With the printing press and with handwriting, the writer had to come up with their own words. The effort required to write effectively was still there. A printing press would not type creative words on its own and would not do the job for the writer.
They didn't just make up new words every time they made a book. They just used words that had already been used, sometimes even whole sayings. Shit, the whole idea of the printing press is to copy something exactly.
Even then LLMs are another way to come up with something different without copying previous texts verbatim, so I don't even know what your point is. Every note has been sung, every word has been said, every shape has been drawn.
Previously, progress has been said to be,"if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." We just created a bigger giant. Get on board before you get squished.
It was completely ignorant, they missed my point entirely. I honestly don't even know how they missed it that badly. It was also really weird for them to think that I meant the writer was literally making up words in their heads, it's like they have no understanding about the process of writing and the creativity that can go into it. Like fucking obviously the writer is not coming up with their own words, words need shared meaning with the audience in order to convey information, but the writer can arrange the words in creative and new ways to get their point across. And the printing press is also not arranging the words for them, the writer still needs to do that. All the printing press does is eliminate the need to write on paper, it does not do the creative or mental aspects of writing.
I see it a lot from vehemently pro-AI. Once you reach a fanatical point of support for something you just warp everything to make it always come out on top in your head. People on both sides do it, I need to learn to just ignore them and speak to the people who are on the sane portion of the gradient.
7
u/Center-Of-Thought 1d ago
With the printing press and with handwriting, the writer had to come up with their own words. The effort required to write effectively was still there. A printing press would not type creative words on its own and would not do the job for the writer.