I’d earlier reported that a post at LessWrong was driving traffic to my Academia.edu page to look at papers on ChaGPT and ayahuasca. That post – The idea that ChatGPT is simply “predicting” the next word is, at best, misleading – went up on Feb. 20, peeking three days later on the 23rd. That’s when hits began arriving at Academia.edu. Then things slowed down, but never quite back to where they had been before. And there was a smaller spike or two.
But then – SHAZAM! – there was a BIG spike yesterday, March 13. That’s it there at the right:
It’s at 133 document views, 121 unique visitors, while the Feb 23 spike is at 93 document views and 80 unique visitors. What happened there?
Jerry Seinfeld is what happened. I’d posted a new working paper, Seinfeld's Comedy, Jokes are Intricately Crafted Machines, and that got posted at Hacker News (it’s scrolled way down by now). Now, look at this screenshot, which is from my Academia.edu page some time yesterday:
So those “ycombinator.com” links in the 2nd column from the right. That’s the Hacker News. There’s also one from scottaaronson.blog and one from academia.edu.
I wonder where things will go next?