Professional tech Cassandra discovers ELIZA and Searle; coins a term for it. More at 10...
Seriously though, why did I just need to read that many words to get no really new content? We have known for decades that humans are predisposed to anthropomorphize chatbots, and questioning whether coherent linguistic output implies understanding (or intent) is equally old hat.
It can be both full of fluff and have actionable take aways.
This is dozens of pages long and reading it thoroughly will net you maybe a dozen useful sentences. That ratio is the problem people are complaining about.
Speaking about style choices, I was curious why you sometimes use the 'f' from the Latin Extended-B block, U+0192, in your comments. I've never seen that before! (I'd meant to ignore it but you seem to be soliciting typography discussions...)
It is more about the document containing more than sixty of them. They are a completely legitimate piece of punctuation, but even prolific pre-LLM users did not tend to go that wild with them.
It's actually not em-dashes, they are en-dashes, which is either intentionally to deceive (e.g., swapped) or used incorrectly. Both of which are bad, it's up to everyone to decide on which is worse coming from MITality.
Spaced en dashes – like this – are a correct and accepted typographical choice. Whether to use spaced en dashes or (spaced or unspaced) em dashes is a matter of taste or local convention, and varies from one publication to another. Other than a typo or two where the space was left out on one side of a dash, the dashes in this linked document are just fine. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#En_dash_versus_em_dash
I was not claiming they are not correct punctuation/syntax. My claim is just no one uses them that frequently... When you see dozens of them in the first few pages of a document it raises suspicion.
This is likely an artifact of writing standards - not especially suspicious, it's like MIT Tech Review or the New Yorker using diaresis when they need to say reëducate.
Do you think LLMs invented the em dash? Pre LLM, em dashes were a sign of pretentiousness. Which is why LLMs learned to use them, and why a document produced by a university has plenty of them.
Easier to send them through a duplex scanner (or put them in a flatbed one if they are fragile). Cheaper than buying the automated ones with the page turning robot arm.
I have done it at home for my books since the mid-00s.
Not OP, but I do similar. I only de-spine a book if it is in poor condition (and I have a nice copy). Some of the material I scan is stapled instead of glued and I can remove the staples, scan and replace with new (not rusted!) staples to return the book to its original form.
I have books but would have 5x as many if I could not capture them digitally. (When I go to move or go through a purge, some of the books I scanned do go to a used book store.)
So I scan in part to keep my physical book-footprint smaller, but also my scans all get cleaned up and uploaded to archive.org. Mainly I scan young-adult science books from the 50's and 60's (since they were so influential and have all but disappeared except on eBay and the like).
Sometimes? But for scanning I can use a cheap worn copy as long as the pages are clean.
Most books I would rather have a digital copy. I had four or five book cases full of stuff and it makes moving difficult.
I originally started scanning 20 years ago when it was more difficult to find PDFs of basically whatever you want. Now it is only random old books I find at the used shop or online for cheap and somehow cannot get from archive.org or elsewhere.
Not OP, but: If it's something I want to work from, I get a printer to slice the spine off and rebind it with a ring binding. That way it lays flat on the desk.
You've trashed the book (and its lifespan) but some books are for using, not keeping.
