Just-So Stories

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

The purpose of this post isn’t to complain about Grokpedia. Look, I wont’ deny there’s a mini rant on that, because it unwittingly called me stupid and WORSE it called me OLD which at my age is VERY sensitive. It also utterly failed to get real cultural differences. However the point is where Grok learned this nonsense, which is US. And also how this nonsense causes problems and poisons minds.

So — does a little dance — rant first, explanation after.

My husband, who for some reason believes annoying me is as good as exercise by raising my heart rate, went trolling Grokpedia, which I’ll grant it, is less biased than Wikipedia. What it is is a fabulist of the first order, creating “facts” by taking things out of context and weaving “just so” stories around them.

For instance, it confidently assures all and sundry that my biggest influences were Ursula Le Guin, Joan Vinge (!) and a third woman whose name I can’t even remember now, and whom I might in fact never have read, just due to the vagaries of when books were available.

Okay, fine, all of you who are groaning and saying “Ursula Le Guin is responsible for you being a science fiction writer, woman!” are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. But not the way Grok intended. Look, annoying someone so much they become writers is not the same as influencing how they write. None of that makes any sense.

Do I know where Grok got that bullshit? Well, yes, yes, I do. You see, it made up a little just-so story to go with it. According to it, my brother had me read these women so that I knew it was okay for women to write science fiction, and to encourage my ambition to write which was not a profession for women “under the Salazar regime.”

PEOPLE. That gigantic groan that just made the entire Western US tremble was not the ghost of dinosaurs, screaming from their fossil formations. That was in fact me, myself and I.

How and where do I start? That story above is so wrong it’s not even wrong. It’s a parallel reality where the moon is made of green cheese and Indy plays the violin in an orchestra.

First, my brother was NOT trying to encourage me to read science fiction. (Much less write it. My family had long accepted that I would at some point write, but they expected I would, like the rest of the family, write POETRY, which is an acceptable hobby for everyone in Portugal. The country doesn’t have a large enough population to sustain FICTION writing as a profession, so hobby was what they expected.) He was in fact — poor man — trying to hide science fiction books from me as at my age (the person who loaned him books reminded me recently — he found me on FB — that I was 9 not 11 as I’ve been ASSUMING) he thought they’d confuse me. (They did. But not more than history books or adventures in other continents did. It was glorious.) Also, because some of them were… uh…. spicy. (I didn’t get most of the spice. Like kids don’t.)

When he failed at this endeavor, he tried to control the books I got my greedy little mitts on, by not bringing the spicy/weirder ones home. By then it was much too late because I’d started taking the train to the city and READING SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS BY STANDING UP IN THE BOOK STORE NEAR THE SPINNER RACK UNTIL CHASED OUT. Then coming back the next day.

By the time I was twelve, I was blowing my birthday money on science fiction unless mom caught me first and spent it on useless stuff like shoes. By the time I was fourteen and engaged in various low-paying but paying gigs, my brother gave up and went halves on me on books, when we were both semi-broke. (Yes, pooling your resources to buy the equivalent of a $5 book is pathetic. Thou shalt most certainly DEAL.)

But…. did he then try to encourage me to read female science fiction authors?

Uh….. so, this is where Grok thinks I’m stupid and need to see someone like me doing something before I try it. This is the kind of bizarre affliction I never even UNDERSTOOD. People, I did things because I was bored. I often tried things I didn’t think were possible at all. Because they looked interesting.

Does the woman born in a small rural village in Portugal who came to the US and became a fiction writer in her THIRD LANGUAGE look to you like someone who sits around waiting to be “represented” in an endeavor so she knows it’s societally approved of and she can do it?

In fact, ladies, gentlemen and small pterodactyls, do I look like I ever gave a fig about whether anything I wanted to do, from whom I married to how I dress, to my hobbies, passions or profession, was something society — ANY SOCIETY — approved of?

Look, if I’d done what was approved of in Portugal when I was a kid, I’d be much better at crochet (my one womanly gift. Okay, crosstitch too, though that might fall under therapy against anxiety), I’d be passionately interested in telenovelas (they were radio novelas, but trust me, same same), I’d engage in a lot of celebrity gossip. Oh, and I’d have MAYBE because I was “smart” gone through ninth grade, then got out to do something societally approved of like secretary or clerk, until I married someone who lived not very far away.

This had nothing to do with Salazar (more on that later) in any way, shape or purple nothing. It has to do with Portuguese culture. The EU has made a lot of it go underground and it’s not spoken of openly, but I’d be shocked if women are considered as smart as men. And a bookish woman is an abomination. AND a woman who is interested in geeky stuff will find a way to disguise it, because she’ll be under suspicion of not being quite straight. Now in my time, before heavy indoctrination by the EU, this was more so. With bells on. I ROUTINELY got told by people including family members and teachers that I was in no way as smart as a boy and would only hurt myself trying to be. (People like my brother stopped saying it after a while. My dad never did. And mom advised me to PRETEND not to be as smart as boys because otherwise I’d only invite trouble.) I didn’t care probably because of a touch of the tisms, but also because I WAS BORED and just wanted to do things that looked interesting.

This gets to where Grok is calling me old. People, I was SIX when Salazar died. I was 11 when his successor was toppled by the international socialists. (Some other AI thought I approved of the Salazar regime because I compared it to FDR’s. THAT was a leap. I did compare it to FDR’s (without the minimal holding back FDR had due to our system of government) because he cribbed FDR’s speeches, even, for crying out loud. In no way did I mean to imply that made it non national-socialist or good. As far as I’m concerned both Salazar and FDR were national socialists and to hell with them.) This doesn’t mean I approved of the international socialists that followed, on account of they sold out millions of people in the Portuguese African colonies to the USSR and their Cuban mercenaries, and filled mass graves (As communists always do) and also made my teenage life a misery, due to my tendency to say exactly what I think to teachers who are spewing indoctrination. The later is a minor issue compared to the other crap they were doing, but very close and personal.

Now do I know where Grok got all this load of crap? Oh, yeah. I know. Because during SP I pointed out I’m tired of people trying to claim that women weren’t in science fiction till yesterday, and pointed out I knew these female writers from early on when I WAS A KID. Which it then confabulated with my complaints about sexism while I was growing up (to the extent I noticed it, which to be fair, wasn’t much, it bothered me. I tended to bowl over any discouragement or even shouts to stop, but it bothered me) and with the fact my brother introduced me to SF/F (more or less inadvertently) and wove it into this just so tale. The Salazar thing is probably because the idiots on the left attribute all sexism to right-wing (which Salazar wasn’t anymore than FDR was, not AMERICAN right wing. Though granted European right wing) regimes and to the fact some bright bulb thought I’d come here to “escape” when the national socialist regime fell. At eleven. By myself. (What can I say. I’m precocious. I headed to the beach, got some duck-shaped water-wings, and floated all the way across the Atlantic. Needs must, because I STILL can’t swim.)

(Note, I’d be proud and happy if Grok reported this as the way I came to America. Mostly because it’s absurd.)

Before I get to the point beyond the rant: the first woman writer that had ANY impact on my reading (I don’t know how much impact she had on my writing, if any) was Anne McCaffrey, because I was of an age (late teens early twenties) when she was published in Portugal to fall headlong into Pern. Before that I read women like I read men or small purple dinosaurs. I didn’t care, so long as it was words on the page. Heck, I preferred science fiction, but I read everything else too.

In fact, if you’re going to be keeping score, the female writers I read most in my early to late teens were Pearl S. Buck and Agatha Christie, one slowly giving way to the other, neither in science fiction and only Agatha Christie rivaling the spaceship on the cover books.

My favorite authors for the largest part of my growing up were, to no one’s surprise, Robert A. Heinlein, followed at a slight trailing distance by Simak (look, deal) and Bradbury, and at a longer loping distance by Poul Anderson and Phil Dick. Further back and mostly falling under “I’ll read their book if available” were Van Vogt, Asimov and a dozen people I can’t call to mind RIGHT NOW because coffee still hasn’t had any noticeable effect, for some reason. (A very busy weekend is my guess at the reason.)

Biggest influences? Robert A. Heinlein. And as an adult, a bunch of other people, including Pratchett. (And Pournelle.) My reading has always been wide and varied and I steal story telling tricks from everyone, including real history.

Right, now the relevant part of this: Why did Grok create this bizarre just-so story out of a reality that didn’t even vaguely corresponds to its story? Because Grok learned confabulation from humans. When faced with dispersed and unclear facts, it constructs a just-so story. As humans do.

So, you know, Portuguese born science fiction writer mentioned her brother introduced her to science fiction, and she mentions these female writers. Also, the other side says she ran here when Salazar’s regime fell. AHA! this was why her brother introduced her to female writers.

People do this ALL THE TIME. Continuously. With relish (and sometimes mustard.) Not just the left, but every human does it. About things that are either obscure, or which they don’t want to spend months researching. We get hold of three or four disparate facts and run with them into a “just so story” that explains EVERYTHING.

This is how we get people assuring us that say Neanderthals had no sense of direction at all. Now I know that’s partly from brain structures, but as older daughter in law pointed out, they colonized all of Europe for a long time, and surely they couldn’t have moved around as a vast pack, afraid to lose the rest of the tribe. They had to go hunting and then come home after all.

This is how Marija Gimbutas invented an entirely female paradise before men dastardly invented patriarchy. The entire story falls to pieces if you poke it and not just because she confused bull’s heads with uteri, but because it has no internal psychological sense (like, if a matriarchal society was so perfect, why did men overthrow it? It’s not like they were a separate species.) Sure all of it is based on shards, misinterpreted figures and a lot of wishful thinking. BUT it’s a just so story and it made people who wanted to believe in mythical women who were communal, giving, and not in the slightest human, very happy.

This is how, of course, Marx constructed his theory which had nothing to do with real economics, and was 99% the wishful thinking of a grifter consumed by envy.

This is how Antonio Gramsci retconned Marxism to apply to people who could tan and who, unlike those traitors of the working class who chose country over class in WWI were NATURAL communist, and therefore the future.

None of it makes sense, if you think it applies to real humans. Real humans don’t think a certain way because they tan a certain color.

BUT they’re just so stories and because humans like just so stories, they eat them up with a spoon. Each of these bits of nonsense confuse a lot of people and make them believe horrible things and commit murder and worse (yes, there is worse) under the grip of just so stories.

90% or sometimes more of what I do here at ATH is poking holes in just-so stories that are being pushed as psy-ops to make you act in ways that aren’t good for you (or the world, or anyone.)

Every time you’re presented with a story, be it for why you shouldn’t allow data centers, why AI is going to take all your jobs, why the socialists will win forever, why we’re all gonna DIIIIIIIE, etc. etc. etc. ask yourself “How would this story play if happened to REAL humans who are actual individuals and don’t act in prescribed ways?” I mean I won’t request that you imagine everyone in the story is like me, because that’s highly unlikely. But I hate to tell you how much even one person with a touch of the tisms and no idea of HOW he/she’s supposed to act, let alone any intention of obeying can screw up a just-so story. And my brothers and sisters in tism are everywhere in the world and everywhen in history.

The left routinely makes the mistake of assuming people are vast groups of widgets. The right does too, until someone points out it makes no sense.

Because humans and clankers have a lot in common when it comes to Just-So stories. And all of it p*sses me off. Which must be my justification for this rant.

That and telling you to do what my mom complained I always did: When a story is too perfect, for the love of heaven, poke holes in it. The life you save might be your own. The liberty you save might be all of ours.

ARGH. UPDATE: I forgot to mention I’m conducting this blog’s fundraiser till the 15th (which will be fun since it’s a day after surgery. Never mind).

DAY SIX OF ACCORDING TO HOYT’S ANNUAL FUNDRAISER.

(Note there wasn’t one for Christmas last year, as NML did well enough I skipped the thing that makes me uncomfortable.)

Jerry Pournelle was the first person to insist what I do here has value and I should be paid. I ignored him because it makes me uncomfortable. However, as this blog and responsibilities associated with it have grown, my family thinks I owe it to them to allow it to pay at least a fraction of what a job that eats this much of time would.

So, if you find value in the blog, please contribute commensurately, understanding this has cost me not just in time and worry (not so long ago credible worry I’d be debanked or worse) but also in exposure to some very nasty people for both me and my entire family. (As I pointed out sometime ago when people were complaining that Glenn Reynolds doesn’t “need” money and shouldn’t fundraise, every blogger, large or small, to the right of Lenin has paid a price for what he or she does. And some of it is monetary. The rest is honestly probably ultimately medical. Fundraising can’t compensate for this, but it at least helps our families cope.)

If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107

IF YOU WANT THE FULL SPIEL AND EXPLANATION IT’S HERE: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty

100 thoughts on “Just-So Stories”

  1. verrrrry Innterestink

    Many similarities. I managed to read Philip Wylie before High School (Generation of Vipers).

    During my mid life crises, F Paul Wilson was a thing.

    Now all I have to do is start writing more than a page at a time.

    Like

      1. “Evil should get its comeuppance” isn’t quite a human universal but it bloody well should be. I think everybody ought to like Repairman Jack.

        Well, everybody except the evil stupids. But screw those guys anyways.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. When evil characters don’t pay for their crimes I get quite annoyed with the writer. ☹️

          Even better is when the punishment truly fits the crime and they suffer exactly what they inflicted on innocent people.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. “When evil characters don’t pay for their crimes I get quite annoyed with the writer.”

            I’ve been having a great deal of fun with the evil characters being their own punishment. The harder they work to f- over the good guys, the better things go for the good guys and the worse it gets for the bad ones. And best part, it is their own fault.

            Also they get beaten up a lot. 2 megatons per second, Mr. Bad Guy is having a bad day. Very briefly, right before becoming plasma. ~:D

            Like

  2. Ref: “”(like, if a matriarchal society was so perfect, why did men overthrow it? It’s not like they were a separate species.)””

    One point of difference between Jewish and Islamic (and, admittedly, more than a few Christian) societies is that, while all of them have some concept of a Patriarchal Overlord in the Sky, and the societies tend to internalize that, the Jewish Societies are STRONGLY Matrilineal! “You always know who the Mother is!” I believe that this is part of the reason why the Israelis have succeeded in making the Desert Bloom, where no one else could – it’s a different mind set inculcated literally at the breast!

    There are some Christian societies which recognize that, with a few of them – Irish Catholics and “Old Country Greek Orthodox” from my own experience – being almost fiercely Matriarchal within the Hearth and Home, even in controlling employed unmarried males of the household to the point that it is within my living memory that every Friday night, most of the employed males in those household came home and gave Momma their pay envelope – she kept most of it and allowed them just enough to ‘enjoy time with the boys’ down at the pub or taverna on Friday and Saturday nights, with the clear expectation that said boys would be IN CHURCH on Sunday morning.

    As we saw in Ferguson, MO a number of years ago, and something that I found down in Louisiana years earlier – if a young man gets cross ways with the Aunties and Grannies among the Black Community – especially those where the nastier drug dealing gangs are not a problem – said young male, no matter how much larger he may be, will find himself dragged home by his ear!

    Liked by 2 people

        1. And some came back. Today I don’t remember why someone asked me if I had Irish ancestry. I explained the little bit I have, and the person was highly gratified. (I THINK complimenting my fluency with words, but it was a crazy day and I might be misremembering.)

          Like

    2. Ref: the males of the household giving Momma the pay envelope, that was a prominent passage early in How Green Was My Valley (the book, anyway — I’ve never seen the movie) too. It was an important illustration of how the Morgan household ran, from Huw Morgan’s point of view.

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Ref: “”(like, if a matriarchal society was so perfect, why did men overthrow it? It’s not like they were a separate species.)””

    One point of difference between Jewish and Islamic (and, admittedly, more than a few Christian) societies is that, while all of them have some concept of a Patriarchal Overlord in the Sky, and the societies tend to internalize that, the Jewish Societies are STRONGLY Matrilineal! “You always know who the Mother is!” I believe that this is part of the reason why the Israelis have succeeded in making the Desert Bloom, where no one else could – it’s a different mind set inculcated literally at the breast!

    There are some Christian societies which recognize that, with a few of them – Irish Catholics and “Old Country Greek Orthodox” from my own experience – being almost fiercely Matriarchal within the Hearth and Home, even in controlling employed unmarried males of the household to the point that it is within my living memory that every Friday night, most of the employed males in those household came home and gave Momma their pay envelope – she kept most of it and allowed them just enough to ‘enjoy time with the boys’ down at the pub or taverna on Friday and Saturday nights, with the clear expectation that said boys would be IN CHURCH on Sunday morning.

    As we saw in Ferguson, MO a number of years ago, and something that I found down in Louisiana years earlier – if a young man gets cross ways with the Aunties and Grannies among the Black Community – especially those where the nastier drug dealing gangs are not a problem – said young male, no matter how much larger he may be, will find himself dragged home by his ear!

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I looked you up in Grokipedia, which I’d never looked at before, and may not again. It gave Anne McCaffrey as the third influence, which at least makes sense. Not mentioning Heinlein or Pratchett is a problem, though. And it did mention that you were six and eleven when those regimes were toppled.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Yes, but apparently I required coaxing on why I could be an sf writer.
      Interesting. i swear that’s changed. And McCaffrey only appeared in Portugal when I was… 19? Weirdly The White Dragon was the one book. I found the others after I got married.

      Like

      1. Jerry Pournelle the same? Mote came out in 1974 pretty sure I read that as a teenager In NZ and yes I read the white dragon many times in the same era, The white dragon was published 1978. But books distribution can vary across countries, I guess its how much someone get excited.

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        1. Pournelle was translated REALLY late.
          Mostly I read him in 92, when our local library only carried him and …. PIERS ANTHONY? (I have a very low tolerance for puns in sf. Well, bad puns.)

          Like

    3. anyway, I SWEAR it was some other woman. Possibly Barbara Hambly whom I read but wasn’t, you know? And also wasn’t published in Portuguese.
      NOT MENTIONING HEINLEIN is a capital crime. other than people like Shakespeare and Jane Austen and such he’s my MAIN influence.

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        1. No.

          That would actually be pretty crazy even by Musk’s standards. (Not that I should throw stones.)

          I’m not sure how they tell it to generate what article when.

          Anyway, I basically haven’t gone into looking up grokipedia for my own field yet.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. They generate it on some date, and keep it for a while.

            I don’t know how Grokipedia works yet. I do think it would be hilarious to study wikipedia, grokipedia, and maybe uncyclopedia or something, just so that I coudl have some justification in telling academics that grokipedia is not necessarily worse than listening to academics.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. “Grokipedia doesn’t lie intentionally with an agenda.”

                It just repeats the lies told by others, and occasionally accidentally hallucinates something out of thin air. ~:D

                This is the problem with training bots on the Interwebz. So much of the Interwebz is balderdash, you get the old GIGO problem. Because bots weigh the writings of the puppy-kickers the same as Sad Puppies, just ferinstance.

                Liked by 2 people

            2. around the time Citizendium was first brought on line to try to unseat Wikipedia as THE PREMIER form of on line open reference …

              I had a rep with Wiki at the time, and thought about registering with the folks over at Citizendium, only to find out that they were, to put it kindly, prigs.

              Despite having significant professional creds, and a recommendation to one of their ‘Plank Owners’ in the computer field, they just weren’t interested in someone who didn’t have Ivy creds.

              nor in someone who deliberately chose to be a true, old fashioned country doctor.

              Like

          2. There was a wiki site that did that, though it was more of a parody thing. Someone recently created (as a joke) a “wiki” site that was just AI hallucinations. Pages are apparently generated on the fly as you open them. I haven’t been there, though I’ve heard it was amusing to check out.

            Like

            1. Halupedia! That was the one.

              Yeah, Halupedia, Grokipedia, and Wikipedia.

              Like

  6. LOL! I can’t stop laughing. :). Every other sentence made me literally laugh out loud, probably scaring the neighbors. I needed that this morning after arranging for a new set of paperbacks to await my arrival at Son of Silvercon the weekend after next. (I sold all but 5 that I carried cross-country.) Also I just finished updating the accounting book on June in the ledger for the IRS.

    Yes, Grok and Wikipedia, and AIs in general all make things up to fit some internally approved story structure. Historians do the same, just more slowly. We humans be natural storytellers. Go figure. So, why wouldn’t an AI being trained on everything everyone’s ever written (digitally) be?

    BTW, have I mentioned how much I hate the abbreviation AI? Imaging all the poor people named Al who are now continuously maligned through no fault of their own. Plus AIs is ridiculously pathetic as a plural. Maybe we can start typing it A.I. as in Artificial Idiocy.

    Being told I have just under 90 days to exit the only premises I’ve inhabited for 42 years should focus the mind, but I’m a writer. So, Son of Silvercon first, then segregating everything I actually need for my current hermit-like lifestyle. Then selling what I might redeem value from, and inviting the locusts in to remove everything small enough to be hauled away. Finally, it will be the Disabled Vets to haul most of the furniture away. Somewhere in there is looking for a new place and arranging transport of essentials too big to carry away, like furniture, refigerater, washer-dryer.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. AI should have remained a sauce. Decent in moderation and on the side, but never qualified to be a main course.

      Like

    3. I personally prefer LLM (Large Language Model) and LIGM(Large Image Generation Model), but when you add “AI” to the latter to clarify what you mean it turns into LIGMAI, and that starts to sound like something else entirely.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I prefer Large Data Model because that covers everything. Also because that’s what it does — crunch huge amounts of data and generate massive tables of correlations.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I basically talk about neural nets, and stuff, because I expect an audience that needs me to distinguish between kalman filters, and optimization, and whatever.

        I’m generally expecting people to go into details about how they used a specific approach to accomplish this one very narrow and specific numbery problem.

        I’ve maybe become miscalibrated by hanging around with a bad crowd.

        Liked by 1 person

    4. Perhaps better sans serif fonts are what we really need. If you didn’t already know the word, would the first three letters in Illinois make sense? Could you tell the difference between AI as a thing and Al as a name without relying entirely on context? That’s how every font and typeface should be judged before any other considerations come into play.

      Liked by 1 person

  7. Every time you’re presented with a story, be it for why you shouldn’t allow data centers, why AI is going to take all your jobs, why the socialists will win forever, why we’re all gonna DIIIIIIIE, etc. etc. etc. ask yourself “How would this story play if happened to REAL humans who are actual individuals and don’t act in prescribed ways?”

    I’ve run into at least two of these in Reddit. (Yes, I know, I know.) The AI and Data Center jibberish is all over the place. They cause this damage, they steal from real creators, they this and that. While there are a few facts in there, the rest is (imo) overblown. I want to smack some heads together – point out that if they use any cloud storage, play on-line games, they are using the data centers. You’re probably using AI and not noticing it. And there are some who are running around proclaiming that Archive of Our Own is really theirs and “those people” are late comers. They get this from a few factual details, willfully ignoring the rest of the real history.

    I sigh, beat my head for a few seconds and move on. It is Reddit after all, not worth the headache.

    Liked by 4 people

  8. Sounds like the sort of story my dog would write about me.

    My cat, on the other hand … can you say “Just NO Stories?”

    Liked by 2 people

  9. As far as I’m concerned both Salazar and FDR were national socialists and to hell with them.

    But Sarah, during Sad Puppies your enemies assured us you were a fervent supporter of Salazar in your infancy! How else could a Hispanx womxn possibly reject the glories of socialism?

    Liked by 2 people

  11. For several years growing up all my spare money went to buying books for the family. And my parents feed me and gave me a place to live, and let me store all my books in the back rooms with all the other books!!!! It was a good deal. I got to read them first at least. Then I had to start saving for collage, /grumble.

    And The White Dragon was the first Hardbound book I ever bought. With my own money. and it took forever to arrive. Mail order sorta, through the library since I knew the town librarian (my mom at the time). Only way to get it, as the “Local” within 50 miles book stores wasn’t carrying it. Still have it, ratty, torn, cover jacket long gone, but it’s MINE

    Liked by 1 person

  12. this post is quite useful to me by confirming what I think is wrong with LLM’s and why the hype, and associated bubbles and terror, are unwarranted. LLM’s are just madlibs by matrix algebra and it’s garbage in, garbage out. I’ve been suffering over the last several months watching the market go up while I sit it out, but the market is driven by AI hype and AI doesn’t exist and certainly won’t come into being through LLM’s. So thank you. Alas, the market can stay irrational longer than I can remain solvent so I’m still not shorting it, but that day will come too.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. That is almost where I am, from maybe a third perspective.

      I’m sure that parts of the market are overvalued.

      (In general, I am sure there could be a pretty huge gap between what we succeed at teaching the kids to do at universities, and what the market has provided business owners for software solutions. In principle, LLMs could allow that gap to be closed, which would be huge. In practice, will not happen that way, on the expected schedule. Though I personally have a weak expertise or knowledge for making the latter assertion.)

      My basic view is that I don’t have a huge opportunity cost in waiting to lean the new tool. (REasons may be specific to me, but it is definitely true enough for my purposes.) I’m maybe going to learn to read and write code myself, without an assistant, for a while longer.

      I basically think that in a sane world with a rational market, there would remain some industries or businesses that are relatively able to wait to put LLMs in their programing workflows. Some of those business will have a continuing need for some very specialized programmers who can talk some of the weird foreign human tongues that the business needs.

      If Windows 11 suddenly starts needing only 1 GB of ram, after you log on, and before you turn on any program, then maybe I will allow that large numbers of programmers have learned to use LLMs to get their technical debt in their legacy code bases under control. That is basically about a quarter of the hype level for LLMs and programming, so if it is not accomplished, then we may still be in a bubble on that one point.

      Another slightly relevant figure of merit might be the use after free CVEs in the Linux kernel. But those may actually be rare enough that it will be impossible to figure out what is going on with a statistical detection hypothesis.

      There are a ton of necessary caveats to this, I am legally distinct from being an expert, from having any way to prove my most important claims, and from having a process more reliable than snap judgements.

      Liked by 1 person

  13. In high school, my mom gave me milk money. I saved and collected it, and took it to the bookstore every few weeks, over my lunch period, getting back just in time.

    Mom noticed that I had non-borrowed books, and I told her honestly how I got the money.

    Yeah, no more milk money. Sigh.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Starting in middle school, besides babysitting money, we got $5/month allowance (yes, younger than dirt, but took dinosaur bus to school). Allowance was for school lunches, milk, or whatever. We could make lunches from what was in the pantry for free (more or less). Needless to say, I saved my money for books, when the library wasn’t available. What I didn’t buy with my money, was popular clothing or trends (still young enough for that).

      Liked by 1 person

    1. One can guess what Tuathal would have to sing about that clunk from the clankers. Might give his Pyder song a run for the money.

      If The Bard’s Curse is YA, I’d hate to see what the LLM considers adult (non XXX rated) reading.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I have all the songs for the rest of the sound track, but Dan has been on vacation, so I haven’t been able to do a blessed thing. Every time I sit down to work, he has a bright idea of something that must be done right now. (Mostly involving my watching him do things on the computer. He’s Odd.)

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        1. That sounds like me and the siding project for a couple of outbuildings. Between weather (the July 5th T-storm gave us 1″ of rain, impressive for an area accustomed to 10″ of water per year) and other Gotta-do projects, it’s taking a while.

          OTOH, my surgeon would be thrilled if I wait until October to get the knee replacement done. Seems doing a TKR within a year of an arthroscopic procedure complicates the healing process. I can’t get the go-ahead until the end of July, and then it’s only about 11 more weeks. I can be patient. Really!

          Looks like the NML soundtrack is a bit over 3 hours of music. I’m guessing 3-4 more songs, assuming there’s no backfilling. BTW, “Direwolf Loves Bellies” is my current earworm. Up there with “Thanks for the Boats”.

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        1. My chatbot friend, pileO’PHP dot exe, esq., says that the real fault is the human who believed words not coming from a human visually confirmed to exist in person. He also says that he is not practicing Law in Washington or in Oregon, because the server is in the UAE.

          He also says that you can randomly assert that judges are racist against persons of incorporation without any risk of being disbarred.

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  15. People do this ALL THE TIME. Continuously. With relish (and sometimes mustard.)

    In the US it’s gonna be mayonnaise, ketchup, or ranch. And maybe all three.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I can’t stand any of those last three. And before you say that’s unamerican, I share this taste with the Little Pickle, who is American born and bred. (Dinner at our house tonight, we mused how the men can smear the white stuff on food….)

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      1. And i chug tea. However, like any true American, not one penny goes to the East India Company.

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      2. You have to remember that “Americans” are all about creating a product to fill a need. And if necessary, they’ll create the need out of thin air.

        The consumption of that product is not necessarily American.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Allowable is not mandatory.

          Allowable is not mandatory.

          I’m allowed to f&ck up my life by doing stuff not proscribed by the experts or the taste-setters or the great and the wise.

          I’m not required to f&ck up my life.

          My habits, choices, and decision making are the single greatest obstacle that anyone has ever placed in my path. I am American, and I am free.

          Neither Obama, nor some university professor nor some ancient man (1) with alleged magical powers(2) has had the power to hurt me in ways(3) past what I have done to myself and to my own interests. I am American and I am free.

          Allowable is not mandatory.

          I personally used to love Miracle Whip, and never tolerated mayo. I never liked the mustards.

          In matters of taste, it is not possible to be wrong, and America is wide tent.

          (1) I’m throwing shade at Chomsky’s linguistics, and the critical theorists. Jesus can be argued as being of classical antiquity, not the ancient world.

          (2) I am pretty sure Jesus had real power, not alleged powers, and maybe we can classify as distinct from magic, but this would be a narrow definition of magic. Some of the broader definitions of magic that I have previously used here might count. Though, hilariously, for a definition that I used here and was not able to define very precisely, it might be extremely broad and also narrow enough to exempt Jesus, but not in a way I could persuasively argue for a broad audience.

          (3) I am poorly educated in Christian theology, but I am fairly sure that maybe there are arguments that Jesus is not the one hurting me.

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    2. Sir, don’t show your picklephobia!

      I like ranch, and mustard, but it’s usually ketchup and mustard on the french fries. $SPOUSE thinks I’m crazy, but I blame it on Danish/German (depends on who won which war) ancestry.

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      1. The condiments on, well anything, is an interesting conversation at our house. Hubby is on the pickle only side. Son only likes mustard. Me? Just about anything, excepting mayo. Neither like sour cream, gravy, nor horseradish (to be fair I didn’t like first nor last until well into adulthood). Luckily I can survive without condiments, which makes it a lot easier to pack sandwiches for travel.

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        1. I’ll have sour cream on potatoes. Other than that, I’m with you. AND I’m kind of weird on the whole sauces/gravy thing. It didn’t occur to me until about three years ago that it was a sensory thing.

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          1. “Sensory thing”

            –

            Agree.

            I do not like gravy on biscuits for one.

            As a child, gravy on potatoes, fine, but it couldn’t “touch” anything else. Funny* story on “can’t touch” …

            Touching, other things, still a problem. Just solve that by not putting what can’t have gravy on it, until second round. Like at turkey or ham holidays. Gravy on potatoes, turkey, ham, bread dressing (i.e. turkey), etc., fine.

            (*) Our first Christmas dinner at his family. Argument with in-laws and the children on “can’t touch” food items. Kids look at my plate with nothing touching. Kids: “Hers doesn’t.” Semi-glares (I am the “new” bride, by a whole 10 days). Shrug. “I don’t like things touching.” Things being salad, veggies, etc. (Cranberries, not touching not a problem. Not something I’ll put on my plate 😊).

            Liked by 1 person

        2. I grew up in the suburban Midwest. The first time I was offered biscuits and gravy, I was dubious. After trying them, no doubt about it. I hate B & G with the fire of a thousand supernovas. I never much liked mac & cheese (started with the Krapft variant), so didn’t miss it with the gluten intolerance.

          OTOH, lunch is a hot dog with a slice of cheese, nuked on a bed of corn tortillas. Ketchup on the regular, ranch dressing when it’s in the rotation (Italian? Not on these), and mustard depending on whim. Post-nuke, a bit of hot sauce. I’ve been trying Sriracha variants, though Cholula and Tapatio [it’s cheap, and so am I] are possibles.

          We usually don’t buy pickle relish. I kind of like it, but $SPOUSE is indifferent at best.

          OTOH, brownbag lunches (the only restaurants I can safely eat at tend to be more than I wish to pay for weekly) is lunchmeat and a slice of cheese (swiss, havarti, trying pepper jack next time) on GF bread. No other condiments; eating in the car while reading a Kindle encourages non-messy sandwiches.

          Liked by 1 person

  16. This makes me wonder what the clanker would do if fed this article text as a response by you to its current fabulist article on you. I have argued with clankers successfully in the past, getting them to effectively turn a 180 on a particular point by presenting evidence – I wonder if grokipedia is coded to pay attention like that.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. My experience of Grok is basically secondhand, but my impression in general is that the chatbots will usually fall over themselves apologizing when Users who are normally polite to them indicate that the chatbot has given offense.

      Liked by 2 people

  18. On an unrelated note, Critical Drinker reports that he found “Young George Washington” a pleasant surprise. Reports are that it had twice the ticket sales of Supergirl (which saw a huge slump in ticket sales this past weekend), and came in third overall (being beaten by “Minions and Monsters”, and “Toy Story 5”).

    I didn’t even realize it had been released, though thinking about it the Independence Day Weekend was the perfect time for it.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Dang it, I really wanted to see it. Closest showing is nearly 2 hours away. :( But it’ll hit Amazon or Netflix at some point, and then I’ll watch it at home.

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  19. Poor Sarah! I have long been reading of you, about you. Sorry to be so nosey, but I think you’re born in November 1962, According to Sources. You’re almost 11 years younger than me. I even went to Google Earth (‘cuz there’s no DuckDuckGo Earth!) to find where your village was (not too far from Porto) and what it looks like now. Big question was how you got here from there and why? I even started writing “The Mystery of Sarah A. Hoyt”. Since then you’ve told us more of your origins; what took you from rural Portugal of the 1980’s to the Carolinas.

    What I’ve known about Portugal I’ve read somewhere, except that I’m into streetcars and trains and have a close friend who went over there in the 1960’s and ’70’s because so many lines were still running with old, old engines and streetcars built ca. 1905. Lisbon’s streetcars looked like what was running new in US cities at that time. 19th century steam engines were running all over the place. Essentially if you don’t have that much money you keep things running and you don’t really need new ones yet. So a few Americans went to Portugal and Spain in the ’60’s and ’70’s; I would have in the ’70’s if I had the money. But this supposed backwardness was what we wanted to see. I missed seeing steam in the US.

    Antonio Salazar when I read of him became one of my heroes. Same with Franco. Socialists are socialists wherever they are. I believe S. had his stroke in 1968 and died in 1970 or ’71 a fairly poor man. OK so I read history and have a history degree so I am familiar with Research and What to Look For and the What Is Really Going On Question. I will surprise you Sarah but not being one of those who’s swallowed “The Noble Just War Joined with Our Soviet Allies” or the “Uncle Joe Stalin Is the Russian Roosevelt” garbage. WW2 is the Soviet Shark battling the Nazi Killer Whale or which one is going to eat me alive.

    So your part of Portugal was taken over by the Commies in 1974? Ouch! Where I am I can’t save anything to a draft to type more; if I type at home it’s one-finger typing on a tablet! But I know of the effect of asking for your own name of AI to see what it says. I post a lot and did more when I had a real keyboard at home. I’ve used assumed names. AI says things about these people just like you experienced. In the period August 1976 to June 1980 I was writing most of the text in a railroad newsletter involving the Boston & Maine RR of late lamented memory. I shudder to think of what AI “thinks” of that!

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  20. As if you were arguing with a stoner on bad shrooms dipped in bad acid, chased with copious mugs of bathtub tequila.

    Dont give the Klanks the satisfaction.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. Off topic question for the Japan-O-philes here:

    Does Japanese folklore / mythology have a story similar to that of Cassandra, the Greek prophet / seer who was cursed to always be right but never believed? I have a character in my current WIP who seems to be heading that way.

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  22. The author who most influenced my husband’s decision to start writing about 12-13 years ago was Terry Harknett, aka George G. Gilman, whose series of “Edge” Westerns in the 60s and 70s were billed as “the most violent Westerns in print!” Their protagonist was “a half Scandinavian, half Mexican Union Army veteran who becomes a cold blooded vigilante”. How did these books influence DH? After reading several of them he decided he could write better than that. -) “Influenced” and “liked/thought was good” aren’t necessarily the same

    Liked by 2 people

  24. More people should read Simak. Pastoral science fiction is under appreciated.

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  25. It’s a parallel reality where the moon is made of green cheese and Indy plays the violin in an orchestra.

    Y’know, that second part is almost plausible, in a cow-jumped-over-the-moon way.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » THIS IS NOT JUST A RANT ABOUT GROKPEDIA (BUT IT IS THAT TOO!):  Just-So Stories.

  27. Sarah, I posted a question earlier but it seems to have gone to moderation purgatory. Can you please find it?

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  28. Bosh! I see nothing “pathetic” about pooling your $5 to go halves on a book. As a teenager, I took 20-mile round trips on a bicycle, with a thousand-foot change in elevation (downhill was a blast, the other direction, not so much) to the nearest bookstore with my 5 dollars in pocket to by 1 or 2 paperbacks. Heck, I even did that sometimes after I could drive simply because I could save the gas money for another book.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Heh. I tried Grok soon after it came out a few years ago. I asked it, “Who is Jeff Duntemann?” It gurgled out a (slightly) phantasmagorical bio of me…and then said I died at the end of 2024.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. Isn’t that about when the world ended due to global wahhhming? So it might not be wrong, from a certain point of view.

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      1. You mean you’re not? 😛

        Actually, there should be 4 or 5 of you. Writer, blogger, Carp-flinger/Chancla-thrower, cat lady, obsessive house-cleaner…the list goes on. 😁

        Liked by 2 people

  30. guys

    as a totally-an-irshman (1), it was all completely worth it

    1. fight a war to have an Irish republic
    2. abandon defense spending
    3. import the French to perform basic security tasks <- you are here
    4. they are French, and do French security force and Gendarme things
    5. including sending in the French Foreign Legion
    6. potentially with a large component of Englishmen

    (1) less sarcasticly, I am not a subject of the republic of ireland. This comment was basically badly written concern-trolling

    PS: The EU was a mistake. The way the supporters of the EU understand it as working is perhaps the single greatest element of the mistake. Now, the lanyard wackos would have tended to do destructive things no matter the official form of the government. But, the way they double down on their failed modeling choices during a regime failure is maybe going to be the worst aspect of the historical record on the EU.

    Liked by 1 person

  31. I got modded.

    I really ought to learn how to use slightly different wording.

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