8
on writer status
—so let’s say GPT-7 can just write a book as well as a human can
—one assumption i have is that verbal people will still want to compete for social status through the production of words, so how will that be done
—i think one possibility is a return to live storytelling as a primary medium
—this could be fun, a lot of live storytelling nights are corny as fuck, but this i think is a talent allocation question, it’s just not where the glamor is currently
—improvisatory/live/collaborative writing could be another thing, writing that is more like performance art based on ongoing situations
—this would make sense because until we have really good brain-computer interfaces, the one thing a language model can’t do is report your qualia, riff on your sense doors in real-time
—i don’t know man this is all rank speculation
—but i think this is going to be a really good time for opportunists, as with any moment of rapid technological change, assuming the technology change keeps being rapid
—what will be important for me personally is detaching my love of communication from the identity of “writer,” because i think that profession will change in nature significantly, sooner rather than later
> —improvisatory/live/collaborative writing could be another thing, writing that is more like performance art based on ongoing situations
What are your thoughts on Improv? As in Improv Comedy/Theater.
I've taken two levels worth of Improv classes and I feel like there is a decent overlap between the writing skills you used to teach as a coach and Improv skills. I have yet to do longform-ish writing to test how much Improv skills transfer back into writing, but my twitter reply game is 10x better now (which is a limited kind of writing but I think it's still a datapoint).