Is there anyone better at using the essay form to understand the experience of living and working within the institutional constraints of the modern research university than Rafe Meager?
Oh, and I agree "timeless" doesn't quite fit there! Can't catch em all.
But i'm seriously blown away by this, Rob, and it means so much coming from you. Thank you for this and for all your comments and discussions as we go here.
Spot-on observation about LLM-generated smoothness creeping into human writing. The tension you describe between wanting authentic voices and spotting transformer-style prose is somehting I deal with constantly when filtering notes. I actually built a small side project in 2023 analyzing sentence-level entropy in essays, and low-variance phrasing was everywhere even before ChatGPT went mainstream. Meager's work does stand out, particularly how they weave affective experience into structural critique of academia without falling into either pure abstraction or pure memoir. That balance is rare.
That's really interesting. It supports the sense I have that LLMs have intensified, or maybe just made visible, shifts that were already underway as culture became more and more online. I suppose you could say LLMs are a feedback loop of digital culture.
I am, of course, touched beyond words by this post.
Oh, and I agree "timeless" doesn't quite fit there! Can't catch em all.
But i'm seriously blown away by this, Rob, and it means so much coming from you. Thank you for this and for all your comments and discussions as we go here.
Well, I had to find something to disagree with. Otherwise it's a fan letter...and that's what the comments section is for.
I love that!!! I completely agree.
Spot-on observation about LLM-generated smoothness creeping into human writing. The tension you describe between wanting authentic voices and spotting transformer-style prose is somehting I deal with constantly when filtering notes. I actually built a small side project in 2023 analyzing sentence-level entropy in essays, and low-variance phrasing was everywhere even before ChatGPT went mainstream. Meager's work does stand out, particularly how they weave affective experience into structural critique of academia without falling into either pure abstraction or pure memoir. That balance is rare.
That's really interesting. It supports the sense I have that LLMs have intensified, or maybe just made visible, shifts that were already underway as culture became more and more online. I suppose you could say LLMs are a feedback loop of digital culture.