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Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

After the first two paragraphs, and especially at the point of Swan Moots, I thought “Someone got creative with ChatGPT prompts”.

I was, of course, wrong. But now I want to train a GPT3 model on ridiculous ancient laws so that I can have it generate an endless variety for my entertainment. The responses I get from vanilla ChatGPT aren’t bad, but not of the quality of British Swan Law

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Here's one for you:

"Plans by the City of London to move its markets to a new location in Dagenham have run into a problem"

"The issue is Romford Market, which was created by the Royal Charter of the Liberty of Havering granted by King Henry III in 1247 — and that Charter includes a clause banning any other market from being set up within a day’s sheep drive."

https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-city-of-londons-mar...

So much of ridiculous fantasy fiction is based in ridiculous monarchical reality.

Yes, lot's of it is simply "let's take a succession crisis from IRL, change the names & add magic."

Though I'll admit I find some of the ridiculous fantasy fiction entertaining. But I also find lots of real history entertaining too. Intricate power struggles & their intersection with daily life are interesting, at least from the distance of fiction or a few hundred years. Watching them play out in real time is usually horrific.

This exactly. On paragraph four, the first sentence is this:

> In order to fully understand the complexities of the scope of British Monarchy Swan Privileges, we need to go back to the Middle Ages, when swans were a luxury good. Valued as both . . .

I stopped reading there. I'm thinking: No, we absolutely don't need to go that far back to answer this question of who owns swans. For goodness sake, will it kill authors and video makers to tell us the answer in short-form and then help the reader decide to continue going down a long-winded explanation if they desire? This gives the same vibe as the overly-long YouTube videos that squeeze 10 minutes out of questions that can be answered in 30 seconds.

Concise and informational writing is dead, and LLMs are the final nail in the coffin.

For this kind of historical minutia, of course we need to go back to the Middle Ages. That's when such things got established. Maybe if you're from a much younger country that's only been around the blink of an eye that makes sense, but that would put you in the minority.

I don't know what LLMs have to do with this.

I really don't think this article was intended to be informational: how many people actually need to know whether the King technically owns all the swans. The purpose of the article is entertainment, and just saying "he owns most swans in England and Wales with a few small exceptions" is not nearly as entertaining.

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