Some people say they have no inner monologue. How is that possible? I have a constant inner monologue. So, no thoughts in their heads, they just live with emotions. That actually explains a lot.
Thank God you said this Spencer! I knew this for myself, but did not realize it was true for everyone. I practice "lectio divina"--a form of prayer in which one takes a phrase from scripture (or other writing), and ponders it so as to find the meaning in it for oneself. In my way of doing it, I write down my ponderings. I started doing it that way so as to keep distractions to a minimum; writing was a way to keep focused. But I have found that as I write, thoughts come from my pencil that I didn't know were there. In this way, my thinking about scripture has over the years become much more clear and real. I'm not in the way of becoming St. John Henry Newman, or any other great thinker, but my own thinking has clarified and broadened.
Thank you. I think many/most of us have gone the easy route…and now AI makes it worse. So, thought is displaced by reaction/emotions….and so we have the reactionary, hateful dialogues today…dialogue requires thought. What a concept!
Yes… these things can’t magically extract what’s in your heart and mind any better than power tools can help a novice extract cabinetry from lumber. The hard work of knowing what’s inside you is what allows you to share “you” with someone else. Even less personal acts of creation are void of human connection without the authenticity of the would-be human creator. If you can prompt a machine well enough to create writing that expresses your own act of creation, you didn’t need the machine to begin with.
"Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to penetrate it. I sit in a labyrinth of solitude , jabbing at its bulwarks with the point of a pen - jabbing, jabbing." Beryl Markham
Things that are well written seem to have a soul - a material form and also a spirit. I think this can only be done in the labor of love. But these stories open my world to other souls who have lived richly and painfully. I am mostly a non-fiction girl for this reason.
Here are a handful of stories that have touched me and taught me this year:
Related: I have been trying to figure out whether there’s an epidemic of Substack content written by AI, or if it’s just the emergence of a common style. Lots of Notes, and even newsletters, are written with a lot of near-random bolded sentences and one- to two-sentence paragraphs. They’re often well-tuned to seem thoughtful and reflective but the reasoning is (on closer inspection) fairly shallow and/or entirely driven by appeals to emotion. Has anyone else noticed this?
Some people say they have no inner monologue. How is that possible? I have a constant inner monologue. So, no thoughts in their heads, they just live with emotions. That actually explains a lot.
Thank God you said this Spencer! I knew this for myself, but did not realize it was true for everyone. I practice "lectio divina"--a form of prayer in which one takes a phrase from scripture (or other writing), and ponders it so as to find the meaning in it for oneself. In my way of doing it, I write down my ponderings. I started doing it that way so as to keep distractions to a minimum; writing was a way to keep focused. But I have found that as I write, thoughts come from my pencil that I didn't know were there. In this way, my thinking about scripture has over the years become much more clear and real. I'm not in the way of becoming St. John Henry Newman, or any other great thinker, but my own thinking has clarified and broadened.
Thank you. I think many/most of us have gone the easy route…and now AI makes it worse. So, thought is displaced by reaction/emotions….and so we have the reactionary, hateful dialogues today…dialogue requires thought. What a concept!
Yes… these things can’t magically extract what’s in your heart and mind any better than power tools can help a novice extract cabinetry from lumber. The hard work of knowing what’s inside you is what allows you to share “you” with someone else. Even less personal acts of creation are void of human connection without the authenticity of the would-be human creator. If you can prompt a machine well enough to create writing that expresses your own act of creation, you didn’t need the machine to begin with.
"Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to penetrate it. I sit in a labyrinth of solitude , jabbing at its bulwarks with the point of a pen - jabbing, jabbing." Beryl Markham
Things that are well written seem to have a soul - a material form and also a spirit. I think this can only be done in the labor of love. But these stories open my world to other souls who have lived richly and painfully. I am mostly a non-fiction girl for this reason.
Here are a handful of stories that have touched me and taught me this year:
West With The Night -Beryl Markham
Everything Sad is Untrue - Daniel Nayeri
Apeirogon- Colum McCann
Table for Two - Amor Towles
A Lantern in her Hand - Beth Streeter Aldrich
Every Falling Star - sungju Lee
I read “West with the Night” ages ago. What a great read. I’ll check out the books you mentioned 🙏🏻
Related: I have been trying to figure out whether there’s an epidemic of Substack content written by AI, or if it’s just the emergence of a common style. Lots of Notes, and even newsletters, are written with a lot of near-random bolded sentences and one- to two-sentence paragraphs. They’re often well-tuned to seem thoughtful and reflective but the reasoning is (on closer inspection) fairly shallow and/or entirely driven by appeals to emotion. Has anyone else noticed this?
Sometimes I bounce my own writing off it to see how it reflects my ideas.
A Klavan once said, “A writer is always writing past what he knows.”
And so, when I write back and forth with Chat GPT, I’m able to reiterate and sharpen my ideas after seeing them in other words.
Also I love using it to dive deeper into history and science.
It has provided great entry points for deeper research.