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[Weekly Update] LLM fiction is a self-defeating prophecy
🕑 Added 2025-09-15 01:22:34 +0000 UTCWe need your help!
Tomorrow, I'll upload a potential future video script on the topic of "how to spot a fake critic", in which I basically rant about the characteristics of poorly written movie reviews without pointing fingers at specific reviewers. Though if you are familiar with film criticism on YouTube, the subtext is not subtle.
It's no surprised that this was a video script motivated by frustration and grievances, which is why, at least to me, it feels very cynical. It's not something we does, and I'm not sure if we should publish it.
That is why, I would love to hear your opinion on it. I'll make the script accessible to all supporters for a limited time. If you have the time, please let us know your thoughts. Are my arguments validly sound? How do we retool it so that it is more informational than cynical?
Anyway, in this update, we'll discuss why it is so difficult to find writing textbooks that are comprehensive, and what that means for AI written fiction. But for now, let's do some housekeeping:
CHANNEL UPDATE
Reactions From Our Last Video
Hope you enjoyed our last video, provocatively titled "Be the Chinese the Japanese Think You Are". I'm surprised how well it is doing, honestly. I thought it'd just be a niche little idea. I guess Chinese-Japanese relation is just a topic that gets a lot of heat. Nevertheless, I really appreciate the supports from everyone lately.
One part that I find amusing is that there are commenters who think the video puts Japan as superior, no doubt influenced by the video title. But there are also commenters who think the constant emphasis of China being the origin of culture means I'm a Wumao. I hope when the next part comes out, it'll become clear that I want nothing but peace and connection between the people.
The only thing I really want to apologize for is the amount of on-screen text error.
Information I Didn't Include
Whenever there's a block of text appearing on screen, that's a chuck of text that was meant to be part of the script, but was cut for time. One particularly controversial bit is the part about how the Japanese language influenced Chinese. The topic itself is highly controversial, as did the 70% estimation.
Long story short, during the late Qing dynasty, when China was trying to industrialize, many Chinese scholars studied science through Japanese text, which were translated from Western writings. Since the Japanese writing system is entirely based on Chinese, naturally, these new words were created using Chinese characters. In many cases, Japan repurposed old and archaic words to mean new things. One example would be the term "Legality", 法律, which did exist in Middle Chinese, but is not widely used. 律令 and 律法 was the more common term. But these days, 法律 is the most commonly accepted term because of Japanese influence.
This leads to a lot of debate on wether or not this constitutes as loan words. The word was loaned by Japan and then loaned back to China. Not to mentioned, the entire writing system is loaned from China. To Chinese people who are proud of the unique and ancient language, this debate is a matter of national pride.
Added to the complication is the blurriness between what counts as a "word" in Chinese, and what is a "character". 法 means Law. 律 means decrees. The meaning has always been there. It is part of the problem of applying the concept of "loan words" to a complicated situation like Chinese-Japanese language influence.
Ultimately, the point is, the way Japan utilizes these word has impacted contemporary Chinese speech. The two languages are more closely tied than it seems.
MEDIA TALK
Let's talk about AI again. I know it gets very tiring, but it is the hottest issue right now. But don't worry, I have good news.
One of my passion as a filmmaker is writing. It's how I can write an update every single week for y'all. But being a screenwriter is not easy. I think most writers will agree with me that, the more writing guide books you read, the less useful they seems. Indeed, the most useful tips are always from your peers, rather than some master who wrote some books decades ago. Save the Cat is a decent read, but when you start writing your script, you'll quickly realize just how many rules you have to break.
And this is the problem of self-defeating prophecy. The moment you create a formula for something popular, it ceases to be popular. Put it another way: People are hipsters.
It is the reason why musical genre keeps shifting. It is why you don't listen to what your parents listen. It is why art movements keeps flip-flopping between sincerity and de-construction. Writing is like a crypto-scam, by the time someone in a YouTube ad is telling you about it, the fad has already passed.
This is the reason why Pixar movies no longer feel magical. A lot of people points to how the stories lack the childhood imagination of "toys come to life" or "house can fly". But in my opinion, nothing about Pixar movie really changed. To this day, its scripts are still just as solidly constructed. It still has all the fascinating visual and touching emotional moments. Pixar is still Pixar, and that is the problem.
As our taste change, Pixar got left behind. What worked for the 2000s no longer works today.
Another example would be the OG Naked Gun vs the Naked Gun reboot. Both movies worked excellently for their time. But if the OG Naked Gun comes out today, it'd feel strangely slow. Back then, a joke is funny when you keep milking it. When Ed says "That's no way for a man to die", Frank proceeds to give 3 consecutive punchlines: "A parachute not opening", "Getting caught in the gears of a combine", "having your nuts bit off by a Laplander". For audience back then, this will result in increasingly louder laughter.
But this kind of chain punch is gone in the reboot, and for good reasons. Perhaps we our attention span is fried, or perhaps we are so much more used to seeing the same joke being reposted, we no longer like seeing the same joke being milked. As a result, jokes in the reboot are all punch and done. Either you build on the joke further, or move on to another gag.
All that's to day, writing is about capturing the wider social zeitgeist. It's about knowing your audience. And no AI can help you with that... Except maybe an AI that functions identical to a human being but at that point, that's just another human being in an electronic body. The more a LLM learns from, the more mainstream its writing becomes, the less appealing the stories are.
Anyway, that's the update for this week. This whole train of thought originally came from reading the Foundation book series, in which a concept of psychohistory is introduced, allowing people to mathematically calculate social reaction and development in the long term. It's a neat concept, but that is the classic example of a self-defeating prophecy: In a chaotic system, knowledge of the future will immediately alter the course of history into a different direction. And the knowledge about that different direction will only further alter the trajectory. It's something interesting to think about.
Anyway, I've rambled enough already. I hope you had a great weekend. I'll see you with the next script, and in the next update!
![[Weekly Update] LLM fiction is a self-defeating prophecy](https://img5.runfaps.com/storage/5/rz/vl/e9630c-019e86f1-a53e-7a3e-a677-ab0432bba12e.jpg)
