- "Very, very far from being unvetted. This algorithm has been used, unchanged, for the 50 years since Flesch–Kincaid was developed."
I mean that the instance is unvetted: the machine score is generated automatically, and placed on the website automatically, and no human in the loop checks if it's reasonable or not. Not that the general algorithm is un-reviewed.
- " But they do give a decent idea of the overall readability of a piece, and that helps you to see if your content is too wordy. They are not, by themselves, an indicator of quality. They are not a substitute for proofreading and editing. But they are a useful tool to have in your arsenal."
This is very fair.
- "Life is filled with proxy metrics that are flawed, from insurance risk and credit ratings"
And a lot of them are very rightly illegal to score algorithmically in the EU (for important decisions), without manual oversight, because of the possibility of egregious and unaccountable machine error. The trend of abdicating human agency is not overall a wholesome one.
I'm coming from a place were I do read books (despite the fact I write HN comments like an illiterate stoned baboon, I'm trying my hardest really I am), and they come lovingly edited by obsessed people who put probably thousands of hours into editing each one, individually, with commentary essays that are up to 50-100 pages long, fastidiously crafted to guide the novice explorer. Standard Ebooks is neither a publisher not attempting to replace publishers. But: it's viscerally disturbing to me to see robots taking the hallowed place of human scholars in annotating—in this narrow example, scoring–books, and when they go badly wrong like this Joyce example, it's very upsetting, and makes me (irrationally?) think there's some terribly dangerous cultural normalization for replacing authentic human intelligence with fake, stupid, hopelessly lost machine imitations. And we'll lose many valuable things and our humanity in the process.
I sincerely apologize to anyone I've annoyed with this (I infer I've annoyed a lot of people). I'm just very upset with seeing fake machine stuff everywhere.
I mean that the instance is unvetted: the machine score is generated automatically, and placed on the website automatically, and no human in the loop checks if it's reasonable or not. Not that the general algorithm is un-reviewed.
- " But they do give a decent idea of the overall readability of a piece, and that helps you to see if your content is too wordy. They are not, by themselves, an indicator of quality. They are not a substitute for proofreading and editing. But they are a useful tool to have in your arsenal."
This is very fair.
- "Life is filled with proxy metrics that are flawed, from insurance risk and credit ratings"
And a lot of them are very rightly illegal to score algorithmically in the EU (for important decisions), without manual oversight, because of the possibility of egregious and unaccountable machine error. The trend of abdicating human agency is not overall a wholesome one.
I'm coming from a place were I do read books (despite the fact I write HN comments like an illiterate stoned baboon, I'm trying my hardest really I am), and they come lovingly edited by obsessed people who put probably thousands of hours into editing each one, individually, with commentary essays that are up to 50-100 pages long, fastidiously crafted to guide the novice explorer. Standard Ebooks is neither a publisher not attempting to replace publishers. But: it's viscerally disturbing to me to see robots taking the hallowed place of human scholars in annotating—in this narrow example, scoring–books, and when they go badly wrong like this Joyce example, it's very upsetting, and makes me (irrationally?) think there's some terribly dangerous cultural normalization for replacing authentic human intelligence with fake, stupid, hopelessly lost machine imitations. And we'll lose many valuable things and our humanity in the process.
I sincerely apologize to anyone I've annoyed with this (I infer I've annoyed a lot of people). I'm just very upset with seeing fake machine stuff everywhere.