Jake Justen > Recent Status Updates

372 Pages We'll Never Get Back. Wow was that dull. So much dialogue inserted just so the author could insert backstory. None of the characters are interesting. There's a full chapter of the first person narrator just spacing off for more backstory. Then there's a third person chapter about someone else - don't know who, only know her as "she." Does anyone listed in that chapter or their relationship to "she" matter?

So far this is exceeding my expectations. My one hope was for this to be done competently and it has at least cleared that bar. Matt Dinniman has done a good job of world building. There are pop culture references, but not so many that they are distracting. Stats haven't gotten overbearing yet, but I am zoning out on the stats. (Audiobook, narrator has been decent)

It's insane that you can be 80% through a book and have no idea how or why anything works, or why anything is happening. The philosophy of the book is easy enough to get, it's just generic early 2000s boomer conservatism. And this last section has sprinkled in a few more "Grandpa, no" moments.

Been listening since February and I finally feel like I'm making progress. Still 6.5 hours to go. VERY comprehensive history of the US from 1492 to [early 2000s]. Lots of interesting stories, though.

18 chapters in and I have no clue what's going on or how HAL works. We're constantly told how perfect and virtuous Theresa is, but her actions show the opposite. This is clearly meant to be a manifesto, but the author's views aren't clear (except his contempt for cable news, which I'm sure he calls the lamestream media). The protagonist is still at someone's house, so maybe this is a genius 3rd Amendment manifesto?

I only have the epilogue left. Again, listening to the audiobook, it's odd how much it seems the narrator sounds like an AI voice over. I appreciate that the authors have taken a nuanced view of AI and looked at both sides of the hype cycle - promised benefits and existential concerns. Even their conversation with a chatbot showed how information generated by AI can be incorrect or wholly made up.

The authors are definitely more optimistic about generative AI than I am. Are there benefits to AI sorting through large amounts of data? Yes. Are there very real risks regarding government and corporate over reach? Also yes. The authors do respond to existential concerns reasonably and clearly. It's a little odd, though, I have been noticing that the audiobook narrator sounds like an AI voice over bot.

I honestly don't know what happened in this section of the "book." I cannot follow Norman/Theresa's theory about HAL being dark matter or how it works; it's just rambling, incoherent nonsense. There are several sentences stacking up at an alarming rate that I do not understand at all ("I would have needed to marry you to prove something instead of for yourself.") I've read Facebook rants that are more coherent.

Interesting thoughts on the claims of what AI can do and what its true limits are. The section I've read so far focuses on predictive AI and its limits/failures, which stem from other predictive model limits. For instance, there are many variables that are not (perhaps cannot) be measured accurately or at all, or would create so many data points as to be effectively useless.

372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, reading assignment #1

Grandpa, no! Middle aged men, do (and I cannot stress this enough) not write first-person perspective for a teenage girl.

This book, aside from the "Grandpa, no" stuff, and the Mary Sue aspect of the main character, is a manifesto. Too bad Kindle doesn't have a Time New Manifesto font.

The writing is so bad. It's like reading a game's user manual after it's been converted to prose. On top of that, this wasn't even run through a spelling/grammar check.

This is going pretty quick, but I'm also skipping large sections which are just a list of the character's stats and explanations of said stats. I don't care about any of those, and skipping hasn't negatively impacted my understanding of the story.

"I began creeping through the woods, carefully, like a creeping thing."

"I...walked into the small cave searchingly."

"Please chose two buffs for yourself at first level!"

I knew this was going to be a Mary Sue/Gary Stu narrative, since it's introduced before Chapter 1 that the character is unbound. I couldn't care less about the character's stats, those lists were easy skims and now I skip them entirely.

"stated the angry demon angrily" is a real thing that the author wrote and kept in the book.

After the interesting section about deluge/flood mythology around the ancient world, it gets pretty slow. Good thing I am listening to an audiobook, I think reading it would have put me to sleep or I would have quit or at least skimmed a lot. Audio quality is understandably rough, being a LibriVox recording; no professional voice over narrators or professional audio/recording equipment.