9 Comments

I think what we all instinctively look for is what C. S. Lewis was for Tolkien (and vice versa). Candid critique and genuine care for each other's work. So far one it seems to be the case that one has to rely on serendipity for this to happen. Claude (and I suppose workshops) can recapitulate parts of it, which is ofc better than being completely on one's own.

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yeah, i guess a lot of my problem was that my workshops were academic & not chosen friends /collaborators really...i actually dont know that much about what the inklings literally did in their meetings process wise...sthg to look into...

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i recently read this book about the Inklings, it's very good! https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-inklings-humphrey-carpenter?variant=42098643599394

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Dec 5Edited

The reproductive blindness is probably more of a "let's avoid bad press risks" than an AI alignment thing. Also there's some things you've kind of misunderstood in your comments on AI and how they should work (e.g., reproduction) but I'm not sure it's super productive or demanded for me to pen a long technical digression in this comments thread.

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I feel like the “organized sessions where people work together on writing” that does what you're looking for is pretty obvious: it's a writer's room on a commercial project. There's nothing else more interested in what people want to read, and the head writer (and creative director, and CEO, and shareholders) is monetarily incentivized to improve the ability of the writers participating, to engender a positive work environment and to measure audience reactions. It doesn't always work of course, but that's what it's trying to do. If that's what you want, working on a project like that is probably the way to go.

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Claude 3.5 sonnet does not have sex blindness. Unless I’m misunderstanding what you mean by that.

3.0 would not engage with my work, even under the pretense of “it’s fiction,” but 3.5 has no such prudishness or moral qualms.

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goodness gracious, not my experience

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>it feels unnatural to be like, “Well, this poem has thirteen lines, it doesn’t rhyme, it is about a dog” for a full quarter of the workshop time.

if it doesn't rhyme, someone has to tell them!!!

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Yes, yes. AI chatbots suck as prose generators. They might be okay at generating outlines (I dislike writing to an outline, so I wouldn't know). But what they excel at is simulating a reader response.

I like to make Claude pretend I'm a canonical author and discuss my work in a Serious Academic Tone. This is mostly just a delightful ego-boost, but it's also a way of discovering things that are latent in my writing, which helps stimulate ideas for future work.

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