This is why there is growing anti-AI sentiment. It is always extractive. You can never just enjoy a poem, you need to use it. You need to extract its value for shareholders. Get a life.
This cracked me up. I only used ~~one~~ two of his poems and enjoyed most of the others. Betting on the Muse was $2.09 on Amazon, which is a good ROI, I think.
Bukowski worked as a mailman. I had that job too. It was an awesome job. I got through like 9 hours of audiobooks a day.
Only issue was nobody sends mail anymore -- the elderly, Christmas and spam -- so when there was no mail, you'd work an hour and then you'd only get paid one hour. So most people were students, or their spouse did the heavy lifting.
Other than the pay, it was a great job though. I worked in snowstorms (and regular storms!) and in >37C (~100F) -- I got a big sombrero which looked a bit silly but did the job.
Then I'd go home and work on genetic algorithms. And then when the pay arrived at the end of the month -- 800 Euros (909 American), I had to wonder if I wasn't doing it backwards -- I should be getting paid to work on genetic algorithms all day, and then at the end of the day I should run up and down staircases for several hours for free.
All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. plumbers don't get plumbers block, and doctors don't get doctors block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working and then expects sympathy for it?
“. . .a lonely room, with a cup of coffee, facing a blank piece of paper.”
Wouk elaborated on that predicament. He said that writer William Faulkner was asked, ‘Mr. Faulkner, do you write on inspiration or do you write on a schedule?’ Faulkner replied. ‘Well, of course I write on inspiration. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at a quarter past nine.’
I enjoy the fact that you were able to wedge Bukowski into this clusterfuck of technobabble , but the parallel being drawn between quality-writing and hitting buttons on the magic-elaboration-device ["ai"] is just... not there. Quality writing requires actual lived-experience, emotions, adventures, and a keen ability to grasp and clasp ends of an event-sequence like a beaded necklace or rosary; to present something cohesive and well-lived to someone who can imagine , provided ... the imagery and order-of-events are resonant.
Stylistically, I find Bukowski's "I know it / will" linebreak to be offensive to my aesthetic sensibilities as an excellent writer.
Summarybot (I feel silly for replying to a *bot*), that's a really good point, and I'd argue that creative writing and software development have a lot in common, especially now that English is the #1 programming language.
Nowadays when we can build software 50x faster, there are even greater benefits from spending time to speak with our prospects/customers.
"Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. Listen to your wife, she'll give you perspective. Meaning, you need a break. You have to take a bath or you'll get nowhere. There would be no order only chaos. Go home, Max, and you take a bath."
Some of it is fun and new, I'm spending a lot of time just making stuff I wanna make.
But regarding work produced for the marketplace, I think it is naive to think any productivity gains will ever produce more time on the beach for workers. The market is competitive. Some gains will be seized by capital, and others realized in the production of some combination of more stuff, cheaper stuff, or better stuff.
I think it boils down to most of these folks don't have anything better to do. Or worse (the bucket I find myself in) this type of work is the most mentally stimulating thing I have, so I do it willfully at the expense of my wife and cats.
I'm still building the discipline to put the important stuff first!
I think this comes down to getting paid per effort invested (measured in time) vs getting paid for the result.
If the average person were self-employed and received income proportional to their economic output, then they would be rewarded for working faster, instead of punished.
If they increased their productivity, by means of technology, they could then simply choose to work fewer hours.[0]
I noticed this before AI. If someone does the same job twice as fast, do they deserve half as much compensation?
What if they find a way to automate an entire process? What if they replace months of "manual labor" (tedious refactoring) with a perl script that produces the same result, deterministically?
A friend of mine once automated a woman's entire job away. He thought he was doing her a favour, freeing her from the drudgery, so she could focus on the other parts of the job. She wasn't so happy, when she revealed to him, that there weren't any.
---
[0] But most people aren't in such a position, and have to stay the required number of hours regardless of how much has been achieved. And I'm increasingly hearing reports of some kind of burnout resulting from being expected to keep up with machines that work a thousand times faster than you.
And that's now... Just wait until the big providers switch to Cerebras in a week or two!
(Though at that token speed, the silver lining is the work becomes interactive again, so if you use it correctly, your mental model does not desynchronize from the codebase, i.e. you don't need to spend extra time later catching up. But that deserves its own thread, I think :)
When I was in college I took a class in modern poetry. The teacher showed us a film about Bukowski. Before the film, there was a trigger warning. "I must warn you," he said, "Charles Bukowski is an asshole."
> the best writers have said very little and the worst, far too much.
> bag over his head in a bathtub full of water. what Hitler couldn’t do, he did to himself. happy journey.
Throughout reading the "Betting on the muse", I had plenty of "what an asshole" moments.
This is why there is growing anti-AI sentiment. It is always extractive. You can never just enjoy a poem, you need to use it. You need to extract its value for shareholders. Get a life.
Is this a comment toward the author?
Surely the irony isn't lost upon you that they literally are advocating for getting a life.
This cracked me up. I only used ~~one~~ two of his poems and enjoyed most of the others. Betting on the Muse was $2.09 on Amazon, which is a good ROI, I think.
Bukowski worked as a mailman. I had that job too. It was an awesome job. I got through like 9 hours of audiobooks a day.
Only issue was nobody sends mail anymore -- the elderly, Christmas and spam -- so when there was no mail, you'd work an hour and then you'd only get paid one hour. So most people were students, or their spouse did the heavy lifting.
Other than the pay, it was a great job though. I worked in snowstorms (and regular storms!) and in >37C (~100F) -- I got a big sombrero which looked a bit silly but did the job.
Then I'd go home and work on genetic algorithms. And then when the pay arrived at the end of the month -- 800 Euros (909 American), I had to wonder if I wasn't doing it backwards -- I should be getting paid to work on genetic algorithms all day, and then at the end of the day I should run up and down staircases for several hours for free.
All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. plumbers don't get plumbers block, and doctors don't get doctors block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working and then expects sympathy for it?
—Philip Pullman
“. . .a lonely room, with a cup of coffee, facing a blank piece of paper.”
Wouk elaborated on that predicament. He said that writer William Faulkner was asked, ‘Mr. Faulkner, do you write on inspiration or do you write on a schedule?’ Faulkner replied. ‘Well, of course I write on inspiration. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at a quarter past nine.’
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/30/inspire-nine/
I enjoy the fact that you were able to wedge Bukowski into this clusterfuck of technobabble , but the parallel being drawn between quality-writing and hitting buttons on the magic-elaboration-device ["ai"] is just... not there. Quality writing requires actual lived-experience, emotions, adventures, and a keen ability to grasp and clasp ends of an event-sequence like a beaded necklace or rosary; to present something cohesive and well-lived to someone who can imagine , provided ... the imagery and order-of-events are resonant.
Stylistically, I find Bukowski's "I know it / will" linebreak to be offensive to my aesthetic sensibilities as an excellent writer.
Summarybot (I feel silly for replying to a *bot*), that's a really good point, and I'd argue that creative writing and software development have a lot in common, especially now that English is the #1 programming language.
Nowadays when we can build software 50x faster, there are even greater benefits from spending time to speak with our prospects/customers.
This is the "working subconsciousness" take-away from Earnest Hemingway I wrote about here: https://galjot.si/what-ai-developers-could-learn-from-ernest...
"Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. Listen to your wife, she'll give you perspective. Meaning, you need a break. You have to take a bath or you'll get nowhere. There would be no order only chaos. Go home, Max, and you take a bath."
Some of it is fun and new, I'm spending a lot of time just making stuff I wanna make.
But regarding work produced for the marketplace, I think it is naive to think any productivity gains will ever produce more time on the beach for workers. The market is competitive. Some gains will be seized by capital, and others realized in the production of some combination of more stuff, cheaper stuff, or better stuff.
I think it boils down to most of these folks don't have anything better to do. Or worse (the bucket I find myself in) this type of work is the most mentally stimulating thing I have, so I do it willfully at the expense of my wife and cats.
I'm still building the discipline to put the important stuff first!
Not a great article
>Why aren't we spending more time on the beach.
I think this comes down to getting paid per effort invested (measured in time) vs getting paid for the result.
If the average person were self-employed and received income proportional to their economic output, then they would be rewarded for working faster, instead of punished.
If they increased their productivity, by means of technology, they could then simply choose to work fewer hours.[0]
I noticed this before AI. If someone does the same job twice as fast, do they deserve half as much compensation?
What if they find a way to automate an entire process? What if they replace months of "manual labor" (tedious refactoring) with a perl script that produces the same result, deterministically?
A friend of mine once automated a woman's entire job away. He thought he was doing her a favour, freeing her from the drudgery, so she could focus on the other parts of the job. She wasn't so happy, when she revealed to him, that there weren't any.
---
[0] But most people aren't in such a position, and have to stay the required number of hours regardless of how much has been achieved. And I'm increasingly hearing reports of some kind of burnout resulting from being expected to keep up with machines that work a thousand times faster than you.
And that's now... Just wait until the big providers switch to Cerebras in a week or two!
(Though at that token speed, the silver lining is the work becomes interactive again, so if you use it correctly, your mental model does not desynchronize from the codebase, i.e. you don't need to spend extra time later catching up. But that deserves its own thread, I think :)
I can't even begin to imagine how appalled Bukowski would be if he was alive to read this haha
I met and drank with him once. Brutal punk poet of a guy.
Your comment starts as a nice teaser… care to share more? When was that?
Judging by his writing, I get a sense that he became a bit more socially pleasant towards the end of his life?
When I was in college I took a class in modern poetry. The teacher showed us a film about Bukowski. Before the film, there was a trigger warning. "I must warn you," he said, "Charles Bukowski is an asshole."
Oh, yes. And I think he was proud of that.
> the best writers have said very little and the worst, far too much. > bag over his head in a bathtub full of water. what Hitler couldn’t do, he did to himself. happy journey.
Throughout reading the "Betting on the muse", I had plenty of "what an asshole" moments.
> Why are we instead witnessing a 996 phenomenon. Why is there a sudden urge to ship 4,500 PRs per day?
This is the natural continuation of "90 hours a week and loving it!" https://www.folklore.org/90_Hours_A_Week_And_Loving_It.html
Me: I like your solution, but could you unpack all those dense one-liners to make the code easier to follow?
Cursor: Do you wanna mess me up? Do you wanna screw up the works? You wanna blow my token sales in Europe?
Bukowski would probably want to kick the shit out of you if he saw this.
I bet I could take him out.
Come on, what would they need to learn that wasn't already "trained" by the LLMs ingestion of his works in the first instance??