Maximus Lollius

The problem with Dysgenic Tech Freaks is that they assume IQ is an equivalent substitute for being a Shark Playing circular LP games in Silicon Valley is not equivalent to competing against those who can smell blood a mile away

Something that I’m proud of about A Way With Words is that it makes an argument for the uniqueness and importance of human language that *isn’t* based on human prose being more elegant or more nicely composed than AI text. In other words the book shows that *even if* AI learns to “write better” than us, we will still be the only creatures with language in the deep sense. Now I still *also* think it’s unlikely that machines will ever write better than the best human writers, and I say why in the book. But you can disagree with me about this and still follow me when I say that what we do when we speak—whether gracefully or gracelessly—is different fundamentally from what computers do when they respond to prompts.

Is In Search of Lost Time actually worth reading, or is it lengthslop?

Losers actually make the best writers. It’s as if their defeats become the catalyst for their writing excellence: Thucydides, Xenophon, Cicero, Dante. The victors, by contrast, forgettable.

If you want modern storyteller who feels Pindaric …read Conrad at his best. In Nostromo and Lord Jim it’s way beyond “nonlinear narrative” it’s nested stories within stories within tangents …that’s part of what induces a mythic timeless feel

You can just live life without expecting or desiring your favorite books be turned into movies.