This market resolves to YES if I am genuinely impressed by any piece of writing that was primarily generated by AI before June 1, 2025.
So far, I have never read anything from AI that elicited my serious interest or has made me want to keep reading at the expense of other tasks. Will that change?
Here are some pieces of writing that made me seriously interested: "Circe" by Madeline Miller, "The Ballad of the White Horse" by G.K. Chesterton, "Hadestown" by Anaïs Mitchell, "You Like It Darker" by Stephen King, "Unsong" by Scott Alexander, "Ra" by qntm, "The Blacktongue Thief" by Christopher Buelhman.
Frankly, if I'm even likely to want to revisit the piece of writing, this market is likely to resolve YES.
1,000@TiredCliche theoretically I could still see a situation where something is so much of a trainwreck that you want to keep reading it, but I think there is ultimately a limit to the level or granularity that can be had in title alone
As an example, I just asked ChatGPT to write a genius poem and provided the first three lines, which are from the song "In Heaven" by Japanese Breakfast, which is great and has stuck with me.
This is rhymed pablum but it's still pablum. This resolves NO.
"Here’s a poem based on your opening lines:
---
The Dog’s Confused
The dog’s confused—
She just paces around all day,
She’s sniffing at your empty room,
As if the scent might stay.
The chair still holds your shadow light,
The floor remembers weight,
The evening hums a quiet tune
Of someone running late.
She whines beside the open door,
A sentinel of loss,
Her paws wear circles in the dust,
Her heart can't bear the cost.
The leash still hangs upon the wall,
The bed is cold and still,
The world has shifted in its place,
Yet time moves on, it will.
But every night, she lifts her head
And listens for your key—
She dreams that footfalls on the stairs
Will set her spirit free."
ChatGPT gets stuck on focusing on the sad dog. The real song moves on to express more general thoughts about grief and loss.
"The evening hums a quiet tune of someone running late." This is just wrong. Evenings can't hum a quiet tune, that's meaningless pablum, and the person in question isn't running late- they're gone.
"The leash still hangs upon the wall." So the dog hasn't been walked by the writer since the other person was gone? Stupid.
"Yet time moves on, it will." Using Yoda-speak to force a rhyme sucks.
"She dreams that footfalls on the stairs/Will set her spirit free." This is genuinely a great line, and if this was the quality of the whole poem I would resolve the market YES. It's a disconcertingly sweet paradoxical image.
@TiredCliche thoughts on this? Better, worse, the same?
The dog’s confused.
She just paces around all day,
sniffing at your empty room—
her nose sweeps the floorboards,
tracing what’s left of your scent—
a map erased at the edges.
Your sheets still hold the shape
of a body the morning refused to keep.
She nudges a slipper, half-cocked
like a question mark,
whines at the clock’s muted pulse
where your voice once pooled.
We’ve stopped explaining time.
She chews the hours thin,
licks the air for a fingerprint of salt,
while I count the ways light
folds into your chair:
origami of absence.
Outside, the hydrangeas bow
under the weight of their own blue.
She stares at the leash, coiled
like a vein without pulse,
and brings me her ball—
an orbit with no center.
Some say animals don’t grieve.
But watch her dig at the rug’s edge,
unearthing nothing but lint and static,
her tail a metronome
measuring the silence
you left in the walls.
Tonight, she’ll curl where your shadow once slept,
dream in twitches of a hand
that never quite learned to stay.
I’ll whisper your name to the dark—
it unravels in the air,
hers to carry, mine to bear.
We’re both waiting
for a door to crack into dawn,
for the world to exhale
what it clenched in its fist.
Till then, the dog keeps her vigil—
and I, mine, for a key
that no longer turns.
@MingCat Honestly, this is possibly worse. I noticed three flaws when I started reading it when you sent it, and then I wasn't interested in reading the rest of it till now.
"your scent— a map erased at the edges." Doesn't make sense, other than I guess edge smells might fade away faster than others. But left behind smells aren't really a map in any way.
"a body the morning refused to keep." Mornings don't keep bodies. Mornings make bodies start moving and doing things. A night could keep a body. So, literally the opposite would be better.
"nudges a slipper, half-cocked like a question mark," The best line of the poem. At least this analogy makes sense and I haven't heard it before, even though question marks aren't really half-cocked, I can vibe with that.
"clock’s muted pulse where your voice once pooled." Why is the clock's sound muted? Does a voice pool?
Every single line in the third stanza is nonsensical.
"coiled like a vein without pulse," Veins don't coil when blood doesn't pump.
I could go on, but I won't.
What LLM did you ask for this... And in the prompt, did you specifically ask for "disconcerting, paradoxical images?"