When I got to 'Mercuh, I suffered the surprise of writing assessments that prioritized formulaic writing. #creativeDeath4Life
To be fair, my writing wasn't all that clear: my hubris reached for big ideas, and I had not paid too much attention in my high school English class. I must say, however, that I am still quite resentful about what seems like a slightly dogmatic fanaticism with “accessibility” and “clarity” in our writing.
Mill talks about a sort of cognitive sovereignty in the soliloquies where he complains about the tyrannies of the herd. Call me paranoid, but much of the same creative death that GPT is blamed for seems to have its precursor in the tyranny of accessible writing. I am not sure writing is most “generative” when it is tailored to an audience... at all.
Orthogonally, Bateson tells us that the term “information” is any difference that makes a difference (maybe it was MacKay or something—not sure). And, yeah, sure, I get that most academic writing, even when it is accessible, has an audience that is highly specialized, and finds diversity by way of being disciplined by the discipline—if you catch my drift (vroom vroom). Nevertheless, I wouldn't be surprised if the fanaticism with accessibility hampers diversity by formalizing such conventions even across disciplinary writing conventions.
Warner's text reminded me of that thought. Prioritizing ideas, perhaps even at the expense of clarity—Thank God, someone said it! Yet, taking a step back to, like Professor X, summon our metacognitive powers, Warner also reminds me of a troubling pattern which is particularly prevalent in the humanities. We claim to be so critical and yet fall into monolithic conclusions in our “critical thinking.” “AI bad,” “AI stops our thinking for sure,” “bla bla bla,” and not only with AI. The root of “criticism,” or the Proto-Indo-European krei (womp, womp!), is related to the concept of separating, discerning, splitting, and difference. Going back to Bateson, it has to do with the genration of information. If we are so lucid in our moralized conclusions, be they in writing, knowledge production, or politics, then where the hellie is the “difference” that makes a difference?
(anyways, the real q tho is “was this written by AI?” -- how the Gemini MX-2200)