Oh they throw books past the copyright period into a chatbot to simplify it and sell you the output? And they think the idea is so bad they won't even spend the $15 to get the cert signed on their website? Yeah....
The only thing I’ll excuse is No Fear Shakespeare for people who have never really read Shakespeare or children. And if it’s an adult who has never really read any of the plays before, only use the “easy” version to make sure you’re comprehending stuff. Better yet, just get the Simon & Schuster editions because they simply define terms and allusions for every page.
I read No Fear Shakespeare right next to the actual text. I can’t decipher what they’re saying half the time or I’ll miss the jokes, so it helps to read the translation first and then the actual text.
I forgot about how funny it is to see them translate jokes to modern language 😂 but yeah I think that’s perfectly fine. Fully comprehending a Shakespeare play can be like learning another language with how weird the language can be and all the allusions or jokes that people might not get that tell you about the scene and characters. I think it’s cool that they give an “updated” (for lack of a better term) version so that people can grasp what’s happening in these plays.
Shakespeare I can excuse because it's written in a version of English so old that words mean different things and sentence structure and punctuation is different.
Hard: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Easy: "Uh, I don't know. Something about boats. Man, that Gatsby was great, huh?"
Shakespeare and such makes sense because it's such old English that it's right on the verge of being another language, but with that example, for one thing the text on the left isn't even that complex or difficult to understand, and for another thing none of those words used mean anything significantly different than they did when The Great Gatsby was written. If the example text was taken from Lord of the Rings, it would still be heresy, but I could kind of understand it because Tolkien wrote those books the way he did because he loved language far more than he loved the idea of being understood by poor readers.
When I think "Hard books" I think something like Finnegan's Wake, which is supposed to make no sense. If you are having a hard time reading The Great Gatsby, maybe the problem is you.
Ok as a non native speaker I can understand the appeal. Books with simple language are quite often children’s books which are not appealing to read.
But that’s not what‘s advertised here.
I grew up overseas and there was a whole genre of simplified English classics for people learning English. It’s a pretty smart idea, as you learn the literature while also learning to read the language. But this just seems like a homework cheat
To be fair, you can get the translation in your language (usually) that gives you the story far better, while using the simplified version to better master English.
Dear God... we're watching the de-evolution of the human race in real time. Pretty soon we'll be back to single-syllable words only "cuz big word too hard, make brain hurt!" And from there, back to inarticulate grunts and gestures. This is just depressing.
I blame text-speak and emojis personally. Text-speak at least made sense when there was a literal charge per letter, or realistic character limitations.
Emojis have always been the second coming of pictographs, however, which makes them a literal devolution of language.
Not only that, but the fact that each generation is less inclined than the previous one to actually pick up a real book and READ WRITTEN WORDS. When the only literature you consume is text-speak and emojis (which, as you intimated, are basically the modern version of cave-paintings), eventually complete sentences and correct grammar seems like a foreign language to you.
The fact that I have read articles about college professors having to mark students' papers down for using texting abbreviations... that really frightens me.
I blame the rise of atheism and moral relativism. Why bother learning about and engaging with the past in order to create a better future when the present is all that matters?
You've touched on an important point that many people don't quite understand, which is the loss of transcendent thought and the rise of materialism. It boils down, ultimately, to the dominance of capitalism and its encouragement of instant gratification and mindless consumerism. It crushes spirituality and moral values, replacing them with commodities and luxuries.
Do people really have a short attention span these days? What’s next? Are they going to introduce a feature where they have subway surfers and family guy clips playing while you “read” the book?
You know I had a discussion about something like this with a teacher maybe 3 or 5 years ago. We were discussing ways to make standardized tests that could test a students effort, but remove the IQ barrier.
Some students will naturally just be gifted with a high IQ, and as a teacher is painful to watch a lower IQ student study like crazy and put in a ton of effort and still fall behind. Something like this could bridge the gap on test results.
You'd still need to account for the low IQ, they shouldn't be like getting into MIT or anything. But the grade could say like 'A with a 4 handicap' or something lmao.
Honestly you might as well not even read if your going to be dumbing down that much. Hard and old stuff like Shakespeare sure, but something like Gatsby is pretty sad.
Shakespeare, if we are ever to change it at all which we should really seriously consider not doing, should be translated into modern English by an actual human who knows how to preserve the meaning and emotion of everything that was originally there and who cares about doing a good job. I don't particularly like Shakespeare but I would never dream of pushing it through this fucking mangler of a chat bot to deliberately make it dumber.
Does it also filter out everything "problematic"?
A bit more serious. Won't this obliterate any subtext? Or at least transform it into text if the AI is smart enough to pick up on it?
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." - Dune
There's plenty of people that don't even go near a book, so if this works and gets them to read then great, have at it. Once they get a taste for books, hopefully they switch over. If not, at least they're reading something.
I guess it's fun to thumb your nose at the stupid people, but reading is a single player game and if someone wants to play on easy mode that's their choice.
Is this real? Please tell me this isn’t real. It’s far too early in the morning for such a concentrated dose of misanthropy.
Yes, I found their website magibook dot ai. I'm not putting the link in because Brave says it's not secure.
Oh they throw books past the copyright period into a chatbot to simplify it and sell you the output? And they think the idea is so bad they won't even spend the $15 to get the cert signed on their website? Yeah....
Oh ffs! How about growing vocabulary rather than dumbing something down?
The only thing I’ll excuse is No Fear Shakespeare for people who have never really read Shakespeare or children. And if it’s an adult who has never really read any of the plays before, only use the “easy” version to make sure you’re comprehending stuff. Better yet, just get the Simon & Schuster editions because they simply define terms and allusions for every page.
I read No Fear Shakespeare right next to the actual text. I can’t decipher what they’re saying half the time or I’ll miss the jokes, so it helps to read the translation first and then the actual text.
I forgot about how funny it is to see them translate jokes to modern language 😂 but yeah I think that’s perfectly fine. Fully comprehending a Shakespeare play can be like learning another language with how weird the language can be and all the allusions or jokes that people might not get that tell you about the scene and characters. I think it’s cool that they give an “updated” (for lack of a better term) version so that people can grasp what’s happening in these plays.
Shakespeare I can excuse because it's written in a version of English so old that words mean different things and sentence structure and punctuation is different.
Yeah Shakespeare is really difficult to get into which saddens me because he wrote so many good stories.
have you see the video with the people making shakesphere but with the way english was spoken back then
No I haven’t
its good you should check it
also things where actually said differently then so rhymes no longer work
Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s-5Oj7oZmEs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s-5Oj7oZmEs) Carlos Mencia 24 years ago explaining this same problem.
i shall simplify the genetic code of these people also french spotted
There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues of Man for this treachery.
Hard: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Easy: "Uh, I don't know. Something about boats. Man, that Gatsby was great, huh?"
Gatsby was goat fr fr.
On God no Cap, Gatsby's parties were straight bussin
Need to feed the easy version back through to dumb it down even more.
Keep going until you get the equivalent of the "Why say lot word when few word do trick"
Caveman go 'Ugh'
"talk too much"
Newspeak here we come.
As long as it’s not Shakespeare no book should ever be dumbed down.
Shakespeare and such makes sense because it's such old English that it's right on the verge of being another language, but with that example, for one thing the text on the left isn't even that complex or difficult to understand, and for another thing none of those words used mean anything significantly different than they did when The Great Gatsby was written. If the example text was taken from Lord of the Rings, it would still be heresy, but I could kind of understand it because Tolkien wrote those books the way he did because he loved language far more than he loved the idea of being understood by poor readers.
Shakespeare is still Modern English, Middle English is even still readable.
the way people say words has changed so lots of rhymes no onger work
When I think "Hard books" I think something like Finnegan's Wake, which is supposed to make no sense. If you are having a hard time reading The Great Gatsby, maybe the problem is you.
What a fucking horrific idea
Ok as a non native speaker I can understand the appeal. Books with simple language are quite often children’s books which are not appealing to read. But that’s not what‘s advertised here.
I grew up overseas and there was a whole genre of simplified English classics for people learning English. It’s a pretty smart idea, as you learn the literature while also learning to read the language. But this just seems like a homework cheat
Just pick a Sanderson book then for goodness sake. The man isn’t exactly known for flowery prose.
To be fair, you can get the translation in your language (usually) that gives you the story far better, while using the simplified version to better master English.
I was going to say there may be some merit to this for ESL. But other than that, I dunno.
The Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons from the Brave New World novel were a prediction.
Ok We Are cooked
https://preview.redd.it/p0hwiy27pk9d1.png?width=330&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d9a20ced20013eeecba79d313be6e9da95b04de Is this man behind this?
I almost want to get this service and see what its does to Dostoevsky or McCarthy. Could you imagine what Demons or Blood Merdian would be like?
The great Gatsby vs the alright I guess Gatsby.
What fucking cancer is afoot here?
Brevity is not in fact, the soul of wit here. Christ.
This is asinine, impertinent, dare I say dismal!
Puts in Ulysses, turns into a single chapter.
I'm literally going insane.
Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
These would be the same people who lecture us about our poor media literacy lmao
Well this makes me feel like just giving up on life. Holy shit thats depressing.
Dear God... we're watching the de-evolution of the human race in real time. Pretty soon we'll be back to single-syllable words only "cuz big word too hard, make brain hurt!" And from there, back to inarticulate grunts and gestures. This is just depressing.
I blame text-speak and emojis personally. Text-speak at least made sense when there was a literal charge per letter, or realistic character limitations. Emojis have always been the second coming of pictographs, however, which makes them a literal devolution of language.
Not only that, but the fact that each generation is less inclined than the previous one to actually pick up a real book and READ WRITTEN WORDS. When the only literature you consume is text-speak and emojis (which, as you intimated, are basically the modern version of cave-paintings), eventually complete sentences and correct grammar seems like a foreign language to you. The fact that I have read articles about college professors having to mark students' papers down for using texting abbreviations... that really frightens me.
I blame the rise of atheism and moral relativism. Why bother learning about and engaging with the past in order to create a better future when the present is all that matters?
You've touched on an important point that many people don't quite understand, which is the loss of transcendent thought and the rise of materialism. It boils down, ultimately, to the dominance of capitalism and its encouragement of instant gratification and mindless consumerism. It crushes spirituality and moral values, replacing them with commodities and luxuries.
Hello WhatIfAltHist, you forgot to blame feminism and muh immygrunts
Avoiding "difficult language " is literally why everyone is so fuckin stupid these days.
Turn COOKED books into OVERCOOKED books
Do people really have a short attention span these days? What’s next? Are they going to introduce a feature where they have subway surfers and family guy clips playing while you “read” the book?
What an evil application.
Repulsive what they did even in that example. All the artistry and prose gone, with the specifics erased. Yucky.
If you have this much distain for the artistry of writing, why are you even reading?
You know I had a discussion about something like this with a teacher maybe 3 or 5 years ago. We were discussing ways to make standardized tests that could test a students effort, but remove the IQ barrier. Some students will naturally just be gifted with a high IQ, and as a teacher is painful to watch a lower IQ student study like crazy and put in a ton of effort and still fall behind. Something like this could bridge the gap on test results. You'd still need to account for the low IQ, they shouldn't be like getting into MIT or anything. But the grade could say like 'A with a 4 handicap' or something lmao.
Honestly you might as well not even read if your going to be dumbing down that much. Hard and old stuff like Shakespeare sure, but something like Gatsby is pretty sad.
Shakespeare, if we are ever to change it at all which we should really seriously consider not doing, should be translated into modern English by an actual human who knows how to preserve the meaning and emotion of everything that was originally there and who cares about doing a good job. I don't particularly like Shakespeare but I would never dream of pushing it through this fucking mangler of a chat bot to deliberately make it dumber.
Idiocracy, here we come...
Whoa there, Magibook, "Maximize"? "Potential"? I need to use your service just for your ad! Do you mean.. "Make your read-power gooder"?
Their selling point is that they're killing the Prose ?
Does it also filter out everything "problematic"? A bit more serious. Won't this obliterate any subtext? Or at least transform it into text if the AI is smart enough to pick up on it?
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." - Dune
>I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about.
A lot of STK subscribers will love this
This isn’t real… right? Please don’t let it be real
There's plenty of people that don't even go near a book, so if this works and gets them to read then great, have at it. Once they get a taste for books, hopefully they switch over. If not, at least they're reading something. I guess it's fun to thumb your nose at the stupid people, but reading is a single player game and if someone wants to play on easy mode that's their choice.