Embracing openness, seeking closeness Yin/yang, partner dance, improv, singing/harmony, game dev https://xitter.cf/t.co/UBndqTSBQ5
Michigan, USA
Joined September 2009
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As someone who loves using the structure of em dashes (see: both of my tweets in this thread), I totally get it haha
I agree! It doesn't change the impact on the reader though: once they start to detect the AI 'tells', they won't be inclined to invest - even if the content is genuinely good. It's a natural human instinct to not want to get "got"
Anxiety about AI writing and art works on this same axis. We invest in reading a work because the writer has paid the upfront cost of writing it. AI writing has the same shape as a con - the person didn't invest their own effort into it, and we don't want to get "got".
"encouraging discernment" is a great way to put it! Learning how to navigate towards correctness is the whole process and it requires being able to discern better from worse. But when "that was bad, I can do better" turns into "I am bad", navigation also stalls
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I had a recent conversation about this!
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"my shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt" except it's your personality
Like a singing teacher telling a new singer when they are off pitch, until the singer can hear what being off pitch sounds like themselves
The struggle with learning anything is not knowing what correctness*feels like* when you start out doing it. The purpose of a teacher is to be an external reference, guiding the student towards correctness so they know what it *feels like*.
As promised!
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The truly scary thing about Holmes is that she never gives us that "gotcha" moment. Which means we're forced to grapple with whether she was pretending to pretend at all.
That's exactly the uncomfortable space that Fielder has made a career out of. Game recognizes game.
Good fiction is playing pretend, fully invested. Liars and con artists are *pretending to pretend*. We *want* to believe in fiction. What we are afraid of is looking silly when someone says, "Gotcha!"
And that's what makes Elizabeth Holmes such a fascinating subject for Fielder. Any good leader or CEO does the exact same thing as a good author: they pay the upfront cost, they jump into the deep end first so you feel comfortable joining in. Holmes stayed committed to the bit like no one else, never selling her shares, far past the point where it made sense for her to get any personal benefit out of it.
But she's the one that feels more like a fraud in the moment, because Nathan has put all of this together for her at great expense, and she's been treating it like a personal vacation. Nathan's the one being cheated out of all his effort, not her.
There's a scene in The Rehearsal S1, where Angela, the subject who Nathan has built an entire fake house and fake son for, is shown to not be taking the premise seriously. It's all fake, so she's the one who is refusing the "lie" and is more connected to reality, right?
Nathan Fielder does this very well in The Rehearsal: everything he does is completely fake, but the elaborate sets, the extensive actors, are his way of investing first, paying the costly signal, going so over-the-top that you can't help but feel inclined to play along.
All of fiction is intentionally saying untrue things. But we have no problem investing in this made up reality, because *the author has committed first*. They pay the upfront cost of making everything up, so all we have to do is step in.
In YCSE, Holmes defines lying as intentionally saying things that are untrue. This is a common definition, but I think our fear of "being lied to" works on something different entirely.
Our fear isn't believing an untrue thing, it's *getting more invested than someone else*
one thing i find fascinating upon rewatching YCSE is that it's entirely plausible that Holmes doesn't explicitly *lie* about a single thing in the film.
in the beach patio scene, when Nathan grills her on whether she's ever lied, she defines lying as "intentionally saying something that is untrue."
paired with the linguistic sleight of hand she stands by wrt the "this device CAN...", her (ostensible) confusion around the "Who's on first" bit, and her (alleged) ignorance of the Billy/A24 deal... it's not out of the realm of possibility to say that she's carefully constructed her reality (and/or memory; assuming she has lingering trauma) to only include True information that supports her narrative/case
the rest is up to Billy and whoever the fuck else wants to pick up the pieces, and you can see her lean on Billy to (messily) defend her, continually keeping her hands clean. she slips through the interrogations like sand
Nathan is on my side too
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