this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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There are books that are too hard for me. I get that and I’m comfortable with it. Anything above short story length from James Joyce or William Faulkner is simply beyond my abilities and not enjoyable to me. It is fine; I don’t read them.
(1) I would obviously never in a million years decide that the answer was for someone or some bot with no literary abilities whatsoever to pre-chew it for me and spit it back up into my mouth like a big mama bird, and for me to choke down the resulting product (2) The Great Gatsby is not on that list my man. It has some deeper themes, allegedly, but that’s not a hard fuckin book. I suspect they just chose a “classic” book at random, unaware that the specific one they chose is a pretty easy and enjoyable read, because they have never read it, because they are to a man a bunch of un literary morons and thieves.
The older I get, the less I am interested in a book that will challenge me through being difficult. I'd rather just be entertained or informed. Or hopefully both at the same time.
When I read, I want my thoughts and ideas challenged. Not my reading comprehension.
There's a point where you can't separate reading comprehension from transmission of thought.
Agreed.
Agreed
Lookin at you “Ulysses”
Tbf, there would be no point in dumbing down (or simplifying) something like Ulysses which is a prime example of a literary work where the form and content are inseparable.
For you.
JFC, is it really that hard for some people to see outside of themselves? 🤦♀️
Yeah maybe that's fair
My point is largely based on that I think the LLM is going to do an incredibly poor job of this. Something like the Pearson readers, I think are fine, because they're accomplishing this important thing while (a) preserving the literary merit (b) IDK, something about how this is marketed makes me think it will be aimed at people who should be developing their reading skills but want easier-than-adult-English level for whatever reason, not at places where it actually makes sense and is perfectly reasonable to have an easy-fied version.
My point was that Gatsby is perfectly readable for an adult reading level. If someone's not at that level with English then fine. Can we compromise on the importance of preserving the important elements of the book, if we're going to make a simplified version of it, instead of just having an LLM make a bad job of it and then pass off the result as something that's going to do something for anybody if they read it?