Thought this might be interesting for folks.
For complex long-form writing, I’ve been using a process I call “sculpting.” It’s not necessary for simple stuff like “What are the most important concepts for machine learning?” but for things like, "how does the concept of glossolalia relate to innovation discourse?
Prerequisites:
- You have enough familiarity with the related concepts to know whether outputs are “good.”
- You are aiming for something interesting and valid, but not specific.
Instructions:
- Start with a prompt that mimics something you might find on the internet in which a summary of a text is given before then writing the longer form of the text. For example:
This blog post is part of a series on the role of philosophical, theological, and metaphysical concepts in startup entrepreneurship and innovation. Its purpose is to broaden the conversation around technology, growth, value, and meaning by introducing (or re-introducing) concepts in an approachable way without sacrificing depth of thought.
Title:
Glossolalia: Channeling the Discourse of Disruption
Summary:
In this blog post, we explore the concept of “glossolalia”, or speaking in tongues, and how it explains ideas and patterns in how we talk about innovation and growth. We think a bit about how the idea of communication with the divine influences the way we treat innovators and judge their actions in a moral sense. We also think a bit about how ideas of thinking and unthinking in glossolalia connect to induced spontaneity in innovation scene setting and placemaking, as in brainstorming sessions. We start by briefly outlining what glossolalia is and the key concepts underlying it for readers that are unfamiliar with the concepts, and finish with some suggested actions to re-orient toward innovation and growth given our learnings.
Author:
Jeremy Kirshbaum
Post:
I am not actually writing a blog post series, I am just using that to encourage the outputs to be of a certain length, and a certain kind of non-technical language. I also write it in a way that doesn’t instruct the model to do something, but begins in a way where on the internet it might follow with what I want.
1a. In the summary (or somewhere in the prompt), it is often helpful to mention that there will be a description of individual concepts before relating them. I got this idea from the concept of “chaining” from @mattbrockman 's work.
1b. Although its contrary to the point here to be too prescriptive about what it will say, it can help to ascribe some general directions in the summary as I’ve done here.
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Set the Response Length to ~200 tokens, the Temperature to .72-.78, the Frequency penalty to .15-.35, and the Presence penalty to .01-.05. This sets us up to get something divergent from the prompt, but still on topic. However, with the high temp, its going to get off the rails quickly so we keep it on a short leash with the Response Length.
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Restart generations until it gives you the beginning of the analysis.
3a. If it absolutely refuses, give it a heading like “Introduction:” -
As you go, monitor closely for correctness and coherence. Even things like extra spacing between paragraphs can be important.
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As you go, delete sentences that re-wording the same idea, even if they are not exact repetitions. Sometimes it kind of meanders around a point for a long time before getting to something interesting.
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To get to the end of the piece before you run out of tokens, managing section length is important. If you have about 800 words total, make sure your introduction is 100 words or less, so the following sections are more likely to be that length. If it starts to outline the prehistoric history of your topic and your goal is strategic insights, you gotta cut that sht out.
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After you have a good beginning, reduce your temperature to .69-.72, and bring your freuqency penalty down to .07-.12. This coaxes it toward building on the original ideas instead of diverging, and gives it leeway to repeat the same words or reiterate its thoughts without repeating the same line.
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As you go, go back to the original prompt and re-inject keywords that are generated back into the summary. An example from the below completion is “induced spontaneity” which I liked a lot, but wasn’t included in the original prompt. This helps build consistency.
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Toward the end, start to delete the original prompt to open up tokens. By the time you are 800 tokens into a piece, it has enough context to make it to the end without the original summary prompt.
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Towards the end, you will need to watch out for when you have about 200-500 tokens remaining to force it to wrap up. Depending on what you’re trying to do, you might just find a logical stopping point and then append a heading like “Conclusion:” or you might add something like,
“Given the above, the 5 most important insights for leaders are:
1.”
Then, especially with a list, make sure the first one is the length the proceeding ones will need to be.
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Thoroughly read through and make sure the content makes sense, and you agree with it. This is your work, and it will have your name on it, because you wrote it! (or sculpted it). You need to stand by and defend the content on its own terms. It’s always going to look really lame if you say, “oh sorry my robot wrote that I don’t really agree with it.” In my opinion, you wrote this and you get the credit or the blame in full.
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Proofread. It’s pretty good about this but does make mistakes. In the completion I share below, I didn’t do this because I was lazy and don’t think I’ll post it publicly, but if you’re going to, you should!
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Learn. The point of this isn’t SEO, its to think about things in ways you otherwise wouldnt have, or would have but would have taken a lot longer to get there. Make sure you iterate the new ideas into your human subjectivity before putting it anywhere else!
Here is my example output after all that:
Glossolalia is a spiritual practice where someone speaks in a language they do not understand. It is often associated with religious sects or at least spirituality in general, but it is not limited to religions that have a belief in a deity. Glossolalia can be used as a means of communication with the divine, or simply a way of connecting with other humans and the world around us.
This concept is particularly interesting in innovation because it plays on the dynamics of disruption of systems, patterns, and behaviors, and how those can be understood as a means of communication.
This blog post focuses on two distinct but related concepts:
The first concept, glossolalia, is the act of speaking in a language you do not understand. The second concept is that of disruptive innovation, which is used to describe how something new enters a market and displaces a previous technology, product, or company.
Innovation and disruption are two of the most powerful forces in today’s society. We use the language of disruption and innovation to describe practically everything in our lives.
In fact, we have become so used to hearing these terms that we often don’t think about what they mean, and how they fit into our lives. Let’s try to dive into the meaning behind this important language of innovation and disruption.
Disruption and Innovation
Disruption is used to describe something new entering a market and displacing an old product or company. A great example of this is the disruption of the recorded music industry by digital music distribution. The term disruption is often used to describe technological progress, but it can also be used to describe the growth of a startup or business.
Innovation is used to describe how we solve problems in our daily lives, and is closely related to creativity. The concept of innovation is often used in technology or business contexts, but it can also be applied to language and art. Innovation is a method of problem solving, whereas disruption is the end result of a process. The language of disruption and innovation can be used to describe both creative thought processes and technological progress.
Glossolalia as Language
Glossolalia is a spiritual practice where someone speaks in a language they do not understand. It is often associated with religious sects or at least spirituality in general, but it is not limited to religions that have a belief in a deity. Glossolalia can be used as a means of communication with the divine, or simply a way of connecting with other humans and the world around us.
Glossolalia is the specific process of speaking in tongues as it relates to religion, but the underlying concept of glossolalia is broader and can be applied to any kind of language or communication.
The linguistic concept of glossolalia is tied to the idea that all languages are connected – they are connected through patterns of sounds, letters, and other symbols that connect languages together.
This underlying patterned connection between languages means that there are relationships between words in different languages that we don’t realize exist. The concept of glossolalia sees words as symbols that can take on different meanings through their context. By speaking or writing in tongues, you are free from your own preconceptions about words and can express yourself freely without those preconceptions getting in the way.
Speaking in tongues is also closely tied to the concept of ritualistic communication. Rituals are one of the key ways we communicate with each other, and glossolalia is a specific kind of ritualistic communication that does not involve conventional language. It invokes the idea that there are things we cannot understand or express with conventional language, but we can through ritualistic communication rituals like glossolalia. Glossolalia is a specific way of ritualistically communicating about ideas that cannot be expressed through ordinary language – whether those ideas are related to religion or not. Glossolalia allows us to communicate about things through language without being constrained by ordinary language ideas or patterns.
Disruptive Innovation as Ritualistic Communication
Glossolalia as a concept allows for novel ways of thinking and communicating about ideas. These novel ways of thinking often come from novel means of expression that break from convention. But where do these new means of expression come from? And more importantly, why do new means of expression emerge? How does language help us think about these kinds of novel ideas? And how do these unconventional ways of thinking relate to disruptive innovation?
When an idea disrupts a system and displaces an old way of thinking, it often changes the way we see things around us – it changes our patterns and behaviors through introducing new ideas that challenge conventional thought. But how does disruptive innovation challenge these conventional systems and patterns? Through the power of novel expressions that change our way of thinking, acting, and communicating. These novel expressions can change our patterns and behaviors by challenging our existing ways of seeing and communicating about things. Novel expressions are a powerful means of channeling disruptive innovation because they are often unexpected and challenge the existing ways we see things – often introducing new disruptive ideas into existing patterns and behaviors. In other words, disruptive innovation changes how we speak about things as well as how we see them.
Disruptive innovation is often seen as an inherently creative process because it challenges existing ideas and patterns, but it is not necessarily a creative process. In fact, disruptive innovation can be a destructive process of challenging existing ideas and patterns. This means that there is a certain dimension of destruction in disruptive innovation, but disruptive innovation does not necessarily involve destructive means of communicating or challenging systems.
Disruptive Innovation and Induced Spontaneity: The Power of Glossolalia
There are different ways we can apply the language of disruption and innovation to our lives: one is through the language of disruptive innovation, and the other is through the language of innovation itself. The language of disruptive innovation is specific to technology, business, or other kinds of progress, but there is another concept in the language of innovation that can be applied to everyday life: induced spontaneity.
Induced spontaneity is a concept in improvisational theatre that gives actors a structure for thinking outside of conventional patterns or behaviors. It is a method for thinking outside of the box. Induced spontaneity is related to the concept of glossolalia because it allows us to communicate about things through language without being constrained by ordinary language ideas or patterns. We can speak in tongues (glossolalia) about things – whether those things are related to religion or not – without being constrained by conventional language ideas and patterns.
To illustrate this idea further, let’s consider an example: brainstorming sessions. Brainstorming is often used as a method for generating new ideas and solving problems. We think of brainstorming as a creative process, but it is actually a ritual that invokes the idea of glossolalia or induced spontaneity. A brainstorming session is a structured process where a group of people come together to talk about a certain problem or idea. They are given specific rules or guidelines to follow that help them think outside of conventional patterns and behaviors, and come up with new ideas that challenge the existing ways things are done.
Brainstorming sessions relate to disruptive innovation because they are a structured ritual that challenges conventional ideas and patterns. Brainstorming is structured spontaneity, but the same kind of spontaneous ritual can be used for different purposes – whether it be for disruptive innovation or not. Induced spontaneity can be used as a means of disruptive innovation, but it can also be used as a means of producing different kinds of value.
The power of glossolalia and induced spontaneity comes from their ability to break from traditional patterns of thinking, acting, and communicating in order to challenge conventional ways of seeing things and introduce new ideas based on those challenges. Glossolalia and induced spontaneity are powerful tools for innovators because they allow us to transcend our own preconceptions about how systems, patterns, and behaviors work – giving us an expanded perspective on how things work as well as how they can change.
These concepts are not limited to religion or spirituality, but they do have relevance for innovators and entrepreneurs that are interested in disrupting systems, patterns, and behaviors. Along with the language of disruption and innovation, the concepts of glossolalia and induced spontaneity give us the ability to talk about how we think about things, and communicate new ideas that can challenge conventional ways of seeing things. In other words, these concepts allow us to use language to channel disruptive innovation in any kind of situation.