Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

Is someone going to make a ChatGPT synthesis of Matt Levine's writings?

Imagine you have, like, a writer who is really knowledgeable about a subject, and you have readers who would like to learn about this subject, but also have limited time. And, I mean, the writer is really prolific and sometimes feels almost a bit too verbose. In these kinds of markets, sometimes there is no deal to be struck, and...that's fine? But imagine if there were an intermediary who could summarize the writing in a way more accessible to people who are casually interested.

View on HN

> And, I mean, the writer is really prolific and sometimes feels almost a bit too verbose.

I've honestly never felt this way about Matt Levine's newsletter. He provides a lot of educational context that news articles generally don't, and that to me (other than the excellent writing) is its value – if you get rid of that, what's left?

And just like in any written medium, you are always free to skip sections. How should an LLM make the decision for you whether a given section is relevant or even interesting to you?

I realize it's an unpopular opinion, but something about his writing style can feel a bit circuitous at times. This particular one was a bit more direct, but sometimes I find them a bit of a slog. If they weren't really interesting, I simply wouldn't read them. They are, though. That's the dilemma.

I'm really struggling to understand the gripe here.

> If they weren't really interesting, I simply wouldn't read them. They are, though. That's the dilemma.

To provide an analogy: it's almost like you're suggesting someone use technology to take a movie and distill it down into a 60s TikTok video.

I don't agree in this case, but you can absolutely find something interesting yet also think it could be better, in any number of ways but including if it was denser.

It definitely does, but that is exactly the didactic value, I'd argue. Examining the same situation through different lenses in a somewhat verbose way can make things click in a way that a dry and concise statement of facts sometimes can't.

I'm not saying that there are no original ideas in his writing that could be extracted as bullet points, but on average, I think that's not the main reason why people read the column:

If you're a finance pro, you probably come for the ideas and the clever writing; if you're an interested novice, you come for the writing and/or the didactic value. Remove the writing and the didactics, and you're probably left with a very small audience.

Who needs ChatGPT? MattLevineBot has existed for the better part of a decade![1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/mattlevinebot

Are you confusing the ability to tune a LLM to write in someone's style with the ability to have it understand everything that person understands?

I might be misunderstanding your comment.

It was done with GPT3 long before ChatGPT existed (and I'm not sure what the interactive format would add here, once generated?).

It was pretty good, he quoted (and linked to it, was on Twitter iirc) some in a newsletter around the time.

Matt Levine's newsletters are valuable for their ability to take very complex news, distill them down into simplified terms and make them witty and entertaining. TL;DR of his writings provide little value here.

> But imagine if there were an intermediary who could summarize the writing in a way more accessible to people who are casually interested.

https://www.axios.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com