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verbose
verbose
04:07
@Tsundoku I'm still wondering whether the data is available for download
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
05:03
@verbose That's strange, someone else tried ChatGPT on the same question and it gave the correct answer. I guess you were unlucky with it.
verbose
verbose
05:45
@Randal'Thor nah, I marked ChatGPT's answer as useless and when asked what could make it useful, I told ChatGPT what the correct answer was
So now ChatGPT will give the correct answer to that question
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
06:17
Oh really? I didn't know it has such a smart learning capability.
Now I'm almost tempted to say something positive about ChatGPT :-P
@Tsundoku Now they have 4 close votes each. If anyone wants to review them, the review items are here and here.
Mithical
Mithical
I didn't think it works like that? AFAIK any conversations it has are not added to the training data.
I just tried it and it gave me "Tales of the Madman Underground" by John Barnes.
 
1 hour later…
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
07:40
@verbose Well, HTML is perfectly downloadable ;-)
@Randal'Thor And still no one has explained what makes those questions "opinion based" or what sort of details are required.
Surely, the terms transcendentalism, romanticism and ethics are sufficiently well understood? People who don't understand those terms should withhold from voting instead of close voting.
 
3 hours later…
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
11:07
@Mithical Would be dangerous if it did, come to think of it - then people less thoughtful than verbose might train it on false information or worse.
Like the early (Microsoft?) AI Twitter bot: they let it loose to train itself on data from whatever people say on Twitter, and within 24 hours it started saying stuff like "Hitler was right".
Tay (bot)
Tay was an artificial intelligence chatbot that was originally released by Microsoft Corporation via Twitter on March 23, 2016; it caused subsequent controversy when the bot began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, causing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch. According to Microsoft, this was caused by trolls who "attacked" the service as the bot made replies based on its interactions with people on Twitter. It was replaced with Zo. == Background == The bot was created by Microsoft's Technology and Research and Bing divisions, and...
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
12:03
@Randal'Thor Does that say more about AI or about humanity nowadays?
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
The latter. AI isn't really an independent mind, it just repeats stuff that humans have said.
 
3 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
15:27
0
Q: The American Transcentalism and the European Romantic movement of the 19th century

StarckmanIn the paragraph concerning the American Transcentalism movement, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists the following features defining this movement: emphasis on the subjective nature of human experience and existence highlighting often even a fairly mystical holism, argument for the pr...

history-of-literature
Mithical
Mithical
15:38
@Tsundoku I don't think anybody owes the OP an explanation. Close votes provide a reason within the system itself, and downvotes etc. very much intentionally do not require comments. Demanding that the close voters provide an explanation, in bold, doesn't seem like the best way to have a discussion about it.
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
16:21
@Mithical The OP apparently can't see the close votes, no one has posted a comment that would explain why there are close votes and the fourth close vote was cast after I commented that the "opinion based" close reason was absurd. So how will the OP know what to improve after the question has been closed? By mind reading?
Mithical
Mithical
17:04
I mean, if it gathers 5 votes, the close reason will be displayed. I currently see votes for opinion-based and needs focus. If it gets closed as one of those options, that'll be displayed to the OP and will provide a starting point for editing.
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
17:15
As I mentioned before, why would well-understood terms such as American Transcendentalism, European Romanticism and ethical philosophy need focus? Or in what way is the question opinion-based? (It's not asking for the opinions of potential answerers.)
Mithical
Mithical
17:41
@Tsundoku I can understand why it would be too broad; asking about the ethical philosophy of an entire literary movement can be seen as very broad. Along the same lines, because of that broadness, which contains many different works, I can see why people might think it's opinion-based - it'll depend on what works you're looking at.
I don't think it's necessarily close-worthy, or I would've closed it. But I'm saying it's understandable.
I probably would have phrased it as "Does <movement> have a defining ethical philosophy?" instead.
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
18:00
Why would Transcendentalism and Romanticism suddenly make the questions too broad when other questions about literary movements weren't? Examples: symbolism and romanticism, romanticism and existentialism, romanticism, realism.
@Mithical I'm not sure why you add "defining". (FWIW, those questions don't assume that there is an explicit ethical philosophy.)
Mithical
Mithical
@Tsundoku Because that's how I read the question; asking about a defining philosophy within that body of works. If it's asking about every portrayal of ethics within those movevemts, that really would be too broad ;)
 
1 hour later…
verbose
verbose
19:34
I agree with @Tsundoku, those questions seem perfectly reasonable to me.
verbose
verbose
20:08
I also agree with @Mithical, close voters don't owe the OP an explanation. By virtue of having gained rep, users with the ability to cast close votes have established themselves as folks whose judgment and knowledge we trust, and on whom we rely to make the site more democratic. Were the site larger or active enough for it to become necessary, those users would also serve a necessary custodial function such that obvious spam wouldn't need to wait for a moderator's intervention.
Does that mean that close voters are always right? No, in this case I think the questions are perfectly legitimate, and clear enough, and well-scoped enough. But so what? Leaving comments below the question might alert other potential close voters that perhaps what's going on is something they don't fully understand.
A question I posted on music.se was saved because someone who knows the music genre I was asking about commented saying the close voters were wrong. I still had a back-and-forth with one of those close voters (I assume), who insisted, even as he made the most egregious errors about the music, that the question was in fact something it wasn't. But the question remains open,
because folks who lack the specific expertise, and who might therefore wish to vote to close, defer to what folks with expertise say in the comments.
Generally speaking, that is.
On another topic when it comes to the topic-challenge, how do we decide between two proposed topics that have the same number of net votes? The age of the proposal?
Mithical
Mithical
20:24
That sounds about right.
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
21:09
May 30, 2021 at 16:28, by Tsundoku
If there is a tie between the suggestions, we pick the oldest one. See Rule for selecting a topic challenge among those with the same number of votes.
This is why I added the date or month when a suggestion was posted to a number of existing suggestions. (The date gets a bit harder to find after a few edits on a community wiki post.)
@verbose I hope you voted to keep them open.
verbose
verbose
21:34
@Tsundoku yeap
as a mod, you can see that, can't you?
I thought mods were like the panopticon, they can see everything that goes on on this site
I still remember when I once mentioned @Mithical in a conversation in a room that had just BESW and me in it, and our lovely mod promptly chimed in to respond to what I had said
Mithical
Mithical
:)
@verbose And yes, we can see that you voted to Leave Open in the same place you can: literature.stackexchange.com/review/close/history - if you have enough reputation, you should be able to see all recent reviews in that list, not just your own.
verbose
verbose
21:49
oh ah. Who knew.
I mean, the mods did, obvs. They're omniscient
Mithical
Mithical
There are... a lot of little features that most people don't know about.
There are even tools most mods don't know about :P
verbose
verbose
oh?
Mithical
Mithical
Or, to be more precise, there are tools that most mods have had no occasion to use and / or the exact rules for how they function aren't documented. Especially for chat.
verbose
verbose
ah
give us an example
I mean, if you can do so without then having to kill us
Mithical
Mithical
Did you know that it's possible to migrate a chat room to be hosted on a different site?
However, that's only able to be done by a moderator on the source site.
verbose
verbose
21:54
no, I didn't know that.
how odd
Is it possible for a mod to edit the "Let us continue this conversation in chat" message to say, "Get a room, fellas"?
Mithical
Mithical
Technically, yes, mods can edit any comment :P
verbose
verbose
well then I'm sorely disappointed that despite the stellar galaxy (is that redundant?) of mods we've had on this site, from Hamlet and you to Randolf and Christophe, nobody has yet done so
Mithical
Mithical
(radio announcer voice) "...if the sound of unlimited power sounds attractive to you, have I got news for you! We're looking for brave souls to step up to the plate to shoulder that responsibility. Call 888-lit-mod today to throw your hat in the ring! And remember kids, with great power comes great responsibility."
2
verbose
verbose
yeah, I've been thinking about that and what it boils down to is, I'm too opinionated to make a good mod. It's better for all concerned that I not be in a position to have my whims enforced.
Mithical
Mithical
...hahaha. The TL (network-wide mod chatroom) is notorious for being chock-full of the most opinionated and stubborn people on the network.
verbose
verbose
22:03
let's just say I'm grateful for being at least self-aware enough to know that about myself, then :-)
Mithical
Mithical
The people who hold strong opinions are usually the ones who care the most about the site. You just have to be able to put your opinions aside and enforce consensus whether you agree with it or not (within reason).
Last week I had a protracted argument in the TL that lasted for hours, arguing with a mod from another site. He's one of the most stubborn and opinionated people I know, and also one of my favorite mods.
verbose
verbose
yeah well I don't take LitSE personally? But it matters a lot to me?
Mithical
Mithical
What do you mean by you don't take it personally?
verbose
verbose
I mean, if someone disagrees with me or vice-versa, even if the disagreement is pretty strong, I don't assume that they hate me, nor do I hate them.
Mithical
Mithical
That's good, that's how it should be.
verbose
verbose
22:13
One of the things I like most about SE sites in general is that people do care about (1) intellectual honesty and soundness (2) accessibility to a non-specialized readership. Even Wikipedia doesn't compare; English Wikipedia is completely terrible, for example, about articles on Indian musicians. They routinely delete articles on performers who are extremely well-known in India
why? because the newspapers that the articles rely on for citations aren't considered major enough .... because they're in (say) Marathi and the powers that be at wikipedia.en don't know from Marathi newspapers
That's just one example of the intellectual arrogance and smugness that Wikipedia has that I'ven't generally seen on SE sites.
Mithical
Mithical
Yep. TBF, we have been accused of having a very Western approach to literature, which I don't think is necessarily unfounded even if that specific post wasn't raising things constructively. Our topic challenges help to a degree with diversifying the sources we're using, but that doesn't change the general approaches that we take when consuming or analyzing the work.
Anyway, it's after midnight and after my bedtime, so this is a train of thought that I'll have to catch from a station in the morning. Later \o
verbose
verbose
Yes, but we wouldn't delete questions on, say, Korean literature because we don't consider it major enough
bobble
bobble
Did we end up deleting the answer which refused to explain its reasoning?
The one where the poster accused everyone of being too White
verbose
verbose
But the Wikipedia editors happily deleted an article on Chandrashekhar Naringrekar, which would be hilarious if it weren't so ghastly
@bobble I think so
gn, @Mithical
I mean, I bet if someone pointed the Wikipedia editors to this photograph of Naringrekar allowing George Harrison to play his (Naringrekar's) surbahar, they'd promptly concede that yes, Naringrekar is a major figure.
Mithical
Mithical
@bobble no
verbose
verbose
22:23
user image
But Naringrekar's standing in Indian classical music circles is every bit as high as Harrison's in western popular music, so why tf should anyone care to educate the Wikipedia editors? Better to just curse them as benighted
bobble
bobble
Yep, still up literature.stackexchange.com/questions/23788/…
verbose
verbose
@Mithical oh I'm wrong, then.
Mithical
Mithical
@verbose you were probably thinking of literature.stackexchange.com/questions/67/…
verbose
verbose
no, I was thinking of the same person @bobble was; I commented on one of his/her/their posts saying the assumption that all active posters on this site were White was baffling and unsupported.
and go to bed already, @Mithical
Mithical
Mithical
I'm in bed...
verbose
verbose
22:30
well, then, quit reading this chat and pay attention to whoever it is that's sharing your bed
or go to sleep, if nobody

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