Comment by alexpotato
5 months ago
It’s funny because someone asked me about this on Twitter too. Specifically, how was I able to reply to tweets of other people with a relevant Twitter thread I had already written.
It’s all manual and I guess just how my brain works. My wife actually calls it “the database” because I can quickly access stories and I apparently tell them in a very similar way.
I’m just as impressed that you noticed and had the Déjà vu.
Out of curiosity, did you come from a family where older generations were storytellers? E.g. parents, extended, or grandparents?
In the sense that there were stories you heard retold (sometimes by the same person) over the years, mutating a bit in each retelling?
I think some brains get wired so that oral (or at least reproductive in some medium) story transmission is effortless, but affinity does seem to differ person-by-person.
> In the sense that there were stories you heard retold (sometimes by the same person) over the years, mutating a bit in each retelling?
It's funny you mention this b/c "yes". Both of my parents are big storytellers.
Never realized this so thanks for pointing it out!
if it's a good story, it is worth retelling. my personal approach is to try to link to the old post or at least mention that i told this before. i don't know if that is better or not though. but certainly if the story fits, then it should be posted, and here it fits.
> my personal approach is to try to link to the old post or at least mention that i told this before. i don't know if that is better or not though
I do this on Twitter.
Specifically, I'll retweet the thread or tweet I already have written on the topic.
Retweeting is, IMHO, the best part of twitter as it lets you "weave" a narrative of old tweets and threads. It's also why I think articles are dumb b/c you can't like to the specific part of an article like you can with a tweet thread.
Thanks for the reply.
> reply to tweets of other people with a relevant Twitter thread I had already written
I noticed I also have topics I talk about regularly and this would be really nice. Some things only need one high-effort explanation and then linking to that.
Using LLMs would in theory save some effort by rephrasing to it doesn't look copy pasted but I am strongly opposed to the mild reality distortion they are prone to doing (like hallucinating random tidbits which never happened, using "A big part of this" as a rhetorical device instead of an actual quantity, etc.) in addition to flat out lying and other mis-generation (I don't call it hallucinations since this is normal operation, not something exceptional).
> Some things only need one high-effort explanation and then linking to that.
I mentioned in a sibling thread that I do this on Twitter (and it's a lot of fun to get to re-use old threads for new audiences).
> Using LLMs would in theory save some effort by rephrasing to it doesn't look copy pasted but I am strongly opposed to the mild reality distortion they are prone to doing
Same thoughts from me. There is also a bit of "John Henry" [0] in that I want to keep my brain strong in this skill versus letting the machines take it away.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)