麻豆传媒

Feedback is 麻豆传媒鈥檚 popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com

Bleaker house

One of the great joys in life, Feedback argues, is the perfect opening sentence of a book 鈥� and the concomitant realisation that, yes, this one is going to be good. 鈥淚t was the day my grandmother exploded.鈥� 鈥淎s the manager of the Performance sits before the curtain on the boards and looks into the Fair, a feeling of profound melancholy comes over him in his survey of the bustling place.鈥� 鈥淟et鈥檚 start with the end of the world, why don鈥檛 we?鈥�

So we, and many others, were horrified by a passage in a recent in The New Yorker about how artificial intelligence might change reading. The suggestion was that AI might simplify challenging prose into something less tangled.

The example offered by writer Joshua Rothman was this line from the 鈥渕uddy and semantically tortuous鈥� opening of Charles Dickens鈥檚 Bleak House: 鈥淕as looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy.鈥� The AI Claude reworks it thus: 鈥淕as lamps glow dimly through the fog at various spots throughout the streets, much like how the sun might appear to farmers working in misty fields.鈥�

This was flagged by Tobias Wilson-Bates, an associate professor of 19th-century British literature, on Bluesky, where he said: 鈥�.鈥�

We suppose that, on some level, Claude has managed to convey something of what Dickens was getting at, but we also suppose that things like cadence and scansion are relevant to the reading experience. The phrase 鈥渧arious spots鈥� physically hurt when we read it. We also aren鈥檛 sure that the passage鈥檚 sole purpose is to convey that things are a bit foggy. Everyone in Bleak House is threatened and stymied, and words like 鈥渓oom鈥� and 鈥渟pongey鈥� set this mood.

But never mind literary criticism when we can amuse ourselves. What other dense prose passages could be summarised by AI for ease of consumption? Adam Sharp has already made some suggestions, again on Bluesky. For instance, take the opening line of Sylvia Plath鈥檚 novel The Bell Jar: 鈥淚t was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn鈥檛 know what I was doing in New York.鈥� Sharp suggests the following abridgement: 鈥�.鈥�

And what about that overly long opener from Jane Austen鈥檚 Pride and Prejudice: 鈥淚t is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.鈥� Surely we can boil that down a bit: 鈥淓veryone knows that rich, single men want to get married.鈥� We encourage readers to identify similar prosey passages in need of AI-assisted simplification.

Burn before viewing

Brian Darvell recently obtained a DVD of the film Conclave and was thrown into theological confusion by a yellow sticker on the back that read: 鈥淪ecurity Protected: Remove before microwaving.鈥� That is one way to make white smoke.

The stork truth

Feedback didn鈥檛 anticipate, when we reminded readers that correlation doesn鈥檛 necessarily equal causation, quite such a flood of responses. What could have caused it?

Jim Handman writes in to remind us of two famously bizarre correlations. The number of pirates in the world has declined in near-perfect lockstep with the rise in global temperatures, leading to the slogan, 鈥�.鈥�

Meanwhile, homicides tend to rise in line with ice cream sales. While this latter correlation 鈥渓ooks goofy鈥�, says Jim, 鈥渢here is actually a good explanation鈥�. Warm weather encourages people to go outside, which increases social interaction, leading to 鈥渕ore opportunities for ice cream consumption and, unfortunately, more opportunities for crime鈥�. It certainly does: Feedback once went outside and bought an ice cream, only to have it stolen out of our hands by a seagull. Lesson learned. Feedback now eats ice cream indoors, away from marauding marine fauna.

A third correlation has already been discussed in a recent column: stork populations in some countries correlate with the number of children born. At the time, we assumed that this correlation was spurious. But three readers have offered possible mechanisms.

Hillary Shaw suggests a link with the built environment: 鈥淪torks like to nest in elevated places including house chimneys, pylons and church steeples.鈥� Wealthier societies, which have lower birth rates, have replaced 鈥渦nsightly pylons鈥� with buried cables and don鈥檛 put chimneys on centrally heated houses.

Paul Vann has a similar thought: 鈥淚 recall from my A-level statistics days鈥� that there was a positive correlation between the number of storks鈥� nests on houses in the Netherlands and the number of children in households鈥�. The explanation? 鈥淔amilies with more children tended to live in larger houses with more chimney stacks and therefore more storks鈥� nests鈥�.

Finally, Brian Reffin Smith describes a site near a river in Germany 鈥渨here storks abound鈥� and 鈥渃onstantly stoop to pick up things鈥�. Brian claims to have twice seen 鈥渟ingle, unopened condom wrappers鈥� 鈥� raising the question of 鈥渨hether the storks are stealing them to ensure more babies, hence more jobs for themselves鈥�. He offers a stern lesson: 鈥淣efarious intention is so often missing as a factor in statistical correlations.鈥�

You decide which is most likely.

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