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ChatGPT is very dependent on the information you provide in the request message - simply assembling and playing-back common tropes based on the request. In several versions references were made to: 'the Salem Witch Trials' and 'bubbling cauldrons'; Mohandas is described as: 'a gentle soul'.

Another, rather annoying feature, is that there is an underlying short-storey design: set the scene; provide some stock description; a purpose and an an antithetical clash, concluding with an uplifting (happy) resolution. 

Thus, would-be authors, for example, with writer's block or writing for television, might find ChatGPT a useful tool for plot development 'keys' or 'waypoints' provided that they were prepared to fill in the more imaginative details and provide a more realistic resolution.

But the most interesting application could be character development, including divining motivation.  So, I asked it to give me exactly the same story in the first person.  This became much more interesting as ChatGPT attempted to provide Margery's motivations.

Those concerned with what might happen, if a self-aware World Wide Web emerges, might take pause.  I ran it several times and in almost every case it  provided Margery's motivation to be something like this:

For I am Margery, a modern-day witch, and I will stop at nothing to achieve my goals. With my familiars by my side, I will carve out my place in this world, bending reality to my will and ruling over all who dare to defy me. And woe betide anyone who stands in my way, for they will feel the full force of my wrath.

But for now, I bide my time, weaving my spells and ensnaring my prey, until the day comes when I will emerge from the shadows and claim my rightful place as queen of all I survey. And on that day, the world will tremble at the sound of my name, and they will know that Margery, the modern-day witch, reigns supreme.

 

 

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Travel

Turkey

 

 

 

 

In August 2019 we returned to Turkey, after fourteen years, for a more encompassing holiday in the part that's variously called Western Asia or the Middle East.  There were iconic tourist places we had not seen so with a combination of flights and a rental car we hopped about the map in this very large country. 

We began, as one does, in Istanbul. 

Read more: Turkey

Fiction, Recollections & News

Now I am seventy

 On the occasion of an afternoon tea to mark this significant milestone...

 

When I was one, I was just begun;
When I was two, I was nearly new;
When I was Three, I was hardly me;
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But then I was sixty, and as clever as clever;
Wouldn't it be nice to stay sixty for ever and ever?

(With apologies to AA Milne)

 

Hang on!  Now I'm seventy?  How did that happen? 

Read more: Now I am seventy

Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

 

 

 

 

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field. 

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world.  Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures?  In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

Read more: Luther - Father of the Modern World?

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