Sure, but you could explain how a Burrough's cut-up sentence was produced, while you couldn't explain how the AI poem was produced. What is the point of comparing the poems to Burroughs cut-ups? If you can clearly, ingenuously, explain what prompted that particular comparison, I think the point is immediately clear. But you have to be clear and honest.

That sounds like the opening salvo to a discussion to me. More than like or dislike anyway. But fine, I’ll leave it there that the poems are interesting but no more than Burrough’s cut ups. — Brett

I've read both Burroughs' cut-ups and these poems; they are different.

I think these poems don't hold up to poems by great poets, and I am sure I can break down why -- but I didn't think I needed to bring that up, because I thought that clearly wasn't the point of the OP. I'm beginning to think that everyone who is reflexively responding negatively couldn't show why great poems are different from AI poems and that accounts for the negative reaction. If it's a given, you don't sweat. If it isn't, there is some discomfort.

That's fine, I'm not trying to convert anyone. I'm literally saying: here is something I liked, check it out. If you don't like it, that's fine too.

Maybe that's the confusion. The OP doesn't have a point. It's closer to : I found this, and thought it was cool, take a look.

(take a look at the OP!)

That’s fine. So what are we here for? — Brett

Well, what do you mean?

They produced what they produced. I think it’s good. I also think any randomly chosen Emily Dickinson poem is probably better. But this is easy to do: select a poem, oppose it to an AI poem, and do the close reading. Show why the human poem is better. I’m confused why simply showing interesting AI poems is generating such passionate, reflexive, philosophical shutdown - I’m only saying I think they’re pretty. (literally, I wasn’t trying to start a debate, only wanted to say: check this out!)

It’s only a threat if you worry you can’t show why it doesn’t match up to human poems. If you think you can, there’s nothing to sweat.

That’s the problem isn’t it? Are they actually producing anything? It’s like saying a sausage machine produce sausages without input from humans. — Brett

They produce what they produce. They don't produce sausages, naturally. But the whole robot/soul thing is realllllly throwing us off the scent. The whole thread keeps focusing on that - I'm not trying to say robots can replace poets! Please look closer

It's fair enough. T.S. Eliot, somewhere or another, talked about living with the suspicion one is incapable of loving. Then: Prufrock. & then, Phillip Larkin. Finally, John Ashbery gets at the incapacity better than anyone,( as always) :

'I feel as though
Somebody had just brought me an equation.
I say, "I can't answer this - I know
That it's true, please believe me,
I can see the proof, lofty, invisible
In the sky far above the striped awnings. I just see
That I want it to go on, without
Anybody's getting hurt, and for the shuffling
To resume between me and my side of the night."

(but is it 'real poetry?')

In any case, I'm not championing Ai at the expense of the shit that feels real, and never have been. Robots aren't conscious; and they produce interesting poems. Can we start from there, please? No one is demeaning actual poets, including me; but almost all comments seem to be defending poetry as real against the robots. Yeah, I agree, but I never for a second felt threatened by them - why do so many people here? I didn't think anyone would worry about robot poets replacing poets, but many here seem to be pre-emptively defending against that.

ty for that, I was following off and on when the thread was current, but fell off out of laziness. I’m reading now but it’s not my wheelhouse so it’ll take me a bit, but eager to digest and respond.

I know very little about economics, been reading this & the OP was just kind of rambling, reflecting on that. Emphasizing again that I have no idea what I'm talking about, those graphs seem to correspond to the last stage in what the author of the linked article describes as a cyclical process : strong currencies inevitably devalue themselves, where finally debt is just too high that the central bank begins feverishly to print money and buy up debt until people start fleeing to other currencies.

I feel as though someone had made me a vest
Which I was wearing out of doors into the countryside
Out of loyalty to the person, although
There is no one to see, except me
With my inner vision of what I look like.
The wearing is both a duty and a pleasure
Because it absorbs me, absorbs me too much.

My initial impetus towards what I now understand as philosophy was actually counter-cultural. I came of age in the 1960’s, and in that period there was a strong sense that ‘straight culture’ (means something different now!) was basically hostile towards anything creative, spiritual or good. Remember it was the Vietnam era, there was a strong sense of antagonism between the counter-culture and mainstream culture.

In the decades since, some counter-cultural memes have really begun to affect mainstream society. I think of ‘biosemiotics’ and ‘systems theory’ as some aspects of that, along with environmentalism generally. But overall, science in the sense it was and is deployed by the military-industrial complex, by consumer capitalism, is often dehumanising and alienating and we see the consequences of that writ large in many facets of modern culture.

The reason I ‘cherry pick’ quotations from the likes of Bohr and Heisenberg and others, is because they’re used to illustrate salient points in the context of this whole debate. Many of their aphorisms, in particular, are pregnant with meaning, and in fact Capra’s Tao of Physics is still a counter-cultural classic for good reason. But I know that many of those born in the decades since have no feel for any of those issues - as if a window was opened into another dimension for a brief period of time, then it slammed shut again, and pretty soon at was as if nothing had happened.

And yet..... — Wayfarer

I understand, I grew up around many veterans of the counter-cultural 60s. And, with some (not all) I often got the sense that the antagonism was being held onto at the expense of the thing that was antagonized.

For example: While the Iraq War was an unabashed mess, I remember that many of the veterans of the 60s in my hometown seemed to recapitulate everything that was happening in terms of Vietnam - literally, often. I remember being at a barbecue at a frisbee golf course, listening to people talk about Gulf of Tonkin and WMDs and it wasn't that the parallels weren't there, I mean, it's that the whole animating spirit was the need to recast, piece-by-piece the present in the past. It felt like everyone had been waiting for the dragon to rear its head, the same head, to define themselves against, in the same way

I'm not part of the military-industrial complex (at least in any capacity other than being born American), I believe in God, the afterlife, and prayer. I have a syncretic belief system and think that eudaimonia requires a mesh of spiritual, aesthetic and practical practices, community, and a faith in a life beyond our own.

But, all that said, I do not think that the metaphysical arena is related to any of that. I think it can be entered into, innocently enough, but that, entered into, it is a kind of supra-personal thought- game, with its own autonomous logic, that endlessly recreates itself, gradually stripping away content. In the same way, one can enter into business with a plan to change things for the better, but get caught up in the autonomous logic of business. Lots of things are like this, not just metaphysics. But the point is that arguing for one side - the true, the good, etc - in metaphysical terms is just one necessary aspect for the metaphysical system of argument to propagate (like all systems it lives in time and needs an influx of energy to continue.)

Have you read Hesse's Journey to the East? I read it a long time ago but from what I can recall it was partially the excitement about being a counter-cultural fellow traveller and partially about making sense of how that changes as things fall apart. One thing he talks about is how those on the journey, while believing they're still on the journey, can slowly, frog-in-boiling-water, become something else entirely. That's the lens I'm approaching this from - not a scientism shut-down of the divine. I'm on your side, I'm saying the metaphysical approach rots that side out.

Or, to take another example: last month
I vowed to write more. What is writing?
Well, in my case, it's getting down on paper
Not thoughts, exactly, but ideas, maybe:
Ideas about thoughts. Thoughts is too grand a word.
Ideas is better, though not precisely what I mean.
Someday I'll explain. Not today though.

Some things we do take up a lot more time
And are considered a fruitful, natural thing to do.
I am coming out of one way to behave
Into a plowed cornfield. On my left, gulls,
On an inland vacation. They seem to mind the way
I write.

New Poem: Ode to Bill

[end of poem]

Nodding a curt greeting: "Well, you've been awhile
But now we're back together, which is what counts."
Air in my path, you could shorten this,
But the breeze has dropped, and silence is the last word."

That keeps me from walking up certain steps,
Knocking at certain doors, fear of growing old
Alone, and of finding no one at the evening end
Of the path except another myself

[redacted]

Overall though, I'm interested in why we find this interesting. Poetry feels like the most fragile art form because language is so fleeting and changes so much, and it's emotional content is so personal. So, as a lay poet and songwriter, and as a lover of words, I do feel some sense of being attacked here. If AI can write better poetry than us, and if our poetry is so fragile in the first place, then what does this even achieve for AI, and what is achieved via AI for us? Our words are already faulty and failing. Why should we use Ai to pantomime ourselves and taunt our failures with caricatures of what we've tried to say in the past? — Noble Dust

I think those are really good questions. I’ve felt some similar discomfort. One potential, positive, way of framing that comes to mind is : it helps us, by negation, to focus on what is important to us in poetry. If an AI can do this and this, then maybe it can help us recognize when we, too, are in autopilot, just doing this and this, deluding ourselves. not to shut us down, but refocus.

The second thought is that the AI becomes just another part of the natural world, and its words are just one swirl of things among others - they’re an accretion of language. I’ve been reading Moby Dick and Starbuck gets at Ahab about seeing an offense in something incapable of giving offense. It’s just another part of what is now.

A few choice Poulenc notes....Yes,
It is being free again, the air, it has to keep coming back
Because that's all it's good for.
I want to stay with it out of fear

And the air pours in with piano notes
In its skirts, as though to say, "Look, John,
I've brought these and these" - that is,
A few Beethovens, some Brahmses,

death and dying is scary: that’s the main reason people fear death. Have you seen someone die? It’s not usually a neat fade-to-black. It is itself a trial and tribulation, often as not.

For sure, though there is a 'worldview which includes science-as-worldview'

@fdrake as promised

Some of this is a bit over my head, (or at least, it's just specialized enough that, given what I'm bringing to it, the opportunity cost of parsing it is too high for me.) If and when you get around to it, let me know what you think.

I think this is really interesting with regard to the topic. . Earlier I brought up the possibility that advancing empirical techniques created a fear in those not making the advances that power would be drawn away from them, and that this might explain the co-evolution of metaphysics with empirical investigation. In deferring to 'the text' we see the metaphysician borrowing from the empiricists handbook - appeal to the external. — Isaac

Oh yeah, I did see your power-analysis above and it makes a lot of sense to me.

Riffing on that:

When 'science' is pilfered for a deck of 'science-against-science' cards (quotes),it calls to mind someone in fear of a conquering civilization who believes what they hold dear can only be saved so long as members of that civilization reveal their angelic aspect and swoop down (condescend) to save. Tales of such salvific miracles (ala the 'good samaritan') are sought out, and then held dearly, as one collects stories of the saints, or centurions with a heart of gold. But the backdrop is always the conquering nation one has to stand firm against, relying on the strength of defectors from its ranks (strength derived from the conquering nation.)

But, if you're a believer, it doesn't have to be like this! The faith that moves mountains isn't 'the faith that uses Roman engineering to move mountains, thank you for the help', it's the faith that does something else alongside the Romans. And besides, science and spiritual practice need not be seen in those terms, though it's true members of both sides often cast them that way.

I think we come to rely on predictable patterns in life to take the edge of the scary unpredictable chaos of it. Metaphysics perhaps, offers a verbal trick whereby we can cement these patterns even when we're not living them, just by talking. Is that something like what you're saying? — Isaac

I think so. A lot of this kind of talking ('metaphysical') reminds me of amping yourself up: like looking in the mirror before a date, or bragging before a fight, or running up to the edge of the diving-point, over and over, before you jump off. "you got this, you're the man, you got this, there's nothing outside mind, there's nothing outside mind, there's no ultimate meaning (or: 'there's a clear meaning [x]"), you got this... etc."

Or, on the other hand, like returning to a shrine, or discussing - even arguing - for the sake of the discussion’s (or argument’s) regular, reassuring, cadence, and family of concepts (like seeing a familiar steeple, store, tree predictably arising one after the other as you drive back into your home town after a taxing trip outside.)

I think these are two sides to a very general phenomenon, but the specificity here is: a lot of us drawn to philosophy were blessed with above-average logical or linguistic capacities which led us to shelter in philosophical zones - spaces, which, if not already mastered, were at least susceptible to a progressive mastery in serenity, where any encounter with - or leap into - another zone could be either endlessly deferred or even permanently set aside.

I think all that is good, as with any set of customs, so long as you don’t wall off what’s outside it out of fear. It’s one part, but philosophy tends to lunge toward the whole (well probably many things lunge like that. It seems fame does, for one, and, another example, many ensorcelled by contemporary economics seem to bring a beefed-up ‘invisible hand’ lens (e.g. Game theory, Schelling Points) to explain everything.)

Yeah, it’s crazy how much it learned. And what’s also crazy is gpt-3 is out, but, from what I understand, it’s not available to the public. This is all on last year’s iteration, gpt-2 (modded) I need to find a link for you because apparently it also, only incidentally, learned very basic arithmetic while learning text-generation, which is interesting from a ‘general ai’ perspective (objections ala it’s only generating correct answers by regurgitating math textbook character strings are addressed- I’ll link when I get home)

@Noble Dust I agree that this isn’t poetry per se, but it’s still beautiful at times. I think ‘genuine’ poetry is often something like the smoke generated from an intense spiritual encounter - say smoke rising from an altar, where the sacrifice is the poet’s encounter ( with something) and the poem is the smoke rising up. This would be something like collective smoke filtered through another medium to produce uncanny almost-poem plumes.

The AI was fed poems from many times and genres, and many of the poems it’s produced feel mock-ancient-epic or mock-mannered-Donne or mock-romantic. I have a hunch the selections in the OP stem from post 50s American poetry ( New York School especially comes to mind.)

A lot of times and styles there if you check out the link. This one feels almost like (one aspect of) Wallace Stevens:

Between mouthfuls of apple pie,
they discuss the panda's defection,
the new twelfth-man problem, the low
cardinality of Jesus, and whether
Saint John broke the bread at the Lord's Supper
instead of the guest Aava.
Their talk is either philosophical
on the one hand, or distressing personal
on the other.
Eve, it is whispered, died of exposure.

I think, while agreeing with the distinction between genuine and nongenuine poetry, there’s a beauty here. And formally, technically, this is a wonderful stanza.

Mostly I’ve been slicing and dicing and extracting the good bits while leaving out the AI-junk but it did produce at least one poem coherent from start to finish which, coincidentally, also begins with the death of a woman due (almost) to exposure. The title it chose is odd - ‘Driving to Santa Fe’ - but the rest is a kind of satisfying whole. Here it is:

Driving to Santa Fe

Under the smog of snow a woman
has killed herself because of the pain
she was in. Her husband did not want
to go to the doctor because he said
it wasn't his job to cheer up
people in pain. The tempest is
hiding in the chambers of the man
who keeps the local offices of the Christian
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
The committee is made up of church ladies
from all over the county: Mary Ann Vecchio
from Limerick, Lucille McCann of Morgantown,
and Mrs. Wallace Smyth of Chesterfield.
John Nevin is the investigator for the committee.
The committee keeps trying to get
the coroner to open up an investigation
into the death of Rosemary Phagan,
the woman who died in the tobacco barn
on the Mount of Olives. Mary Ann Vecchio
and Mrs. Wallace Smyth came down
to Phagan's wake and were so overcome
by the magnitude of the loss
that they went back to Limerick and wrote
to the coroner. Now the committee
is trying to investigate the death
of Mrs. Phagan because she is a friend
of Mrs. Vecchio's and Mrs. Wallace
Smyth's son is a passenger on a bus
that was supposed to have taken them
to watch the sunrise on Palm Sunday.
The committee thinks that Mary Ann Vecchio
and Mrs. Wallace Smyth have conspired
to kill Mrs. Phagan in Limerick.



I think this last poem, especially, is truly remarkable.

What is it now with me
And is it as I have become?
Is there no state free from the boundary lines
Of before and after? The window is open today

New Poem : Fear of Death

[end of poem]

I do not think that this
Will be my last trip to Autumn Lake
Have some friends among many severe heads
We all scholars sitting under tree
Waiting for nut to fall. Some of us studying
Persian and Aramaic, others the art of distilling
Weird fragrances out of nothing, from the ground up.
In each the potential is realized, the two wires
Are crossing.

By air from other places to here isn't much, but
It doesn't count, at least not the way the
Shore distance - leaf, tree, stone; optional (fern, frog, skunk(;
And then stone, tree leaf; then another optional - count
It's like the "machines" of the 19th-century Academy.
Turns out you didn't need all that training
To do art - that it was even better not to have it. Look at
The Impressionists - some of 'em had it, too, but preferred
to forget it
In vast composed canvases by turns riotous
And indigent in color, from which only the notion of space is lacking.

Leading liot act to foriage is activity
Of Chinese philosopher here on Autumn Lake thoughtfully
inserted in
Plovince of Quebec - stop it! I will not. The edge hugs
The lake with ever-more-paternalistic insistence, whose effect
Is in the blue way up ahead. The distance

New Poem : On Autumn Lake

I understand the critique of positivism or empiricism, or verificationism. Condensed: The empiricist's methods cannot be empirically verified, and so they have to ground what they're doing in something nonempirical. You can't verify verificationism, no. The snake eats it own tail, we stand and watch....

But the OP wasn't advocating for the opposite, so we're denied the satisfaction of watching the snake's own inevitable suicide (the snake's alive :mask: ) The point isn't one side is wrong, so it has to be the other. The point is each side can endlessly change the goalposts, and adust their language

For example, Verificationism is wrong, yet

Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, John Haldane. — Wayfarer

we are directed to the sources, verified. And their verification is important - one can cite Bohr, but not Velikovsky. One cites the SEP, or double underlines a quote is from a canonized text. The whole point of Bohr is that he's verified, that's why the quotes feel like they have a pique, or victory-oomph, when quoted, no?

I point out, that, despite your rejection of verification, you compulsively reference verified sources qua verified. Though you reject pure experience as authoritative, and refer to the non-empirical, a priori methodology, you always approach that methodology via empirically-derived understandings of which texts are authoritative. Bohr, not Velikovsky. SEP, not reddit. It becomes clear that, following your lead, we learn, through experience, how to approach experience. We have folded-over, double empiricism.

Well, doesn't a whole universe of objections pop up? But this subtle shifting will characterize all metaphysics. You can shuttle things around things endlessly. If you're clever enough, you can do the inverse of the move I just did to you, back to me, and then, if I'm clever enough, I can do it back to you; and if neither of us are clever enough, someone will come later to do it for us. And it can go on forever, if we're clever enough, or, at least, if the people that come after us are.

But what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy.

In other words, (at minimum) one needs the courage - nerve - to question questions and problematize problems without giving-in to the temptation to offer "answers" or "solutions" (à la self-help / sophistry), in order to do philosophy well (that is, limiting 'beliefs-in' to make room for agency (i.e. capabilities for judging, etc)). — 180 Proof

(From another here, only not attributing because the context in which the quote was quoted so differs)

Rilke:

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer"

It might leave something out, but I don't think so. Maybe there are different ways to approach the same thing. Clenched resolve or long-lashed languid acceptance, we're all circling around the same idea.

@Wayfarer When I think about the OP, it seems to me less an attack on metaphysics than a zoomed-out (or frame-adjacent) recalibrating. Metaphysics exists, but it's not what it thinks it is. I think one tack to approaching the OP, is, rather than to ascribe to it a surreptitious metaphysics against which one can argue ,instead to see it as an invitation to reflect on what we do when we argue metaphysics.

Like, personally.

I was trying to push at you a bit (push back!) about why your posts tend to take as foil a proponent of scientisim who is then, himself, pushed back with quotes from the relevant authorities. What would it mean if the last proponent of scientism was pushed over with a quote? What would you do to commemorate the occasion? What are we doing when we cite Bohr against Churchland?