I wanted a short, punchy, & informative article on the role played by writing & literacy in the Neo-Assyrian state ca. -700. But I could not find one. Can ChatGPT4 fill the bill? My verdict: No...
ChatGPT4 and the Tablets of Power: worst Indiana Jones reboot ever.
It took me a moment to place Saggs before I remembered that I have a copy of Civilization Before Greece and Rome sitting on my shelf. It's been a long time since I read it. As always, I envy your elephantine memory.
Now that you've pointed it out, yes. I'm so used to wading through prose like that I barely noticed how awkward it was. It's like so much of the stuff online and offline that I've been inured.
Thinking about the importance of writing in building our civilizations got me thinking about the impressive power of human language. There's so much research going on with chimpanzees, dogs, dolphins and probably squirrels who are able to use some form of language that it seems the full power of human language has been deprecated. The thing is that only humans really have a language which provides extensive narrative, descriptive and conditional power. Bees can tell each other where to find pollen, but humans can describe multiple step journeys with advice for dealing with obstacles and obtaining one's goals. Writing extends this ability in time and eliminates the need for an individual narrator, but the underlying technology is human language. It's no surprise that one can build an empire on it.
Well, language makes the band of 150—Dunbar's Number—in the present and what people remember being told from the past an anthology intelligence. Writing potentially makes all of humanity past, present, and future into an anthology intelligence...
ChatGPT4 and the Tablets of Power: worst Indiana Jones reboot ever.
It took me a moment to place Saggs before I remembered that I have a copy of Civilization Before Greece and Rome sitting on my shelf. It's been a long time since I read it. As always, I envy your elephantine memory.
The prose! The prose! It reads like an unlawful union between a college sophomore and an HR bureaucrat. I shudder to think of the training set.
Now that you've pointed it out, yes. I'm so used to wading through prose like that I barely noticed how awkward it was. It's like so much of the stuff online and offline that I've been inured.
Thinking about the importance of writing in building our civilizations got me thinking about the impressive power of human language. There's so much research going on with chimpanzees, dogs, dolphins and probably squirrels who are able to use some form of language that it seems the full power of human language has been deprecated. The thing is that only humans really have a language which provides extensive narrative, descriptive and conditional power. Bees can tell each other where to find pollen, but humans can describe multiple step journeys with advice for dealing with obstacles and obtaining one's goals. Writing extends this ability in time and eliminates the need for an individual narrator, but the underlying technology is human language. It's no surprise that one can build an empire on it.
Well, language makes the band of 150—Dunbar's Number—in the present and what people remember being told from the past an anthology intelligence. Writing potentially makes all of humanity past, present, and future into an anthology intelligence...