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Comment by bikeshaving | Hacker News Reader

Who’s to say that our greatest writers didn’t “trip over meaning”? A lot of poetic processes involve finding, curating and re-contextualizing interesting phrases (see found poetry), and there’s potentially a lot of value in applying the same process to computer-generated writing.

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I am wondering if we call some writers great because of what they did not, could not or cannot express (anymore). By their limited and graspable existence they serve as targets for our projections, whereas an AI is less attractive for that purpose, at least in my view.

I'd rather think about the authors of AIs, their assumptions and their worldview.

That's why no one is truly moved by a single phrase. We often quote memorable bits from larger works ("to be, or not to be"), but that quote is only memorable because the entire work makes us believe that it is not an accident.

I was by a famous 6 word poem: "For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

Sure, there are exceptions. And for those exceptions it may be fair to say that perhaps they were just a lucky stumble.

Even here I do wonder how well this poem would be remembered if it weren't associated with Hemingway.

Yeah. But the thing is, after you have own baby, you may find yourself with like 5 pairs of never worn baby shoes.

So while it somewhat suggest death, it is only because of the literally context, which makes you expect something deep. If you seen that in an ad, you would not feel the same.

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