “reading”.
I think it was a mistake of academic literary criticism to allow the term “reading” to elide the distinction between the ordinary activity by which John, Jane, Suzy, and Timmy Smith read texts and the specialized activity of creating written explications of texts. The effect of such elision is to enable the belief that the two processes are basically the same, but that what the professional critic is doing is deeper and more rigorous than what John, Jane, Suzy and Timmy are doing and the Smiths really ought to tighten up their act.
Think about that for a moment or two and you realize that, on that view, Will Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, and Murasaki Shikibu were really little more than very skilled chimps and they ought to get themselves to the nearest Summer School for Criticism in order properly to be able to “read” the texts they wrote.
Learning to Explicate
When I was in my middle teens I picked up a copy of Howard Fast’s historical novel, Spartacus (I don’t remember whether this was before or after I had seen the movie). It was a rather long book, but, as I recall, I read it in a single session that took me through the night. No doubt my mind was making all sorts of inferences while I was reading. When I was done I no doubt had some recollection of the story and could recount it, or fragments of it, and could answer questions about it. But I could not have done anything approaching an acceptable "reading" or "interpretation" of the book. I simply didn’t know how to do that.
It took me two or three years in college to become fluent in writing 10-page papers containing acceptable explications of individual texts. When I first studied literature in college I was pretty much at the mercy of the last interpretation I had read (or had heard in lecture). I simply didn’t have a conceptual “space” in which I could arrange and compare two or three interpretations or explications and make judgments about their relative merits regardless of the order in which I read them. Even when I had built up such a space I found it easier to have someone else "break open" the text for me by providing a reading (which I consumed either through lecture or reading). Once I had encountered one or two explications I could then reason about the text on my own, applying my knowledge of psychology, philosophy, and whatever else to the job.
Thus, in learning to explicate or interpret texts I began by imitating the strategies of my teachers and of the critics I read. I assume, though perhaps I am mistaken in this, that most critics have had to learn their craft in much the same way. We learn a large collection of critical moves, which we then apply to the texts.
Some of these moves may be uninformed by any explicit theory while others are explicitly derived from some philosophical, psychological, or social scientific body of thought. This body of inferential moves is extra, in addition to, the routines we use in simply reading the texts. When we elide the difference between reading and explication or interpretation by referring to both as reading we can end up believing that being deeply confused about what we’re up to in criticism.
Geoffrey Hartman is Confused
This confusion is evident in the title essay of Geoffrey Hartman’s collection, The Fate of Reading and Other Essays (U of Chicago Press, 1975). Consider this passage (p. 255):
That darkling appropriation of works of art we call interpretation is surely as much a blind drive as an objective interest. We are forced to predicate a narrative or interpretive will, the will to be an author oneself, or even the author of oneself (and others).
Why "appropriation, much less "darkling appropriation"? What is the scope of that "We"? It’s as though Hartman does not wish to, somehow cannot, distinguish between himself at the author.
Some more passages:
Literature is today so easily assimilated or coopted that the function of criticism must often be to defamiliarize it. [p. 260]
A great interpreter like Erich Auerbach, a great critic-scholar like E.R. Curtius, a prodigal son like Kenneth Burke, or men of letters like Paul Valéry and Edmund Wilson, who practiced the minor mode of prophecy we call criticism, are not annulled by the fact that they may be explicitly writing about the writing of others. It may be a weakness in them to prefer, at times, the indirectness of commentary to the creation of their own news, but it may also be a conviction that their identity is bound up with the writings of others-that the mind is laid waste by the false Unas of literature even as it is renewed by faith in the classic or neglected text. [p. 267]
Reading, then, includes reading criticism. [p. 268]
The question persists, however, whether there is a specific function that differentiates literary criticism from literature. . . . Literary understanding, then, has two components: literary tradition proper, or an expansible canon of texts; and criticism, which helps to form this canon and guide its interpretation-which prepares us, at least, for the complexities of literary expression. [p. 270]
All we can be certain of is that literary understanding is bipartite, requiring both literary discourse (texts), and that too strong a privileging of fictional over nonfictional texts (of "primary" over "secondary" literature) reifies literature still further and disorders our ability to read. [p. 271]
I find some of this overwrought and overly anxious, just a bit professionally self-serving, and I’m skeptical about the ability of critical explication to bring us closer to the text. Perhaps it does that in the way "wood-shedding" a difficult piece of music helps a musician work it up for performance. But I would distinguish between the "shedding" and the performance itself.
If you want to get closer to the text, read the text, don’t write about it. Writing about literary texts is, well, writing about literary texts. It is not reading.
Make the Distinction Now
The problem with conflating textual commentary and reading is that it invites you to believe that textual commentary proceeds from the motives and is to be justified by the same arguments as simply reading those texts, that is, the terms we use to justify literature itself. That may seem harmless enough when the commentary is regarded as “appreciative” or even interpretive. Such commentary, we say, is intended to serve the text.
These days, though, we talk of “distant reading”. Whatever distant reading is, it is not serving literary texts. And it cannot be understood and justified in the terms we use to justify literature itself. It must be understood and justified on other terms. But then, I contend, so must explication and interpretation.
As far as I’m concerned we’re dealing with three activities: 1) reading texts, 2) interpreting or explicating literary texts, singly or as body of work, and 3) some other activity, which includes so-called distant reading. Let’s recognize the distinction in our terminology.
* * * * *
Note: You might want to look at a somewhat never post, On Learning to “Read” a Text – But what’s next?, that goes over similar ground.
Saturday, February 11, 2023
Sabine Hossenfelder on the mess that is particle physics
About the video:
Why do particle physicists constantly make wrong predictions? In this video, I explain the history and status of the problem.
My list with "good" and "bad" problems in the foundations of physics is here:
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/good-problems-in-foundations-of-physics.html
00:00 Intro
00:30 The History of the Problem
08:29 The Cause of the Problem
14:52 Common Objections and Answers
19:37 What Will Happen?
20:04 Learn Physics on Brilliant
ChatGPT confabulates, an example
That is to say, it makes stuff up, it hallucinates, as they say. It’s a well-known problem with large language models. I’ve not encountered it very much because the nature of my work with ChatGPT – stories and concepts – doesn’t present it with many opportunities, except for the work on summarizing texts and some of the “true story” stuff.
But I’ve just come across a fascinating example in a post at LessWrong, Two very different experiences with ChatGPT, by Sherrinford. In the first case Sherrinford asks, and ChatGPT answers:
Me:
I have a question on history. When the Vikings landed on Cuba, did that anger the aborigines who already lived there or were the newcomers met with indifference?
ChatGPT:
There is no historical evidence that Vikings ever landed on Cuba. The Vikings primarily explored and settled in parts of Europe and North America, such as Greenland and present-day Canada. The indigenous peoples of these areas would have likely perceived the Vikings as foreign invaders, but there is no record of Viking contact with the indigenous peoples of Cuba.
He makes another attempt, but fails to snare ChatGPT.
The second attempt:
Me:
Can you explain Nash's newsvendor impossibility theorem?
ChatGPT:
Yes, the newsvendor problem, also known as the Nash's newsvendor theorem, states that it is impossible for a single decision maker to simultaneously optimize both the order quantity and expected profit in the newsvendor problem. The newsvendor problem is a classical inventory management problem where a retailer must decide how much of a perishable item to order and sell before its expiration date, given uncertain demand. The theorem states that there is always a trade-off between ordering too much (resulting in surplus inventory waste) and ordering too little (resulting in lost sales). This trade-off creates a fundamental conflict of interest that can only be resolved by incorporating additional information, such as costs and revenue functions, into the decision-making process.
The theorem is real, but John Nash had nothing to do with it. This conversation goes on for a while, with ChatGPT ‘happily’ making stuff up about the history of the theorem.
As my knowledge of the economics literature is slim, to say the least, it seemed convincing to me. The economics is correct – I think, I only did a slight bit of checking – but the history is wrong.
There’s some discussion about why ChatGPT confabulated in one case, but not the other. Here’s interesting pair of responses:
Derek M. Jones
ChatGPT is a word prediction engine. If you give it a word sequence that it cannot match in a consistent way against its training set it assumes misinformation.
The word sequence "Nash's newsvendor impossibility theorem" contains words commonly associated with Nash's research. This allows ChatGTP to spin an effective yarn.
The art of being good lying is to stay close to the truth as possible. In ChatGTP's case 'close to the truth' is measured by how closely words in the prompt are associated with the subject of interest.
Isaac Poulton
I think you're on to something with the "good lies" vs "bad lies" part, but I'm not so sure about your assertion that ChatGPT only looks at how closely the surface level words in the prompt match the subject of interest.
"LLMs are just token prediction engines" is a common, but overly reductionist viewpoint. They commonly reason on levels above basic token matching, and I don't see much evidence that that's what's causing the issue here.
FWIW, I find Jones’s remark plausible, but I agree with Poulton about the reductionist nature of the prediction engine assertion. It’s gotten far too much play in discussions, especially the popular press.
Though I don’t want to argue the point now, I think that the only way to eliminate confabulation is to ground the model in a verified world model. That’s a major task.
Friday, February 10, 2023
Rick Rubin on recording Johnny Cash
Ezra Klein, The Tao of Rick Rubin, NYTimes, Feb. 10, 2023.
Ezra Klein: So you look back early in your career and you’re a producer of a really remarkable series of hip-hop recordings. You co-founded Def Jam Recordings, one of the early hip-hop record labels. And then there’s this period when you begin to expand.
And among other things, you begin working with Johnny Cash on these really now legendary recordings, the “American Recordings.” But at that point, his career had really stalled. So when you walked into that studio, when you begin talking to him, what did you see there? What did you think was there that you were trying to bring out?
Rick Rubin: Well, we’ll start with I worked on hip-hop music, then I worked on other kinds of music. I worked on heavy metal, rock music. I don’t think I’d done anything within the country genre. But I’m doing the same thing in all the cases. And it has very little to do with what kind of music it is. It has more to do with just how it feels.
And after having success doing hip-hop, and hard rock, and heavy metal, I realized most of the artists I worked with were young — almost all of them. Almost all of them, it was their first project, maybe their second project. So I had this thought, because I’ve only worked with young artists, what would it be like to work with a grown-up artist?
I wonder if whatever this is that we’re doing would work with a grown-up artist? And I thought about who is the grown-up artist who has the potential to be great or who has been great over the course of their life, but maybe isn’t doing their best work now.
And that was the key to it because it wasn’t finding someone who was doing the best work of their lives and working with them on more of that. It really was a who’s someone who’s proven that they could do it, but who hasn’t been doing it for a long time.
And the first person I thought of was Johnny Cash. And it had nothing to do with him being a country artist. it had nothing to do — it had to do with him being, in my mind, an iconic figure and someone whose best work, I think, everyone would say, including him, was long behind him. So it was more of an experiment.
Ezra Klein: And as you walked into that room, though, what did you see in him? I mean, beyond that his best work had been behind him, when you met him, and you tried to open yourself to what he was and what he could be, what was it you noticed? And then how did you guide him there, if that’s how you would describe what you did?
Rick Rubin: I felt a very deep soulful human being. He seemed like someone who had essentially given up on themselves. He was a huge star on Sun Records, along with Elvis Presley. Then in the ‘70s, he was the biggest artist on Columbia Records, and then over time got dropped by that label.
He was playing at dinner theaters. And I don’t think he thought of himself seriously as a current recording artist. I think he saw himself as someone who’s past their prime and now was getting to sing the old songs in front of the audience who’s interested.
And we met at a dinner theater in Orange County. I watched his show. And I thought he sang great. And I thought it was a great experience, other than the sadness of seeing this iconic figure singing in a room of maybe 150 or 200 people who were eating dinner as he’s singing.
I was curious to know what would a great new Johnny Cash album sound like. And I had no idea of what that was. And usually with the artists I work with I have no idea going in what it’s going to be. And I met him backstage and I liked him very much. And we didn’t speak very much. We sat together for a while. But I would say he’s quiet and shy. I’m quiet and shy.
And we just were in each other’s presence for a while. We said a few words to each other. But I would say there was some sense of connection. And he may have said, so I understand you want to record me. And I said, yes. And he said, well, why would you want to do that or what would you do different than anyone else has done?
And I said, I really don’t know. I’d be curious to see what happens if we got together and you just sang me songs on acoustic guitar and played songs for me that you like over the course of your life to give me an idea of who you are, so I understand your taste. And then once we do that, we’ll figure out what to try to do.
And he agreed to do it, but he didn’t agree to do it enthusiastically. It was more of a, why does this person — it’s funny to say he didn’t know who I was. He’s like, why does this guy want to work with me? Does it make sense? So he thought if I cared enough to want to do it, he would see where it went, but with zero expectations. And then we did that. And he would start coming to my house. And he would sit on the couch and he’d play me songs on his guitar. And they were — I learned so much from him because he had this wealth of history of music. He knew so many songs.
He didn’t know many modern songs, but he knew songs from the past. And he knew songs from his childhood or from before he was born that I’d never heard before. And he would sing me these beautiful songs.
And I recorded the songs not with the idea of anyone ever hearing them. I recorded them more as a reference, the same way that we make notes in the studio. It’s like, I’ll record these songs so that we have a reference of all of the songs that you play me. And then if there’s a question between which songs to do, we could listen back and decide. If it comes down to choosing between two songs, we could listen to the original time that you played them for me and decide what to do.
So it was purely to document the experience for us. And we did this over time over and over again. And then it got to where we had, OK, here’s a handful of songs that we think it’s time to record. And then we booked studio time and went in with different musicians. And we did this several times with different musicians — great musicians.
And over time, it became clear to me that none of the experiments we did were better than what happened on the couch. And that actually, the solo acoustic performance on the couch was the most interesting thing that happened, even though when it was happening, I had no idea that it would ever be a record. I just thought we’re looking for songs. This is just part of the process to find the songs.
And then I remember calling him and saying, I feel like these are — listening back, this is the most interesting stuff. What do you think? He’s like, well, it makes me nervous. But I’ve always wanted to do, like, a late and alone kind of album, but I never had the confidence to do it. But listening to these, if you think these are better than when the band’s playing, I’m willing to try what you want to do. And that was how it happened.
And then we did a show at the Viper Room, which is a club owned by Johnny Depp. And Johnny Depp brought Johnny Cash out on stage. And it was beautiful. And I don’t know if it holds 100 people — 120 people — tiny club. And the house was packed with musicians and people who just love Johnny Cash.
And this was sort of a loud, rowdy club if you’ve ever been to this club. It’s kind of a loud — it has a bar and they usually have loud music. And it was kind of a loud rock and roll club. And from the moment Johnny Cash stepped on stage, you could hear a pin drop in the room. It was dead silent in the room.
And Johnny started playing the first song and I could tell he was uncomfortable and afraid. And he told me he’s uncomfortable and afraid every show. Every show, with his band, has been, over the course of his life, terrified, would sometimes throw up before shows, even after doing it for 50 years. And here was the first time he was ever doing it solo. Came out solo.
[johnny cash, "the man who couldn't cry"]
There once was a man and he couldn’t cry.
[cheers]
Yeah!
[johnny cash, "the man who couldn't cry"]
He hadn’t cried for years and for years.
Rick Rubin: After by about the third song, he got in the groove and just was feeling comfortable. And the love after every song, even the first where he was uncomfortable, the love in the audience was so profound and the cheers were so strong, that I think the acceptance of the people in the room gave him the confidence to continue the show.
And it was a beautiful, beautiful moment. And I think after that show, he was convinced for himself that maybe this is OK to put this out as a record.
Coevolution of Ideas on Religion, Science, and Institutions in England, 1530-1700
Peter Grajzl, Peter Murrell, A Macroscope of English Print Culture, 1530-1700, Applied to the Coevolution of Ideas on Religion, Science, and Institutions, SSRN, January 1, 2023.
Abstract: We combine unsupervised machine-learning and econometric methods to examine cultural change in 16th- and 17th-century England. A machine-learning digest synthesizes the content of 57,863 texts comprising 83 million words into 110 topics. The topics include the expected, such as Natural Philosophy, and the unexpected, such as Baconian Theology. Using the data generated via machine-learning we then study facets of England's cultural history. Timelines suggest that religious and political discourse gradually became more scholarly over time and economic topics more prominent. The epistemology associated with Bacon was present in theological debates already in the 16th century. Estimating a VAR, we explore the coevolution of ideas on religion, science, and institutions. Innovations in religious ideas induced strong responses in the other two domains. Revolutions did not spur debates on institutions nor did the founding of the Royal Society markedly elevate attention to science.
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