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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

Cruising to PNG

 

 

 

 

On the 17th February 2020 Wendy and I set sail on Queen Elizabeth on a two week cruise up to Papua New Guinea, returning to Sydney on 2nd March. 

Read more: Cruising to PNG

Fiction, Recollections & News

A Digger’s Tale

- Introduction

 

 

The accompanying story is ‘warts and all’.  It is the actual memoirs (hand written and transcribed here; but with my headings added) of Corporal Ross Smith, a young Australian man, 18 years of age, from humble circumstances [read more...] who was drawn by World events into the Second World War.  He tells it as he saw it.  The action takes place near Rabaul in New Britain. 

Read more: A Digger’s Tale

Opinions and Philosophy

World Population – again and again

 

 

David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:

 

‘He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."

 

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."

 

Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton:

 

Read more: World Population – again and again

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