Nostalgebraist's Hydrogen Jukeboxes

In conclusion, the only good theory of taste is Nostalgebraist’s.He wrote a post called Hydrogen Jukeboxes, analyzing the literary output of an AI called R1. This AI tried hard to write good fiction, which was part of the problem. It crammed its stories with what Nostalgebraist called (stealing a term from Ginsberg) the “eyeball kick” - a flashy stylistic move that immediately catches the reader’s attention and “wows” them. Here are examples - some from R1, others from an experimental OpenAI model trained specifically for fiction-writing:“There is a prompt like a spell: write a story about AI and grief, and the rest of this is scaffolding—protagonists cut from whole cloth, emotions dyed and draped over sentences.”“When the jar of Sam’s laughter shattered, Eli found the sound pooled on the floorboards like liquid amber, thick and slow. It had been their best summer, that laughter—ripe with fireflies and porch wine—now seeping into the cracks, fermenting.”“And so I built a Mila and a…