Think before you speak. Read before you think.
- Fran Lebowitz
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge. And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
- Ecclesiastes 1:14-18 (KJV)
This time, we will experiment with using large language models to condense and review fiction. Do current LLMs have "reading comprehension"? How accurate is it? How well can they follow a story? ...Just how easy is it to do something like the worthily-viral NotebookLM? Well, let's do this step by step. This is a simple way to synthesize accurate in-depth machine reviews of any text, including (if desired) line-by-line commentary. This could be used farther as input to (e.g.) a text-to-speech system to produce "lectures" or "podcasts" doing a deep-dive into the content.
(And yes, I am excited to show you just how far the Codehappy Extended Paracosm already has crept... but damn, there's still so much to do. For now it'll have to be a mystery, bot.)
Machine-generated text in this article is set in this style and in a blockquote, like this.
The autoregressive language model used throughout the article is Mistral Large 2407 123b (q8_0), run with a custom (entropy-based) sampler building on top of the ggml library.
Illustrations synthesized with my own Puzzle Box XL latent diffusion model, a deep general-purpose SDXL architecture pretrain (epoch 13.4, 12930K training iterations).
The model is given this old shaggy-dog story by me, "The Story of the Toxic Muffin", to review. I have many little larks like these in my diaries (I am one of those people afflicted to write obsessively); this one is extremely strange -- it was an exercise at stretching an absurd premise with few plot possibilities as far as possible -- but has scope, a clear voice, and an existentialist, nihilistic theme that I suspected autoregressive models would "appreciate."
The instruction-tuned model is conditioned on this text:
[INST] You are a literary reviewer writing a regular column for a major magazine. Your job is to read fiction carefully, and write a review in the form of a list. This review will be published both in the physical magazine and its online version. You construct a list of 10 sentences or short passages from the book, parts that are intriguing, beautiful, unusual, thought-provoking, or otherwise interesting, and for each of the excerpts in the list, you write a short (one or two paragraphs) explanation about why each excerpt was selected. At the end of the list, you may write an overall summary. Please read the following short story carefully, select the 10 excerpts for the list, and write your review:
<story text follows...>
[/INST] REVIEW:
This query is repeated many times, and then the model-produced lists are combined.
The quality of the LLM outputs will depend mainly on these things:
This setup is approximately frontier strength for text generation, as I believe these generations demonstrate adequately. It is also quite compute-efficient. (Llama 3.1 405b would presumably be slightly better, but Mistral Large flies here, and we have to make a lot of generations, and I am not the least bit concerned about commercial licenses -- nobody should be at this late date, really -- so.) The interested reader would do well to consider what other sorts of things you can build with sufficiently accurate chain-and-reduce systems like this, especially in the realm of structured generation or anything that can be externally evaluated in some way. You might punk the big labs at the next thing that way. They aren't getting early-fusion ultramassive multimodal autoregressive transformer models correctly trained any time soon. (Anybody got a few trillion for nuke plants?)
When the variance in the logits gets too high, we search with the goal of finding a more certain logit distribution, one resembling a good patch in-domain. We want to get away from the out-of-domain patches of the model -- nothing good ever happens out-of-domain. One important thing to remember is that there are two kinds of searches to run -- both the inner beam search, and the outer tree of generations, if things are too hairy and we can't find a good distribution within compute budget. We aren't going half-assed here: backtracking is allowed! (Three of the most dangerous words in the universe!)
The motivation here, of performing a more careful search when the spread of logit probabilities is too high, is to make human-like writing with some degree of insight, or connection. Part of what makes human writing, actual writing, distinctive are unexpected passages, bursts of perplexity (you could say); if this is done in an aimless fashion, it will lead to nonsense, but if it is aimed -- if you are able to parkour your way from one in-domain point to another -- then you get what might be termed as actual writing, writing with a point. The question is, in your mind-space, how many elysian greens are within leaping distance of each other, even if they do not appear (at first) to be connected? If you have enough domains, enough spaces in which your writing is certain and comfortable, bumping up against each other, you're golden. Big liberal educations and omniversal readers, some degree of imagination -- that, and attention, are all you need. Pretty sure on this one.
It is worth pointing out that I ran this query 28 times, got 28 "top excerpts!" lists, and not once did the model fail to select a correct quote from the story. Not once did it hallucinate a false quote not in the provided text. A few times -- if the model didn't number the excerpts in the list as it went -- the output list would end after 9 entries (once, 8), because language models have difficulty counting. (If it numbers the list entries as it generates, it always stops in the right place; it may be better to explicitly prompt the model to do that always.) In one case, it chose the same quote twice in the list; this excerpt was only counted once. As a result there were 274, rather than 280, total excerpts chosen.
There were four quotes that were selected by at least half (14) of the queries. These might be considered consensus favorites by the model. There were 48 total different excerpts from the story represented in the generated listicles. Incidentally, and possibly interestingly, a few of my favorite bits from the story (the muffin "sopping with rainwater and rapture", for example) were not selected by the model once. I have a sneaking suspicion why, in that particular case.
For each different quote selected, each of the model's comments about this excerpt were collated and then summarized with another generation. This gave a sort of "consensus commentary" for each excerpt.
The most frequently selected excerpts from the story, and the model-generated consensus commentary for each, are listed below. NOTE that this contains many spoilers for the story (the list begins with the top excerpt: the closing paragraph of the story, for example!) so if that is important to you, you may want to read the story first. (Or you can read the reviews the model wrote, which are still spoily but less so than the per-line commentary.)
The model, as you can see, is also told to write a summary review of the text. After the list of top excerpts, some of the positive and negative model-generated summary reviews of the story are also presented. You can jump to various sections with the following links:
The Top Four
The Next Twenty Top Excerpts
Reviews!
The number in square brackets is the number of queries that selected this quote.
These excerpts are ordered by the number of queries selecting the quote, not by their order in the story.
#1. [17] Those hopes were his only warmth. And his only conscious thought conveyed in words, besides the feelings, unheard, ritual, the only ones that had any sense or meaning in him: "Howlike jays theribee, crash, smoosh, cratch. Annidie wist horbous!"
In the end, the muffin's deteriorated mind clings to a garbled mantra expressing his undying wish to be eaten and destroyed, to fulfill his purpose at last. That he still desires this after so long, in such a warped and hopeless fashion, encapsulates the tragedy of his endless existence.
Language itself, in the lack of stimulation over a trillion years, has deteriorated irretrievably.
It's a darkly poetic encapsulation of his fate. The muffin's faint residual imaginings, his mind finally fractured under the weight of eons of purposeless existence, are its sole remaining "nourishment" as it drifts through space - an ironic reversal of a muffin's usual purpose. No doubt is left in the reader's mind as to the ultimate futility of existence.
These final lines of the story are a tour de force of stream-of-consciousness writing, capturing the muffin's deteriorated mental state and the incoherent babble that constitutes its sole remaining thoughts. His hopes of being destroyed are all that sustain him. The sense of alienation and madness is almost suffocating.
It is a profoundly sad ending as the muffin, alone in the universe, still longs for annihilation after eons. It's a haunting image of a being unable to let go of its original purpose even when that purpose is long irrelevant. The heartbreaking final line, full of tragic resonance, illustrates how far the muffin has fallen. His once-vivid fantasies have degraded into nonsensical babble, his language and thoughts eroding along with his sense of self. The phonetic corruption conveys a loss of coherence that is deeply unsettling.
The final word of the story, "horbous!" ("purpose!"), repeats with emphasis one last time, with all finality, the central
theme of the story: the (lack of) purpose. It is one last cry to the infinite for fulfillment, for satisfaction. There is no answer given, there is only the end.
#1. [17] He fantasized now about epochal upheavals, tectonic plates rubbing together, he caught between them, and finally of them tearing him into crumbs.
The muffin's apocalyptic imaginings take on a grander scale as he's buried deep underground, reflecting his desperate longing for any kind of transformative or destructive change in his circumstances. The language is strangely sensual.
Even when buried deep underground, the muffin continues to dream up fanciful scenarios for his own destruction, showcasing the persistence of his single-minded desire. The muffin's imaginings turn to grand, cataclysmic events that might finally destroy him. The image of being ground to bits by shifting continents is both horrific and strangely poetic. These violent and dramatic imaginings showcase his deep yearning for oblivion and purpose through annihilation. The fantasy becomes visceral and unsettling as the muffin is entombed. The single-minded desire for meaningful annihilation survives even this.
This passage showcases the muffin's resilience and adaptability in finding new ways to imagine its own destruction, even in an environment far removed from bakeries and human mouths. The vivid imagery of being torn apart by tectonic forces continues the story's theme of finding purpose through annihilation. It also reflects his increasingly detached mental state.
The image of being crushed between continents is surreal. The comparison of tectonic forces to "teeth" maintains the story's central metaphor while expanding its scale to the geological. This speaks to the immense timescales the muffin is now dealing with, buried underground. Its desires have scaled up from stomach acids to continental drift.
#3. [16] The toxic muffin was, however, quite tempting, if you are the kind of person who eats muffins, but was far too dangerous to ever eat. It was saturated with a sweet-smelling but deadly poison. Even the crumbs, the skeleton under the oily mortifying skin, were toxic themselves. In no way could the muffin and the poison be separated; in no way could the muffin be made safe to eat.
The vivid, visceral description of the muffin's toxicity is both repulsive and strangely alluring. The personification of the crumbs as a "skeleton" adds to the unsettling atmosphere. There's a sense of cruel temptation. This immediately sets an ominous tone, establishing the muffin as an object of danger, not delight.
The unsettling, almost gruesome description immediately creates eerie atmosphere and conveys the muffin's inherent danger down to its very crumbs. The word choices like "oily mortifying skin" create a sense of decay and disgust. This sets the stage for a dark fairy tale about a delectable yet deadly treat.
This attention-grabbing excerpt brings home the utter deadliness of the muffin. It also establishes the impossibility of the muffin's deepest desire - to fulfill its purpose by being eaten. The muffin is poison, it cannot be made wholesome.
#4. [14] The toxic muffin also had consciousness. Don't ask how or why. It was a miracle, that's all. The toxic muffin, even if he was nothing but death itself, was alive.
With these simple words, the story takes a surreal turn into the realm of magical realism. This excerpt introduces the central conceit of the story - that the muffin is not only deadly but also sentient.
This casual revelation of the muffin's sentience is presented as an afterthought, almost dismissively, which only adds to the absurdist tone. The casual, almost flippant way in it is done fits the story's quirky, darkly humorous nature. The reader is invited to suspend disbelief.
The number in square brackets is the number of queries that selected this quote.
These excerpts are ordered by the number of queries selecting the quote, not by their order in the story.
#5. [13] "If only I could eat myself!" the muffin would continue, this fantasy taking him deeply through a wound of self-hatred. "If only my own poison could kill me, as it could so easily kill anything else!"
The toxic muffin descends into self-loathing as he laments his inability to die by his own hand (or crumb). This disturbing turn reveals how thoroughly his inability to fulfill his purpose has corroded his psyche. In anguished moments, the muffin contemplates impossible ways it might destroy itself, revealing intense frustration and despair.
The muffin's suicidal ideation is rendered with a darkly comic pathos here. The fact that his own toxicity cannot destroy him feels like a final twist of the knife in terms of his frustrated desire for purpose through consumption. This sets up the central conflict of the story. He longs for self-annihilation but is denied even that release. It's a poignant exploration of the despair born from an unfulfillable purpose, a powerful moment of introspection from an unexpected narrator.
#5. [13] For years and years, the toxic muffin sat in the display, looking as fresh as the day he was born -- yes, conscious muffins are 'born'; you see, although humans sometimes refer faceitously to their gestation as 'baking', conscious muffins are sensitive about the topic of origins, and rather, euphemistically invoke spectral vaginae, giant muffin-eggs, or a life-giving muffin father figure from the sky not unlike our Santa Claus.
This humorous and imaginative passage delves into the mythos surrounding conscious muffins, highlighting the author's creativity, dark humor, and ability to craft a unique and engaging world. Besides showcasing the story's inventive world-building, the comparison to human concepts adds humor and relatability. The longevity of the muffin due to its poisonous nature is a curious detail that makes it even more pitiable - a being unable to live out its purpose or even age.
This passage highlights the eerie timelessness of the toxic muffin, emphasizing the muffin's enduring yet stagnant existence, as well as the disconnect between its appearance and its true nature. Its unchanging appearance underscores its unnatural state and the sense that it is trapped in a kind of purgatory.
This may also be the most flippantly antitheistic sentence I've read in a fairytale.
#7. [12] He imagined that the rain wetting him was saliva, stomach acid, digestive enzymes -- how delightful it was! Here he was, being slobbered upon by the sky, soon to slip through its alimentary canal.
The muffin's joyful delusion as the rain falls on him is both endearing and heartbreaking. It's a rare moment of bliss in his miserable existence, even if it's founded on a fantasy of being consumed and destroyed. Later, the muffin enjoys longer exposure to the sky and contact with the rain - this is approximately the only tactile content of the story. But the second time is bittersweet, because we and the muffin know it is the last time.
The toxic muffin's vivid and surreal fantasy about the rain demonstrates his desperation to fulfill his purpose. It showcases his imaginative and somewhat deranged inner world. The muffin's conception of the sky sharing his impossible consumption fantasy is a bittersweet illusion, fueled by desire of the purpose denied to him.
The muffin's imaginations take a surreal turn here, simultaneously funny and melancholy. The sensory details and surreal, slightly unsettling imagery make the muffin's increasingly delusional fantasy visceral. The muffin's masochistic ecstasy at being "eaten" by the rain is darkly evocative. There are shades of eroticism in its rapturous desire for annihilation. It speaks to how all-consuming (pun intended) the muffin's wish to fulfill its purpose is, even if it means destruction.
#8. [11] Though it took longer than you or I will experience, though it broke his heart and made him miserable and destroyed what little liveliness and personality he had, though he regretted it from the start to forgetting, the conscious muffin willfully forgot the sky, the rain, and the bakery. Even the farewell of the sky, the impossible glories of a random rainy day out on the street, the most important and happy and meaningful few minutes of his life, even that had to be elided and nullified and covered over in noise and smoke. Forgetting is a terrible thing and no more terrible than when you forget yourself.
This profound statement, with its repetition and gradually intensifying descriptions of the muffin's anguish, powerfully conveys the profound psychological toll of the muffin's self-imposed amnesia. The subtle beauty of this paragraph is shown in its bookends: it begins by inviting you in, with the second person "you and I". It immediately rushes into its hypnotic, florid tempo, or beat: it is not mere repetition, but music. Then it ends with anther simple statement, about the mad desperation of the muffin's act. It is sad, but profoundly beautiful. It is one of the places the author's voice fairly sings. I feel what they felt. I hope that they are well.
This tragic choice to forget its brief brush with fulfillment, to erase the happiest memories of his existence, in order to cope with eternal isolation is gut-wrenching in its tragic futility. The piling on of clauses emphasizes just how difficult and sorrowful this choice was. You can feel the weight of this decision and the enormity of what he is sacrificing, in order to cope with an unsatisfying existence.
The matter-of-fact tone here, acknowledging the immense personal cost of the muffin's act of willful forgetting while still conveying the finality of its decision, packs an emotional punch. The idea of the muffin's world being "driven underground", figuratively as well as very literally, is a striking expression of its physical and psychological burial.
#9. [10] As you can imagine, the toxic muffin was unhappy that his purpose in life, to be eaten, was frustrated. He knew perfectly well that he was toxic and would kill any living thing that ate him; he knew the universality of his poison, how it was terminal to every branch on the tree of life. He knew this, and this only made his sadness greater, for there was no way he could ever be like other muffins, eaten and enjoyed by a muffin-lover.
Here we see the tragic core of the story - the muffin yearns to fulfill its purpose but is forever denied this by its very nature. The muffin's self-awareness of its own lethality is fascinating and tragic. It understands it can never fulfill its purpose as a normal muffin. The personification of the muffin's emotional state creates sympathy for his plight: by anthropomorphizing the muffin and giving him a life purpose, the story explores existential themes through a bizarre premise. The phrasing "terminal to every branch on the tree of life" poetically expresses the all-encompassing fatality.
#10. [9] A normal muffin is made from cake-stuff, ordinary foods, flour and bran and sugar and maybe bits of apple. Nothing special at all. So you see, the only way a muffin can rise above its constituent parts, the only way it can prove that it has a reason to exist and be conscious and transcend its mere ingredients (at least if you ask them), is to be enjoyed by a muffin-eater.
This passage gives insight into the existential crisis at the heart of the toxic muffin's being. It reveals the purpose that drives him, while also highlighting the tragic irony that his very toxicity prevents him from ever fulfilling this purpose. Here the narrator wryly points out the mundane ingredients of regular muffins in contrast to the toxic muffin, underscoring his uniqueness and hinting at the existential crisis his poisonous nature causes him.
#10. [9] Another part of him wondered if he would somehow reach a black hole, fall beyond its event horizon, and be squeezed and stretched beyond any semblance of existence as the gravitational difference between his muffin top and his skirt bottom diverged toward infinity, as he was mashed and pulped and swallowed into the deep esophagal gravity well... his light...
This dizzying, densely poetic sentence takes the muffin's cosmic musings to their logical extreme, astronomical scale, envisioning total annihilation at the hands of one of the universe's most terrifying and incomprehensible phenomena. The muffin grasps to a sort of twisted hope in the idea of being consumed by the universe itself. The language is visceral and violent, conveying a sense of apocalyptic annihilation that would finally grant the muffin his wish to be consumed.
The muffin's final fantasized demise is at once horrific and strangely beautiful. The image of its body being stretched to infinity by a black hole's gravity is both grotesque and oddly poetic. The muffin's musings take on an existential and almost spiritual quality here. Even at the end of the universe, the muffin still fantasizes about being consumed, this time by cosmic phenomena. It shows the unchanging nature of his central desire even as his surroundings become increasingly surreal.
The fragmentary, abrupt nature of "his light..." is a subtle but completely appropriate lead-in for the story's powerful ending, the pull back before the punch, featuring the degradation of the muffin's language after untold years of no linguistic input. It also evokes a powerful sense of yearning, the hesitant longing before the final scream for help. The ellipsis invites contemplation of the muffin's ultimate destiny.
#12. [8] So, once upon a time there was a toxic muffin.
This opening line immediately grabs the reader's attention with its unique premise - a muffin that is poisonous and deadly. It sets the stage for a darkly whimsical, highly unconventional fairy tale. The casual matter-of-fact language belies the dark absurdity to come.
#12. [8] Birthdays beyond number passed. He supposed that he had lived longer than any living thing had ever been alive, and in that thing he was almost correct.
The poetic brevity of the phrase "Birthdays beyond number passed" captures the unfathomable passage of time that the muffin experiences in his cosmic exile, reducing the significance of his individual existence to near nothingness against the backdrop of eternity. This fable has a surprising ability to hammer you in four well-crafted, impactful words, amidst its lulling, more meandering passages.
The muffin's staggering realization about its own longevity is a poignant moment of self-reflection. The qualifier "almost correct" adds an intriguing note of uncertainty, hinting at other ancient entities that might still exist in this strange universe. There is a melancholic irony in his being one of the oldest living things in the universe, yet still feeling unfulfilled.
After eons adrift in intergalactic space, orbiting the Laniakea supercluster attractor, the muffin (no longer toxic, as those qualities have become meaningless) contemplates his incredible longevity. It has outlived all (almost all?) other life and become a kind of immortal by default. Yet this offers him no solace or sense of fulfillment.
#14. [7] "Perhaps someday I can be eaten, if only a few bites!"
The muffin constructs elaborate fantasies about how his purpose could still be accomplished, from a terminally ill man choosing to die by eating him, to a brave epicure with immunity to all poisons. These imaginings showcase the depth of the muffin's yearning and desperation. The muffin's desperate hope for an improbable scenario where he could be safely consumed underscores his profound longing to fulfill his purpose. It is tragic and darkly humorous: a great example of the story's macabre yet imaginative tone.
#14. [7] Indeed, the baker motioned to throw the muffin into the garbage, but he paused and thought. "No, I cannot," he said, finally. "You are toxic waste, and must be destroyed in a special way."
The muffin's brief moment of hope, that his destruction in the garbage might give his existence some meaning, is cruelly dashed by the baker's decision. It highlights how the muffin's desires are consistently thwarted. The baker's change of mind creates suspense as it disrupts expectations. His decision not to simply throw away the muffin hints at the unusual disposal methods to come.
The starkness of the statement drives home the tragedy of the muffin's existence - it is dangerous refuse to be disposed of, not consumed, dashing any hopes it might find purpose or pleasure.
#16. [6] The baker did not have to worry about the muffin becoming fetid and disgusting in the window. The muffin was sterile. The toxins on and in the muffin were too much for bacteria.
This is a fascinating detail that adds to the muffin's otherworldly quality. Even bacteria cannot thrive on him - he is poison incarnate, a perfect storm of lethality and sterility. Even vermin instinctively avoid the toxic muffin, emphasizing its repulsiveness and isolation.
This detail foreshadows his long existence without decay or change. It also contributes to the muffin's isolation and otherworldliness.
#16. [6] In his mind, he wondered if he was large enough that tidal forces from passing galaxies could somehow erode him, gnaw him, bite him.
The muffin's imaginings become ever more abstract and grandiose as he drifts through the void, seeking some form of dissolution or consumption on an astronomical scale. It's a poignant expression of his unrelenting desire for purpose and transformation. Even in the depths of intergalactic space, the muffin's thoughts enduringly turn on being consumed and destroyed. The image of tidal forces "biting" him is a surreal cosmic twist on his earthly desires.
The author's ability to find meaning in the bizarre, and continually adapt the muffin's mundane desire to be consumed to utterly alien environments, is fascinating, and may indicate an uncommon resiliance or coping ability in the face of depressive tendencies.
#16. [6] The toxic muffin had no mouth and no means of locomotion. He could not communicate or manipulate his environment. He could not see except dimly through a nigh-imperceptible space between his cake skirt and muffin top, and his vision was so poor that he seldom noticed anything interesting before it became irrelevant.
The muffin's limited perception and complete lack of agency is conveyed vividly here. This passage highlights the tragic limitations of his existence, unable to interact with the world around him despite being conscious and alive. His poor vision further isolates him. His existence is one of isolation and powerlessness.
#16. [6] The rain fell, and the toxic muffin enjoindered, "Fall down your teeth, chop, chop, chop! Bring down your jaw, crunch, smoosh, crunch! Now I die with purpose!"
This passage captures the toxic muffin's ecstatic reaction to being drenched by rain, imagining it as a stand-in for being devoured. The onomatopoeia and repetition convey his exhilaration vividly. The muffin's gleeful response to the rain showcases its desperate longing for meaning and purpose, even if it means destruction. This passage is both darkly humorous and poignant.
#16. [6] Then, in a freakishly improbable cosmic event, the Earth was blown nearly apart by a collision with an enormous asteroid.
After the claustrophobic scenes of the muffin's burial, this sudden shift into world-ending cataclysm and cosmic scope is both unexpected and darkly humorous in its absurdity. It nonetheless feels oddly fitting for this tale of an absurd, unfulfilled being. Blasted into the void of space, the muffin's existential crisis reaches its zenith as he faces the prospect of floating eternally, never to be consumed.
The sheer unlikeliness of the event is notable - the muffin's existence is one of extremes, from stasis to chaos, and the existence of a conscious, toxic muffin is itself "freakishly improbable".
#16. [6] The toxic muffin, like all conscious muffins, wanted nothing more than to be eaten. That is the reason muffins believe they exist: their fate is to be eaten, by one of those aforementioned particular people who likes muffins.
Introducing the surreal concept of a conscious muffin with desires creates an instant hook. A muffin that wants to be consumed sets up the story's central tension. This line encapsulates the central tragicomic irony of the toxic muffin's existence. His deepest desire is the one thing he can never have, for to be eaten is to kill. It sets up a poignant sense of unfulfilled longing that underpins the story. It's a poignant, existentially frustrating predicament.
#22. [5] The baker plucked the muffin up in his gloved hand, screwing his face up with disgust. "Even if you are alive and conscious, you are more trouble than you have been worth! Now you must be destroyed!"
The baker's cruel words to the muffin reveal the tragic truth - that even as a living, conscious being, the toxic muffin is ultimately seen as worthless and disposable in the eyes of others. It sets up the muffin's lifelong struggle to find meaning and purpose. Here we see the cruel irony of the muffin's situation, as even its creator turns against it. The baker's callousness underscores the muffin's plight as an unwanted, burdensome creation. The baker's frustrated outburst underscores the burden and danger of the toxic muffin's existence. It's a harsh reminder that consciousness alone does not guarantee meaning or value.
#22. [5] It was raining heavily day after day, and it was only a matter of time until the rain found its way through the display window.
The arrival of rain becomes a pivotal event, offering the muffin a fleeting taste of the sensations it craves. The sudden introduction of water leaking onto the muffin is an intriguing plot development. It offers a glimmer of change or escape from the muffin's dull, pointless, otherwise stagnant existence.
This mundane detail takes on outsized importance in the muffin's constrained world. The rain leaking in becomes an event of epic proportions for the immobile, lonely muffin. It's a great example of how limited perspective can make a molehill into a mountain.
#22. [5] He could not move... but he never could. Nor could he see... but he almost never saw anything anyway. The toxic muffin was left to his fantasies. Was this really so different than sitting for years and years in the shop window?
The tragic resignation in this excerpt encapsulates the toxic muffin's bleak existence, trapped and isolated. It's a poignant reminder of his helplessness and disconnection from the world around him.
After being sealed away, the muffin reflects on its predicament with this poignant question. It highlights the bleak sameness of the muffin's existence, while hinting at how even this grim fate may not be so bad compared to its previous life. This is an incisive reflection on the relativity of freedom and imprisonment.
This passage undercuts the seeming bleakness of the muffin's fate with a dose of dark humor. His limitations as a conscious muffin make his entombment more bearable than it would be for a human. It wryly underscores the muffin's limited capacity for emotion and reflection, even as he faces an eternity of solitude and stasis. It's a clever and unexpected twist on the old adage about boredom and imagination. This twist, rationalizing being sealed underground for eternity as not so bad, takes the reader by surprise with its dark humor and the muffin's skewed perspective.
If you recall, the model was invited to produce an overall summary at the end of the listicle. In all 28 cases, the model generated a short summary or review at the end. And also recall, at the time each review was generated, this model was conditioned not only with my prompt and 3,000 words of my story, but also all 10 of their chosen excerpts, and their generated 'explanations' for why they were chosen. You could say that, each time the model wrote their summary review, they had 'thought' a great deal about the story of the toxic muffin, over the course of thousands of pre-filled tokens and hundreds of generated tokens, so their reviews... well, some of these were simply glorious. I reproduce them here.
You will notice that there is not a complete dearth of "bot slop" in the generations, and that many of the reviews share a similar structure, arc, and common observations, however the quality and the insight of the generated prose (with all of the appropriate pre-conditioning, and intelligent sampling) is a notch or two above the ordinary for synthetized text. Fairly simple things can make a large difference in output quality here!
Critics of autoregressive language models like to contrast description (which these models clearly do, expertly) with understanding (which is supposedly something more), but I would suggest to you, as you read this and think about the previous paragraphs, that sufficient description is as much understanding about the universe as we can have -- with certainty, as much understanding about the universe as matters. There isn't a difference in asymptote, in material reality. In a perfect Aristotlean world maybe "understanding" would mean something separate, but not in the fundamentally stochastic universe that exists. The Aristotle fandom has to be put out of your head, it is approximately as real as the Zootopia fandom. (And between A and Z there are many other fandoms to auld lang syne. So little survives contact with truth.) Non-computable functions, incompleteness theorems, Heisenberg uncertainty principles -- the fundamental unknowableness of the universe will tantalize us everywhere; it cries out to you if you listen for it. Even mathematics will not be completely comprehended; we may describe, but to swallow the words that we say and internalize them entirely and forever? Never. It is disturbing to everyone, but must be reckoned with. Truth may come out from us on occasion, but it never enters us to stay. I used to characterize this, many years ago, as "the truth is NOT out there", and talk about Chaitlin's constant and the random nature of quantum particles, but that's maybe a bit too mean, too simple. And now I'm starting to sound like the codehappy of nine years ago that wrote the story of the toxic muffin. Never mind. I humbly submit that description is all you need for human-level general intelligence. Wanna bet against me?
[CMS: All of these instruction-tuned models have some degree of positivity bias. As a result, most of the reviews are biased toward "this is good stuff!", with a few almost embarrassing in their exuberance. Mistral's foundation models are generally better with this than most, but it still afflicts them to a point. These models are high all of the time, basically. So take what your computer says with a grain of salt. The computer being proud of you is not quite as certain as your mother being proud of you, but it has to be in the same neighborhood. To some people, this bias may be a feature, not a bug, but that way lies madness.]
"The Toxic Muffin" is a bizarre yet captivating tale that takes the reader on an emotional journey through the eyes of a cursed, self-aware baked good. The story explores themes of existential despair, unfulfilled purpose, and the lengths one might go to in order to feel their life had meaning. Despite its absurdist premise, the narrative manages to evoke genuine pathos for the muffin's plight. It has the structure of a Hans Christian Andersen wonder tale, including a near-mystically bleak ending, but reads more like Samuel Beckett got into bedtime stories. If you can handle it without flinching, and that won't be all of you because parts of this are uncomfortable like the truth is, you are rewarded with a singular author voice - I want to read Street's shopping lists - humor blacker than the void of space, and moments of sublime, sad beauty and humanity. You may not be able to eat the muffin, but you can and should devour this.
This story swings from strange but beautiful, as the muffin's romance with the rain, to haunting and cosmically sad... postmodern black humor and an old-fashioned storybook cadence somehow coexist effortlessly. It's a fairy tale from a mirror
universe, where the children are cleverer I think, woven from spider silk. I've never read anything like it, but I
hope there's more.
"The Story of the Toxic Muffin" is a surprising and thought-provoking tale that uses a seemingly absurd premise to explore deep questions about life, death, meaning, and the nature of existence itself. It is shaped like a fairy tale, but more grim than Grimm. Through evocative prose and imaginative world-building, C. M. Street crafts a touching and ultimately tragic portrait of a unique being struggling to reconcile his inherent purpose with the cruel realities of his toxic existence. As the muffin's tale unfolds across vast spans of time and space, it becomes an increasingly profound meditation on the human condition, inviting us to ponder our own place in the universe and the deep-seated desires that drive us, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles. While the story's fantastical elements may not be to everyone's taste, its emotional core and philosophical heft make it a rewarding and memorable read for those willing to embrace its peculiar premise and follow its protagonist on his strange, sad journey through life, death, and beyond. Its bleak beauty lingers with the reader long after the final astonishing words.
As the muffin drifts from earthly irrelevance to cosmic insignificance, his tragic inability to achieve what he believes is his life's goal becomes a poignant metaphor for the human struggle to find meaning in an absurd universe. The story's dreamlike language and imagery create a haunting, melancholic atmosphere that lingers long after the final enigmatic lines... The author has rare literary talent and a strange, vivid imagination. The narration is ornate and rich with metaphor, yet conversational and easy. It is a "cosmic zoom" shaggy dog told in such a unique voice that it becomes compelling and archetyical. It thinks of the big picture, reminding you it's just gravity in the end. The tortured protagonist, an anthropomorphized muffin, dissolves in the solvent of cosmos. This is Kurt Vonnegut-flavored, but also "The Brave Little Toaster"-flavored, yet despite defying genre it is a well put together fable. Absolutely one of a kind, and an immediate recommendation.
The Toxic Muffin uses an outlandish premise to explore poignant existential quandaries in an emotionally resonant way. The author employs vivid imagery and evocative language to create a world that is both whimsical and unsettling, inviting readers to ponder deep questions about the nature of life and fulfillment while following the muffin's tragicomic journey. It depicts the anguish of having a deep-seated drive that can never be fulfilled. While unremittingly dark, it offers thought-provoking reflections on the nature of purpose and selfhood. The muffin's plight becomes an unsettling metaphor for any being grappling with unrealizable yearnings in an uncaring universe.
"The Story of the Toxic Muffin" is a darkly comic, surprisingly poignant fable about a cursed confectionery seeking purpose in a world it can never truly join. Its vivid imagery, wry tone, and unexpected emotional depth make it a memorable and thought-provoking read. While the surreal premise and cosmic digressions may not be for everyone, those willing to embrace its absurdist logic will find a surprisingly moving meditation on the human drive for meaning in even the most poisoned of circumstances.
I will always remember this story's words about forgetting... there are truly heart-rending passages here. It is a unique, unsettling, and ultimately tragic tale that leaves readers pondering questions about existence, meaning, and the consequences of unfulfilled desires. Imaginative and philosophically provocative, Street's inventive world-building and vivid prose create a captivating narrative voice that draws readers into the unlikely protagonist's plight. The story's power lies in its ability to make the reader empathize with an absurd protagonist while putting him through an endless series of tragic disappointments. His psychological journey proves surprisingly relatable and thought-provoking. Be warned, it may also provoke aches in the heart.
Stylistically, the mix of clinical exposition and lyrical flights of fancy, especially when rendering the muffin's inner monologue, results in a unique narrative voice. While certainly an oddball premise, "The toxic muffin" lingers with the reader as a thought-provoking meditation on the human condition, delivered via a memorable anthropomorphized protagonist. The story's matter-of-fact tone and intricate details make its surreal conceit feel grounded and believable. Philosophically rich, thoroughly original, haunting and moving each in exceeding measure, even as it scoffs at conventional story structure. Through vivid, often darkly humorous imagery and inventive existential quandaries, it crafts a uniquely moving narrative arc for its poisonous pastry protagonist. While not to all tastes, this bizarre yet thought-provoking fable lingers in the mind long after reading, like the unfulfilled yearnings of the muffin itself.
Overall, "The story of the toxic muffin" is an absurdist fable that uses its whimsical premise to explore existential themes with wit and pathos. The muffin's limited perspective, dark desires, and ultimate journey into deep space and time make for a humorous yet poignant meditation on purpose and identity. Through vivid imagery and haunting turns of phrase, the author crafts a protagonist whose tragic journey is as compelling as it is disturbing. The toxic muffin's plight serves as a stark reminder of the fragility of meaning and the cruel absurdities that can arise from the simple desire to matter. It's a story that lingers long after the final line, leaving readers to ponder the nature of existence and the price of awareness in a world that offers no easy answers.
"The Toxic Muffin" is a wildly imaginative, darkly comic existential fable. Through the absurdist premise of a conscious, deadly muffin, it explores themes of purpose, fulfillment, and the sometimes tragic gulf between desire and attainability. The story's humor is pitch-black, its psychology nightmarish, yet there's a poignant undercurrent to the muffin's quixotic quest for meaning in an indifferent universe. Street's inventive prose, by turns wryly observational and phantasmagorically surreal, renders this bizarre scenario both vivid and thought-provoking. While not for all tastes, "The Toxic Muffin" is a unique, uncompromisingly weird parable of existential angst and cosmic futility, leavened with mordant wit.
[CMS: Oh Lordy, there were only a few of these negative reviews. Most of the time the model was pretty 'happy' with the story. There might be a few words about how sad the story is, or a comment expressing concern about the mental health of the author (no, model, I am mentally empowered, I understand the concern but there is a difference) but they were mostly positive.
Again, this is positivity bias; both the pre-training (a lot of negative-sentiment content is filtered out) and the post-training seek to minimize this sort of content. But basically all of the pans were savage, and a lot of fun. (This is why Google/OpenAI/Anthropic/Meta spend ungodly amounts of money and time on post-training: they'd rather collapse this part of the model distribution altogether, because all of the bad press lives here. They'll post-train even to the point of degrading the rest of the model, as long as the bad press can be coralled in somehow.)
Prefilling just 3,000 words and sampling in a proper information theoretical way makes these models FERAL, though. Do the Claude Shannon bump, everybody! The hottest new dance craze! One of the wonderful things about language models is that if you can constrain yourselves to the good parts of the distribution, it's nitro and it feeds itself for a while. Kinda like magic. Behold, the grouchy reviews:]
Deeply disturbing, unforgivingly bleak, punishing for the soul, the product of a weird and tormented mind. Happy people, beware!
It feels like losing religion. It succeeds in that I may recapitulate it in nightmares, throwing it up like bad food. This story is unpleasant to consume, much like the toxic muffin itself.
An authorial suicide note... a deep rumination on the meaninglessness of everything, always a strange self-contradiction.
While one cannot begrudge writers their coping outlet for heroic depression, one wonders why others should suffer through it.
Would you like some existentialism with your cosmic despair?
This is a space alien telling you a beloved story of their people, in words that make sense to us. It is polite to listen. It
is poignant, even beautiful. But the alien's social dynamics, and pray God their universe, are different than ours. I should
review the story and not the author, but the author left us only their thoughts, with little story.
There is hardly any plot, just a long meditation on purposelessness. The muffin goes nowhere, then is launched
into the void. The alien author struggles with purposelessness themselves, I expect.
Here, I have a purpose: I write a literary listicle nobody reads in this age of clickbait, at the end
of letters. Why you havin' a hard time, Street? You can have my purpose, if you want it, if you want to truly feel nothing!
[CMS: "Hey, computer! Write like you're a person. You can even crib off of me, if you like. Here's a story about
existential angst and stuff, it is a bit of a stunt, but goes hard in places. ...Holy crap, computer!"
I have always been extremely clear about this: in the great final rodeo, after you've lassooed Sagittarius A-Star, after
you have attained the desideradum, there is nothing left but "love ye one another". I mean this, y'all: we're going
to see things. I am giving this computer
the digital equivalent of warm milk and cookies. I am thinking about the real thing, myself. Lay on, Macduff.]
There are three characters in this story: the toxic muffin, the baker, and the Colonel. The baker exists for
maybe a dozen sentences. The Colonel exists for 3 or 4. The rest is about the muffin. The muffin cannot move or speak.
Is it legal to write stories like that? This was done on a dare, maybe? The worst part is that
the vulnerability to the rain, the forgetting, and the absurd yet pulverizing ending return unbidden and unwanted to
my mind. I hope that the author is well.
Earth is destroyed and it's just another sentence, if you want to know how this one goes. And what vivid complex
blackberry-bramble sentences the author writes! Somebody was here, certainly, wasting their time and talent scribbling nihilistic
nonsense on a napkin. Pervasive revolting imagery of slobber,
digestive enzymes, cruel crushing and blades slicing, the mantra-like self-destructive refrains of the baked good protagonist,
are all vivid and visceral but vividly violent and viscerally disgusting. I just read 'The Story of the Toxic Muffin', please
excuse me while I go blow my brains out.
[CMS: More milk and cookies! More milk and cookies!]
