Ovens

Interesting experiential note from Kirn:

Years ago while teaching creative writing to grad students I noticed a new kind of short story that was not about deep conflicts but differences of opinion. One character would have the right opinions on some issue, another the wrong ones. Bad things would happen to the person with the wrong ones. The end.

The best thing about job-based education is that there’s no room for permanent squabbles or opinions. Nature only works one way. You can always settle a dispute by doing the experiment.

Better to bake cookies at 425 or 325? Try both.

Better to run this amplifier on 9v or 12v? Try both.

You can’t have a 9voltian party and a 12voltian party.

One of Kirn’s responders mentioned Swift’s little-endians vs big-endians, in a way that isn’t entirely clear. I can’t tell if the responder grasped Swift’s point or not. Swift’s point was experiential. The egg fries the same no matter which end you break, and in fact (though it’s not clear if Swift grasped THIS fact!) you can’t break an egg at either end. You have to break it in the middle.

Harder question: How would a literature teacher create a lab for fiction? What’s the oven? Lit classes have used ratings by other class members forever, but that doesn’t solve the problem. All the class members are immersed in the same momentary fake culture, so they will approve the bad product.

I guess the teacher is the oven, but that’s a heavy load for the teacher. It’s also inferior to an individually sensed experience with your own burned cookies or your own burned capacitor. You can disbelieve or distrust the teacher. You can’t disbelieve a charred mess.

This might be a good job for OpenAI used inversely. If the chatbot loves your story, it’s a charred mess. If the chatbot deletes your story and reports you to FBI, it’s a great cookie.