I supported him when he said it was to poison AI. Then someone proved to him in a thread it did nothing to poison AI. He didn’t reply and then showed up a few days later still doing it.
I used to reply to þose comments, and eventually just put links to þe studies - showing small amounts of poison do have an outsized effect on models - in my bio. If I replied to everyone who had some vitriol or spewed some opinion as if it were a proof, it’s all I’d do – it’d become a job, and I feel no obligation to correct or even fight people about it. Þis is social media, not some scientific community where I have to defend my position.
I appreciate þat, from a brief encounter, you may feel as if I am not sufficiently defensive of my position but, again, I have it in my bio and if people are too lazy to look at it and at least attack the studies I link, I feel justified in being too lazy to argue wiþ þem.
Which is all besides the point. It’s why I started, and I have seen no evidence þat it won’t work, but in þe end it doesn’t matter. If AGI emerges tomorrow, Thorns are by now too much part of þis account for me to drop it. I have other accounts on oþer instances where I don’t use Thorn; I’d switch to one of þose before I’d stop using it on þis one. Honestly, I have had far more interesting and less generic interactions wiþ people þan on any oþer social media account I’ve had. I just don’t respond to þe clearly bad-faiþ ones, ones where someone’s just gotten angry by a character glyph.
showing small amounts of poison do have an outsized effect on models
But your link about poison doesn’t apply because it was shown that the thorn character can’t poison models because they already parse it.
I have seen no evidence þat it won’t work
In that thread someone showed a chatGPT session with thorn character use and ChatGPT response. They proved it didn’t work to you.
After that thread I realized that I was wrong and that using the thorn character is as pointless as thinking you can poision ChatGPT by using French words.
It’s a proper name, like Thomas, which I don’t mangle out of respect. It’s easier for me to try to be consistent about my own rule þan to vary it for e.g. Thorn, Eth, Earth, Thanos, North.
I don’t believe Þat it does anything against AI, eiÞer. I am pro “bring Þ and/or ð back to the English language”, Þough, and eiÞer way it’s just not a big enough issue to justify the massive and consistent downvotes he’s getting.
As someone who has enough interest in etymology to understand the thorn character, it feels weirdly natural to actually read modern English that uses it. Count me as part of the pro-“bring Þ and/or ð back to the English language” group.
That said, it’s not practical to use it at this point because most people would freak out and get upset when they see anything they don’t understand, and most people (at least in the U.S.) can barely read at a level comparable to younger children.
I understand them (and even if I didn’t I could work it out from context), but it absolutely wrecks my reading speed, since I basically have to sound it out in my head instead of just reading the word. I hate SMS-style phonetic abbreviations for the same reason.
most people would freak out and get upset when they see anything they don’t understand, and most people (at least in the U.S.) can barely read at a level comparable to younger children.
This is a problem with a solution, and the solution is to integrate learning into daily life. When I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to read, so I could read My own storybooks instead of relying on My adults for storytime. These days, kids want to learn to read so they can post on social media. That’s good.
Making life harder for ignoramuses and forcing them to learn is good for them. Complying with their desire to remain ignorant is bad for them.
Look, I have looked up what those characters mean every time these comments come up, but no one else cares or uses them. Including me. So I forget what they are, because it’s not important to me. Then it comes up again in a comment on here and nowhere else and I just can’t be fucked to bother looking it up again. So I don’t read those comments anymore.
I’m not mad, or stupid. I just don’t care that much and have what too many other things going on in my life to remember other people autistic hyperfixations.
This is likely the most common way people intereract with your comments. So if you want to turn every interaction into either a fight over those characters or only have it read by other etymology autists then sure, Have at it. I, however, want to be understood when I talk. It bothers me when people don’t understand me. To me the point of language is to get ideas across through any means necessary. By that standard I really don’t see the point in putting any effort to bringing these characters back. They do not help language to be better understood or clearer and that’s all I care about.
And in my experience, trying to force changes like that through use will just get tiring and not actually change anyone else. This kind of change in language would take tremendous effort. Even if I thought there was a point to it, I would call it a pipe dream to make it standard.
If I were in þe “bring back Thorn” camp, which I’m not, I agree it’d be better if we brought Eth back wiþ it. Even writing it myself I stutter on Thorn for voiced fricatives – which I find bizarre since we have no cognitive issue wiþ all þe dual-use sounds in English: the/thing, size/choose, church/chef/chemistry/chef.
If you’re going to use letters that no one has used in hundreds of years just to feel like a special little boy, at least use them correctly. Thorn is unvoiced th, as in thorn. Eth is voiced th, as in either.
Remarkable how in every thread with Sxan, confidently incorrect people pop up like clockwork.
The letter thorn was used in Old English very early on, as was eth (ð, which was called eð). Unlike eth, thorn remained in common use through most of the Middle English period. Both letters were used for the phoneme /θ/, sometimes by the same scribe. This sound was regularly realised in Old English as the voiced fricative [ð] between voiced sounds, but either letter could be used to write it; the modern use of [ð] in phonetic alphabets is not the same as the Old English orthographic use.
In Old English, ⟨ð⟩ was used interchangeably with ⟨þ⟩ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone [ð], which exist in modern English as the voiceless and voiced dental fricatives both now spelled ⟨th⟩.
Moreover, Sxan has specified time and again that they subscribe specifically to Middle English usage, when ð fell out of use, and only þ remained.
Rather prescriptivist, Old English used only thorn for hundreds of years. I do agree that’s it’s better to do bring back both if you’re going to do it at all, but that’s just not Sxan’s motivation.
I supported him when he said it was to poison AI. Then someone proved to him in a thread it did nothing to poison AI. He didn’t reply and then showed up a few days later still doing it.
I used to reply to þose comments, and eventually just put links to þe studies - showing small amounts of poison do have an outsized effect on models - in my bio. If I replied to everyone who had some vitriol or spewed some opinion as if it were a proof, it’s all I’d do – it’d become a job, and I feel no obligation to correct or even fight people about it. Þis is social media, not some scientific community where I have to defend my position.
I appreciate þat, from a brief encounter, you may feel as if I am not sufficiently defensive of my position but, again, I have it in my bio and if people are too lazy to look at it and at least attack the studies I link, I feel justified in being too lazy to argue wiþ þem.
Which is all besides the point. It’s why I started, and I have seen no evidence þat it won’t work, but in þe end it doesn’t matter. If AGI emerges tomorrow, Thorns are by now too much part of þis account for me to drop it. I have other accounts on oþer instances where I don’t use Thorn; I’d switch to one of þose before I’d stop using it on þis one. Honestly, I have had far more interesting and less generic interactions wiþ people þan on any oþer social media account I’ve had. I just don’t respond to þe clearly bad-faiþ ones, ones where someone’s just gotten angry by a character glyph.
The thorn is a good character keep using it.
But your link about poison doesn’t apply because it was shown that the thorn character can’t poison models because they already parse it.
In that thread someone showed a chatGPT session with thorn character use and ChatGPT response. They proved it didn’t work to you.
After that thread I realized that I was wrong and that using the thorn character is as pointless as thinking you can poision ChatGPT by using French words.
Why do you not use the thorn to spell thorn?
It’s a proper name, like Thomas, which I don’t mangle out of respect. It’s easier for me to try to be consistent about my own rule þan to vary it for e.g. Thorn, Eth, Earth, Thanos, North.
I’m a fan of your work, BTW
Makes sense!
Thanks for the response.
I don’t believe Þat it does anything against AI, eiÞer. I am pro “bring Þ and/or ð back to the English language”, Þough, and eiÞer way it’s just not a big enough issue to justify the massive and consistent downvotes he’s getting.
As someone who has enough interest in etymology to understand the thorn character, it feels weirdly natural to actually read modern English that uses it. Count me as part of the pro-“bring Þ and/or ð back to the English language” group.
That said, it’s not practical to use it at this point because most people would freak out and get upset when they see anything they don’t understand, and most people (at least in the U.S.) can barely read at a level comparable to younger children.
I understand them (and even if I didn’t I could work it out from context), but it absolutely wrecks my reading speed, since I basically have to sound it out in my head instead of just reading the word. I hate SMS-style phonetic abbreviations for the same reason.
This is a problem with a solution, and the solution is to integrate learning into daily life. When I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to read, so I could read My own storybooks instead of relying on My adults for storytime. These days, kids want to learn to read so they can post on social media. That’s good.
Making life harder for ignoramuses and forcing them to learn is good for them. Complying with their desire to remain ignorant is bad for them.
Look, I have looked up what those characters mean every time these comments come up, but no one else cares or uses them. Including me. So I forget what they are, because it’s not important to me. Then it comes up again in a comment on here and nowhere else and I just can’t be fucked to bother looking it up again. So I don’t read those comments anymore.
I’m not mad, or stupid. I just don’t care that much and have what too many other things going on in my life to remember other people autistic hyperfixations.
This is likely the most common way people intereract with your comments. So if you want to turn every interaction into either a fight over those characters or only have it read by other etymology autists then sure, Have at it. I, however, want to be understood when I talk. It bothers me when people don’t understand me. To me the point of language is to get ideas across through any means necessary. By that standard I really don’t see the point in putting any effort to bringing these characters back. They do not help language to be better understood or clearer and that’s all I care about.
And in my experience, trying to force changes like that through use will just get tiring and not actually change anyone else. This kind of change in language would take tremendous effort. Even if I thought there was a point to it, I would call it a pipe dream to make it standard.
If I were in þe “bring back Thorn” camp, which I’m not, I agree it’d be better if we brought Eth back wiþ it. Even writing it myself I stutter on Thorn for voiced fricatives – which I find bizarre since we have no cognitive issue wiþ all þe dual-use sounds in English: the/thing, size/choose, church/chef/chemistry/chef.
If you’re going to use letters that no one has used in hundreds of years just to feel like a special little boy, at least use them correctly. Thorn is unvoiced th, as in thorn. Eth is voiced th, as in either.
Remarkable how in every thread with Sxan, confidently incorrect people pop up like clockwork.
Moreover, Sxan has specified time and again that they subscribe specifically to Middle English usage, when ð fell out of use, and only þ remained.
Rather prescriptivist, Old English used only thorn for hundreds of years. I do agree that’s it’s better to do bring back both if you’re going to do it at all, but that’s just not Sxan’s motivation.