Actually, I listened to a dramatization of The Three Musketeers and I was struck by how _funny_ it is. The 4-way duel at the beginning is hilarious and Aramis' and Porthos' respective romantic escapades give great comic relief to what is otherwise an action packed adventure.
The Count of Monte Cristo is an investment, and the middle third drags, but it's necessary to set up the final third, which is so rewarding for the reader. It's the best tale of revenge and redemption I've ever read.
...I read both of the books recently and it was illuminating to be able to near-instantly explore avenues of insight/criticism of both of the books. Three Musketeers matches fairly closely to Wizard of Oz (vice versa actually), and Monte Cristo raises some really interesting questions if you view "The Count" as basically a fallen angel of divine justice (and the benefits/costs to him via that role).
Since my circle of IRL people who'd recently read both the unabridged books in the last month is infinitesimally small, it was one of my first "arms-length" test cases of "The GPT's" for fitness-for-purpose. I'm still a bit muddy on throwing a bunch of personal data and thoughts to remote servers (or becoming dependent on that interaction pattern), but digging in and analyzing old books was a great kindof gut-check and something I enjoy doing when finishing a book.
I know it's regurgitating a bunch of of reddit comments and academic books/papers (in Dumas's case), but overall- highly recommended!
I mean humans have made death threats towards other humans about whether or not Han shot first.
fiction-fan-discourse is a very low bar on the rankings of human social interaction. I'm not saying that makes it replacable and trivial, but let's not pretend that every fiction discussion with another honest to god human being is a Rembrandt.
This is peak human to human sharing recommendations.
...time passes...
"""Now that you understand the idea behind these pairings, recommend five more pairings, but don't give any hints as to their connections, just five bullet points with "A vs B" movie titles. Bonus points if there is at least a 10-year gap between them, and they are both not box-office blockbusters (but make sure they are slightly more popular or recognizable movies, not exclusively low-distribution non-critically-acclaimed indie movies)."""
* Children of Men vs Snowpiercer * Lost in Translation vs Frances Ha * No Country for Old Men vs Hell or High Water * The Prestige vs The Illusionist * Drive vs Nightcrawler
...I know guidance is "don't just post AI output", but this is specifically a human-to-human discussion around novel(?) ways to interact with AI/LLM's. I've found they're _really_ good at conceptual-venn-diagrams.
There's a book "Algorithms to Live By" (ie: look for matching socks via BFS/DFS or whatever). Asking the AI: "you know a bunch of algorithms, what are the top three that should have been in the book?" => "what are the weakest that could have been removed?"
Recently during performance reviews, we had to write our self-assessment and had guidance from on high like: "make sure you talk about people skills, technical skills, customer impact, etc." ...so yada yada: "I'm so amazing, I'm so great" => "Dear AI, I've been given this guidance `...`, please compare my handcrafted storytelling against the guidance `...` and tell me where I have missed covering a requirement" => "...now please give help w.r.t. simplifying or cleaning up the section on $INCREDIBLE_TECHNICAL_ACHIEVEMENT b/c I was focusing on describing my personal impact, but need help making it more digestible for others".
The combination of instant, tailored feedback and the fact that they've read the whole internet, "watched" every movie (read the script, read critics reviews, reddit, forum discussions, etc), read most published books, and that they're 80%+ plumbers, doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, etc. make them an unstoppable research assistant, especially when crossing connections that would normally be "expensive" to do so.
Example: ask a [doctor+lawyer+plumber] about the health and legal impacts of lead solder in pipes or whatever. Instead of needing to schedule 3 people's times, wait for them, pay them, etc, you can get instant "free" feedback, educate yourself, and then have a more solid foundation to branch out from there. Such incredibly useful tools!
