I think the only misleading part of this situation is your naive and self-centered definition of "trust", and the assumption that so many others think similarly enough that they need to be warned.
I trust a business to fulfill their obligations as stated in writing for the money paid. I do not trust them in any other way. Nobody should "trust" or depend on undefined behavior. Common sense can only ever be as common as you expect.
> expecting compassionate or empathetic behaviour from companies, and [another thing, which is not the same thing as the first thing but merely similar or related]
With the *arr stack, some of the trackers it uses to search for a torrent will present a captcha when Prowlerr queries it for a search. If you integrate FlareSolverr and set up Prowlerr to submit queries through it for the trackers that have CAPTCHAs, it won't get blocked by them.
> I see nothing wrong with readers gobbling up AI-written books for the rest of their lives.
> Because to me, authenticity makes for a better reading experience.
This pair of sentences gave me pause, until I realised that they're not in contradiction - the author is deliberately non-judgemental of _others_ making a personal choice that _he himself_ would prefer not to make. Remarkably rare, nowadays.
They are in contradiction, because the author starts by saying how much he enjoyed the Stratemeyer Content Mill books (full disclosure - I did too) and then says that if only he'd known...
But he didn't. And it didn't affect his experience until he found out.
Which strongly suggests there was nothing wrong with the reading experience, and no lack of "authenticity" in the text itself, on its own terms.
It was a chimera.
As far as most readers knew, Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, and Victor Appleton were all authentically real people.
Discovering they weren't didn't change the quality of the writing - it only changed the implied relationship with the author.
But that's a parasocial experience, not a feature of the words on the page.
I suppose the implication is that because the book went through the mill the author and publisher somehow didn't really mean them.
Perhaps they were tainted by money instead of being products of pure enlightened generous impulse.
But how can you not mean something like a Tom Swift book?
The series was incredibly successful and had real social influence. Would it have been more successful if Victor Appleton wasn't a made-up person?
Why do we expect authors to be scrupulously physical, when creating imaginary people and imaginary worlds is literally the job description?
While I absolutely agree with your points, and do feel the same towards books I've read and later revisited similar to the ones alluded to. I would echo the transparency of giving readers the choice rather than the thought process that it'll still be enjoyable, therefore the deception is fine.
Especially as I feel that more and more this degree of transparency will be crucial for people to make more informed decisions in what they wish to read - and by the author's point, where do they want to spend their money.
What if an individual not knowing any better could absolutely enjoy AI written stories from cradle to grave, but would rather live in the blissful innocence of contributing to a lone writers' income rather than content farms? Isn't that enough reason to want transparency here?
My point being, if there's really "no harm" in the deception of either human-powered or AI-powered content farms. Then let's opt for imposing the transparency for readers to truly have the choice.
> Discovering they weren't didn't change the quality of the writing - it only changed the implied relationship with the author.
> But that's a parasocial experience, not a feature of the words on the page.
So? Consumption of media does not exist in a vacuum - how one feels about the work is inextricably affected by the context in which is was encountered and how one views it. We feel prouder (subconciously or not) of reading works that are considered "great" or "weighty". We feel nostalgia for rereading books from our youth, or affection for a book lent by a loved one.
The writer is not saying that the words _themselves_ were changed by the new information, but that his perception and experience of them was. That experience _is still real_.
> Why do we expect authors to be scrupulously physical
"We" don't. Some people prefer it - others don't care. You're free to fall into the latter camp if you want; but the former is a valid preference, and one which _could_ be served by a market.
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