Another Big Jump at Academia.edu [LessWrong] – Turn! Turn!

I posted my first working paper about ChatGPT (Discursive Competence in ChatGPT, Part 1: Talking with Dragons) to Academia.edu on Jan. 4, 2023. I posted my second major working paper (ChatGPT intimates a tantalizing future; its core LLM is organized on multiple levels; and it has broken the idea of thinking.) on Jan. 23, 2023. I am pretty sure that the first spike at the left, which is on Jan. 24, is a reflection of that. I posted two minor papers between those two, one on stories, the other on The Towers of Warsaw. The net result was an increase in activity on my Academia.edu page.

60-day Activity at Academia.edu (Feb 22, 2023 – 6:51 AM)

The more dramatic spike at the right, on Feb. 20, has a more interesting cause.

30-day Activity at Academia.edu (Feb 22, 2023 – 6:51 AM)

On February 19 I posted a mid-length piece here at New Savanna, The idea that ChatGPT is simply “predicting” the next word is, at best, misleading. I then cross-posted it to LessWrong. To my surprise and delight, it kicked off a lively conversation over there, which I have found quite useful, BTW. That spike to the right reflects that conversation.

How could that be, you ask, as a post at LessWrong has nothing to do with your Academic.edu page? That’s not quite true. That post contained links to two papers I’d posted there. One is the tantalizing future paper about ChatGPT. The other link goes to a review I did of a book about ayahuasca. Why, you might ask, did I drop such a link into a post about ChatGPT? Because it refereed to some work by the late Walter Freeman, a neuroscientist who studied the complex dynamics of the brain.

So, Academia keeps track of the sources of traffic to papers posted there. When I look at that record for Feb 20, 21, and now 22, I see links to those two papers originating at LessWrong, with more links to the ChatGPT paper than to the ayahuasca paper. That members of the LessWrong community should be interested in the ChatGPT paper is not at all surprising; the community was founded on interest in AI, the possibility of AI Doom in particular. The interest in ayahuasca is not quite so expected. Nor is it unexpected either. Remember, the personal computer revolution got started in Silicon Valley, which is only a stone’s throw from the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. And that was the Mecca of psychedelic hippiedom. And if you read my early autobiographical memoire, Touchstones • Strange Encounters • Strange Poems • the beginning of an intellectual life, you’ll see connections between computing, the idea of recursion, and psychedelia, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” in my own intellectual history.

How does the song go?

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under Heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rain, a time of sow
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late

– Pete Seeger (popularized by The Byrds)