The Areas of My Expertise
by John Hodgman · first published 2005
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The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgeman. Sold me on the format and is more like a 7 hour stand-up comedy special than a book per se. Also features Paul Rudd.
on “Ash HN: What is your must-read audiobook?” ↗In one of his auto biographical boom John Hodgman reflects how his nonsense books ("The Areas of my Expertise") were unexpectedly wildly popular among 12 year olds, and this popularity was the primary reason those books and their sequels we're successful.
on “Old jokes” ↗…masquerading of LLM text as human, so I'm curious what you'd consider worse: 1. LLM-generated text reflecting an accurate prompt/input, or 2. genuine human BS wanting to be taken seriously? (e.g. The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman if it wasn't in jest) Personally, I prefer #1 since I can still learn something from it.
on “Why drinking coffee in Iran has become so complicated” ↗…masquerading of LLM text as human, so I'm curious what you'd consider worse: 1. LLM-generated text reflecting an accurate prompt/input, or 2. genuine human BS wanting to be taken seriously? (e.g. The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman if it wasn't in jest) #1 is worse (if unedited/factchecked/improved etc and just dumped out raw), because there will be much more of it and the intermingling of fact and fiction makes…
on “Why drinking coffee in Iran has become so complicated” ↗