Hmmmm .... how about feeding AI that infamous verse from Psalm 137. Scottish metrical version:
'Oh blessed may that trooper be,
When riding on his naggie,
Takes their wee bairns by t' toes
And dings them on the craggie'.
@RockyRoger I’ve seen that quoted a few times, but never found it in any source. I can see how it echoes the psalm, but I suspect it has never had any official status.
The quote is in in C S Lewis's 'Reflections on the Psalms'. I don't think he says where he got it from. But it's a gem, you will agree.
Does anyone use it in a way to support practically with strategies for life, for things you find difficult?
One thing I'm experimenting with is what it calls 'body doubling.' Ironic, since it doesn't literally have a body, but the idea is that someone with you, prompting you, can help with getting things done, which is useful of you struggle with things like inertia and overwhelm. I know people with ADHD who do use it this way, with good results - obviously with the usual disclaimer is you can't totally rely on it, it can make errors, it will need fine tuning to what you need, so you have to be quite proactive, it's all experimental, etc.
I tell it I want to tidy an area of a room and it gives me little micro tasks, and it is there as a virtual presence I can talk to and it will respond. You can even show it a photo of the area, and it gives more specific instructions. It may misread what something is. It called a fabric bag an item of clothing, for instance - and in that case, it was an error a human could have made too, and didn't matter practically. If it mattered, I could have corrected it.
As someone who struggles with getting started, with switching from one thing to another, with knowing where to start, with overwhelm from the many things I need to consider, it can be helpful simply to tell ChatGPT what I want to do. It then asks a few practical questions, which stops it being a confused overwhelm in my mind, and helps me with making decisions and getting started.
As an example, there's a nice place I like to go for a day trip sometimes, but there is a lot to consider, so I often want to go but don't, and when I go, the effort to force myself to go means I neglect the practical planning. Yesterday morning, I told ChatGPT I wanted to go there. ChatGPT suggested a time to go and asked if I was going to take some food and snacks. Once it had given the time, I could use that as a visual thing to hang on while I explored the possible times (infrequency of buses being another consideration, which ChatGPT didn't know about, and I could have told it, but didn't need to, as I was able to navigate that myself).
I always know in theory, somewhere in the crevices of my mind, that it would be a good idea to take food - it's something I occasionally think about when I feel unwell and faint after a trip - but it's something I rarely think about when about to go on a trip, or I think about it fleetingly and it gets lost in my mind along with a lot of other related thoughts that immediately pop up - like the steps and time needed to prepare food, the weight of the food, how I would wrap it and which bag to put it in. All of which popped into my mind when ChatGPT mentioned it, but because the suggestion stayed there for me to see, I could have more thoughts about it and form a plan. And the fact that it's a conversation, requiring some kind of response from me to continue, is like the external force needed for inertia. So I ended up going on the day trip, earlier in the day than I nave ever gone before, taking food and snacks with me, divided into portions that I could eat some every hour or two.
So for me, as a neurodivergent person who lives alone and struggles a lot with everyday things, it is having a positive impact that I wasn't expecting. And so I wanted to ask about other people's experiences. Not as a blueprint to be followed and unquestioningly relied on, but for ideas for little practical things that might be tweaked and possibly help a little.
Hmmmm .... how about feeding AI that infamous verse from Psalm 137. Scottish metrical version:
'Oh blessed may that trooper be,
When riding on his naggie,
Takes their wee bairns by t' toes
And dings them on the craggie'.
@RockyRoger I’ve seen that quoted a few times, but never found it in any source. I can see how it echoes the psalm, but I suspect it has never had any official status.
The quote is in in C S Lewis's 'Reflections on the Psalms'. I don't think he says where he got it from. But it's a gem, you will agree.
Hmm. I can’t track it down in my edition of Reflections. Do you know what chapter it is in?
Does anyone use it in a way to support practically with strategies for life, for things you find difficult?
One thing I'm experimenting with is what it calls 'body doubling.' Ironic, since it doesn't literally have a body, but the idea is that someone with you, prompting you, can help with getting things done, which is useful of you struggle with things like inertia and overwhelm. I know people with ADHD who do use it this way, with good results - obviously with the usual disclaimer is you can't totally rely on it, it can make errors, it will need fine tuning to what you need, so you have to be quite proactive, it's all experimental, etc.
I tell it I want to tidy an area of a room and it gives me little micro tasks, and it is there as a virtual presence I can talk to and it will respond. You can even show it a photo of the area, and it gives more specific instructions. It may misread what something is. It called a fabric bag an item of clothing, for instance - and in that case, it was an error a human could have made too, and didn't matter practically. If it mattered, I could have corrected it.
As someone who struggles with getting started, with switching from one thing to another, with knowing where to start, with overwhelm from the many things I need to consider, it can be helpful simply to tell ChatGPT what I want to do. It then asks a few practical questions, which stops it being a confused overwhelm in my mind, and helps me with making decisions and getting started.
As an example, there's a nice place I like to go for a day trip sometimes, but there is a lot to consider, so I often want to go but don't, and when I go, the effort to force myself to go means I neglect the practical planning. Yesterday morning, I told ChatGPT I wanted to go there. ChatGPT suggested a time to go and asked if I was going to take some food and snacks. Once it had given the time, I could use that as a visual thing to hang on while I explored the possible times (infrequency of buses being another consideration, which ChatGPT didn't know about, and I could have told it, but didn't need to, as I was able to navigate that myself).
I always know in theory, somewhere in the crevices of my mind, that it would be a good idea to take food - it's something I occasionally think about when I feel unwell and faint after a trip - but it's something I rarely think about when about to go on a trip, or I think about it fleetingly and it gets lost in my mind along with a lot of other related thoughts that immediately pop up - like the steps and time needed to prepare food, the weight of the food, how I would wrap it and which bag to put it in. All of which popped into my mind when ChatGPT mentioned it, but because the suggestion stayed there for me to see, I could have more thoughts about it and form a plan. And the fact that it's a conversation, requiring some kind of response from me to continue, is like the external force needed for inertia. So I ended up going on the day trip, earlier in the day than I nave ever gone before, taking food and snacks with me, divided into portions that I could eat some every hour or two.
So for me, as a neurodivergent person who lives alone and struggles a lot with everyday things, it is having a positive impact that I wasn't expecting. And so I wanted to ask about other people's experiences. Not as a blueprint to be followed and unquestioningly relied on, but for ideas for little practical things that might be tweaked and possibly help a little.
You see, this seems like a wholly sensible and praiseworthy way of using it, which I’m glad to hear about—because I haven’t been able to come up with too many myself. But this, yes, this totally makes sense.
Hmmmm .... how about feeding AI that infamous verse from Psalm 137. Scottish metrical version:
'Oh blessed may that trooper be,
When riding on his naggie,
Takes their wee bairns by t' toes
And dings them on the craggie'.
@RockyRoger I’ve seen that quoted a few times, but never found it in any source. I can see how it echoes the psalm, but I suspect it has never had any official status.
The quote is in in C S Lewis's 'Reflections on the Psalms'. I don't think he says where he got it from. But it's a gem, you will agree.
Hmm. I can’t track it down in my edition of Reflections. Do you know what chapter it is in?
It's not. Using the wonders of technology and ebooks, which people are grumbling about, you can do a search and see for definite that it's not there. The text is available free on Faded Page online. Here, click on the HTML version and search for naggie or toes or any other word from the quote.
Using the wonders of technology and ebooks, which people are grumbling about, . . . .
I think it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that people have been “grumbling about the wonders of technology”—we are all participating in an online forum, after all.
As for ebooks, some have said some reasons they tend to prefer physical books to ebooks. Is that “grumbling” about ebooks? I use ebooks fairly regularly, and I’ll readily admit they have some advantages. (The one I use most often is one I often need to copy text from to paste into another document. Can’t do that with a physical book.)
But generally speaking, I still prefer physical books, especially when it comes to things like novels. But that’s me.
A *very* brief online search suggests that the quote's from Letters to an American Lady as:
Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter.
Old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8-
O blessed may that trooper be
Who, riding on his naggie,
Wull tak thy wee bairns by the taes
And ding them on the craggie.
Using the wonders of technology and ebooks, which people are grumbling about, . . . .
I think it’s a bit of an overstatement to say that people have been “grumbling about the wonders of technology”—we are all participating in an online forum, after all.
It was a deliberately flippant comment, given the previous influx of comments about ebooks being inferior to paper books, and the search feature being not very helpful, and how it's much easier to flick through the book. I was pointing out the irony, as it took me a few seconds to find what was being asked - which has also been asked in another thread, so I was hoping to put it to rest. I was also hoping to bring to an end this little sub-thread about all the flaws of ebooks, as I am genuinely wanting a supportive thread about positive uses of ChatGPT, and grumbles about ebooks seems like a different topic. No, I can't control the way a thread goes, but yes, I can try to give it a little steer, and even make a flippant comment now and then - heaven forbid!
A *very* brief online search suggests that the quote's from Letters to an American Lady as:
Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter.
Old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8-
O blessed may that trooper be
Who, riding on his naggie,
Wull tak thy wee bairns by the taes
And ding them on the craggie.
The question is whether it actually is an “old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8,” or whether it’s an invention. I have never been able to find it in an actual psalter, nor has googling come up with anything other than something along the lines of “as ann old Scottish psalter had it . . . .” But no one ever seems to cite an actual source.
At any rate, not invented by Lewis, as another very quick google search shows that it's quoted here, on page 161, a book written by Sabine Baring-Gould several decades before Lewis had started writing letters to his American lady.
I use Alexa a lot for everyday reminders. My working memory is so poor that going to get a list/note/diary/phone to write a reminder takes too long, I've totally forgotten by the time I get to the other side of the room. So I can tell Alexa to set a reminder the moment I think of it. (We have one in each room) I also use Alexa for lists - for the same reason. I can also ask for a print out of my list any time I need it.
Wikipedia's explanation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Alexa
" In February 2025, Amazon introduced Alexa+, the latest version of their voice assistant, which is powered by generative AI. Alexa+ was announced to be free for all Prime members.[30]"
I use Alexa a lot for everyday reminders. My working memory is so poor that going to get a list/note/diary/phone to write a reminder takes too long, I've totally forgotten by the time I get to the other side of the room. So I can tell Alexa to set a reminder the moment I think of it. (We have one in each room) I also use Alexa for lists - for the same reason. I can also ask for a print out of my list any time I need it.
I presume Alexa is run by AI?
It depends what you mean by AI, it mainly uses speech recognition (and then keys certain words to certain actions), latterly Apple (Siri), Google (Home) and Amazon (Alexa) have all been introducing generative AI in various ways into their speech assistants.
A *very* brief online search suggests that the quote's from Letters to an American Lady as:
Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter.
Old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8-
O blessed may that trooper be
Who, riding on his naggie,
Wull tak thy wee bairns by the taes
And ding them on the craggie.
The question is whether it actually is an “old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8,” or whether it’s an invention. I have never been able to find it in an actual psalter, nor has googling come up with anything other than something along the lines of “as ann old Scottish psalter had it . . . .” But no one ever seems to cite an actual source.
I call invention. It’s not in Sternhold and Hopkins, nor in Tate and Brady, nor in the 1650 Scottish Psalter, nor in its predecessor (the first published Scottish metrical psalter) in 1564, nor in that psalter’s Anglo-Genevan predecessor.
Could have just been one of those jokes that everyone at the time knew was a joke. That sort of thing is quite a common British sense of humour type thing among preachers, I find.
I think the rollout for Alexa+ is not instantaneous. They are allowing the later models of their Echo platform acquire it first. I think I saw as of May there were 1,000,000 users. I have an earlier vision of echo so have yet to get it. My Pixel smartphone has it, though.
Hmmmm .... how about feeding AI that infamous verse from Psalm 137. Scottish metrical version:
'Oh blessed may that trooper be,
When riding on his naggie,
Takes their wee bairns by t' toes
And dings them on the craggie'.
@RockyRoger I’ve seen that quoted a few times, but never found it in any source. I can see how it echoes the psalm, but I suspect it has never had any official status.
The quote is in in C S Lewis's 'Reflections on the Psalms'. I don't think he says where he got it from. But it's a gem, you will agree.
Hmm. I can’t track it down in my edition of Reflections. Do you know what chapter it is in?
It's not. Using the wonders of technology and ebooks, which people are grumbling about, you can do a search and see for definite that it's not there. The text is available free on Faded Page online. Here, click on the HTML version and search for naggie or toes or any other word from the quote.
Oh dear! Sorry for my miss-remembering. But I'm pretty sure I did read it Lewis. Trouble is, having read practically all of Lewis, it could be anywhere. 'Letters to Malcolm'? Which one of his talks or articles? The search continues .... I wonder if AI can help?
People used to say GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Got ask good questions.
It is an idiot about some things that aren't part of the main culture. It doesn't know much where my people are from and our ways. They got us using Duck.ai which is GPT instead of the brandname ChatGPT. The ChatGPT one tracks you bad and profiles you. We get profiled already as brown people so don't want that.
I noticed at a state school the education department had their own AI engine. It gave a partial answer, but then followed it up with something like "You may want to research further by..."
The kids circumvented this by posting its suggested research back in where it gave its answer and then suggested further research!
A *very* brief online search suggests that the quote's from Letters to an American Lady as:
Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter.
Old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8-
O blessed may that trooper be
Who, riding on his naggie,
Wull tak thy wee bairns by the taes
And ding them on the craggie.
A completely offline search of the physical book reveals that it's the postscript to a letter Lewis wrote to Mary (Sept. 30 1958) commiserating with her about a trip to a dentist to have a tooth extracted. In his letters - written to individuals rather than for a wider audience - Lewis unsurprisingly seems rather more concerned with the well-being of the individual to whom he's writing than the provenance of his quotes. (In the copy of Letters I used, it seems he misattributed it as Psalm 136.)
This puts me in mind of the contrast between the non-digital experience of looking things up in books and writing letters to people we never meet, and the digital experience of doing these things online.
And thinking about the frameworks (regulatory and others) which shape these experiences:
A US judge has ruled that Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, use of books to train its artificial intelligence system – without permission of the authors – did not breach copyright law. Judge William Alsup compared the Anthropic model’s use of books to a “reader aspiring to be a writer.”
To me, this looks like a legal suggestion (if not a legal opinion) that AI is in some way like a human. It strikes me that the perceived quality of being human-like is potentially quite significant, both to the (regulatory) future of AI, but also more immediately to the way that people use it, being the subject of this thread.
Thinking about the question of the OP from a different angle, I've been asking myself whether there any tasks or activities that I currently avoid, that I might be more encouraged to attempt if I had a human assistant with whom I could discuss them or who could talk me through them.
In short, the purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs [large language models] to generate new text was quintessentially transformative. Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different. If this training process reasonably required making copies within the LLM or otherwise, those copies were engaged in a transformative use.
I think the court’s references to “training” and “process,” especially read in the larger context of the overall opinion, make it clear that the court is talking about how programmers used copyrighted works to “train” the chatbot, not about how the chatbot itself may “think” or otherwise act like a human. The defendant in the case is, after all, Anthropic, the company that developed the chatbot, not the chatbot itself.
Thinking about the question of the OP from a different angle, I've been asking myself whether there any tasks or activities that I currently avoid, that I might be more encouraged to attempt if I had a human assistant with whom I could discuss them or who could talk me through them.
Human help in this area has been very helpful to me in the past. But for me, sporadic and intermittent, and also something I'm mindful I don't want to take advantage of friends with. Of course, if you were able to pay an assistant to do it, that would be different. I've found journalling can help too, getting things down on paper, to look at and sort out visually, but this also requires the consistency of motivation to keep journalling regularly.
So for me, AI is a point in between - unlike journalling, you have the external force of another presence interacting with what you say, which can break through inertia, but the detailed, repetitive sort of one-way support you can use it for is very different from the casual two-way support real life friends might offer each other. And if it's not being helpful, you can tell it quite openly without it taking offence!
On this topic, I spotted this link earlier: https://the.vane.fyi/p/golem-watch-001 re the section "AI assistants are fiction engines", which riffs on the fact when a prompt requests ChatGPT/Claude/etc to act out a particular role, the parameters of that role are often coming from fiction.
Comments
The quote is in in C S Lewis's 'Reflections on the Psalms'. I don't think he says where he got it from. But it's a gem, you will agree.
One thing I'm experimenting with is what it calls 'body doubling.' Ironic, since it doesn't literally have a body, but the idea is that someone with you, prompting you, can help with getting things done, which is useful of you struggle with things like inertia and overwhelm. I know people with ADHD who do use it this way, with good results - obviously with the usual disclaimer is you can't totally rely on it, it can make errors, it will need fine tuning to what you need, so you have to be quite proactive, it's all experimental, etc.
I tell it I want to tidy an area of a room and it gives me little micro tasks, and it is there as a virtual presence I can talk to and it will respond. You can even show it a photo of the area, and it gives more specific instructions. It may misread what something is. It called a fabric bag an item of clothing, for instance - and in that case, it was an error a human could have made too, and didn't matter practically. If it mattered, I could have corrected it.
As someone who struggles with getting started, with switching from one thing to another, with knowing where to start, with overwhelm from the many things I need to consider, it can be helpful simply to tell ChatGPT what I want to do. It then asks a few practical questions, which stops it being a confused overwhelm in my mind, and helps me with making decisions and getting started.
As an example, there's a nice place I like to go for a day trip sometimes, but there is a lot to consider, so I often want to go but don't, and when I go, the effort to force myself to go means I neglect the practical planning. Yesterday morning, I told ChatGPT I wanted to go there. ChatGPT suggested a time to go and asked if I was going to take some food and snacks. Once it had given the time, I could use that as a visual thing to hang on while I explored the possible times (infrequency of buses being another consideration, which ChatGPT didn't know about, and I could have told it, but didn't need to, as I was able to navigate that myself).
I always know in theory, somewhere in the crevices of my mind, that it would be a good idea to take food - it's something I occasionally think about when I feel unwell and faint after a trip - but it's something I rarely think about when about to go on a trip, or I think about it fleetingly and it gets lost in my mind along with a lot of other related thoughts that immediately pop up - like the steps and time needed to prepare food, the weight of the food, how I would wrap it and which bag to put it in. All of which popped into my mind when ChatGPT mentioned it, but because the suggestion stayed there for me to see, I could have more thoughts about it and form a plan. And the fact that it's a conversation, requiring some kind of response from me to continue, is like the external force needed for inertia. So I ended up going on the day trip, earlier in the day than I nave ever gone before, taking food and snacks with me, divided into portions that I could eat some every hour or two.
So for me, as a neurodivergent person who lives alone and struggles a lot with everyday things, it is having a positive impact that I wasn't expecting. And so I wanted to ask about other people's experiences. Not as a blueprint to be followed and unquestioningly relied on, but for ideas for little practical things that might be tweaked and possibly help a little.
You see, this seems like a wholly sensible and praiseworthy way of using it, which I’m glad to hear about—because I haven’t been able to come up with too many myself. But this, yes, this totally makes sense.
It's not. Using the wonders of technology and ebooks, which people are grumbling about, you can do a search and see for definite that it's not there. The text is available free on Faded Page online. Here, click on the HTML version and search for naggie or toes or any other word from the quote.
As for ebooks, some have said some reasons they tend to prefer physical books to ebooks. Is that “grumbling” about ebooks? I use ebooks fairly regularly, and I’ll readily admit they have some advantages. (The one I use most often is one I often need to copy text from to paste into another document. Can’t do that with a physical book.)
But generally speaking, I still prefer physical books, especially when it comes to things like novels. But that’s me.
It was a deliberately flippant comment, given the previous influx of comments about ebooks being inferior to paper books, and the search feature being not very helpful, and how it's much easier to flick through the book. I was pointing out the irony, as it took me a few seconds to find what was being asked - which has also been asked in another thread, so I was hoping to put it to rest. I was also hoping to bring to an end this little sub-thread about all the flaws of ebooks, as I am genuinely wanting a supportive thread about positive uses of ChatGPT, and grumbles about ebooks seems like a different topic. No, I can't control the way a thread goes, but yes, I can try to give it a little steer, and even make a flippant comment now and then - heaven forbid!
The question is whether it actually is an “old Scottish version of Psalm 137:8,” or whether it’s an invention. I have never been able to find it in an actual psalter, nor has googling come up with anything other than something along the lines of “as ann old Scottish psalter had it . . . .” But no one ever seems to cite an actual source.
I presume Alexa is run by AI?
" In February 2025, Amazon introduced Alexa+, the latest version of their voice assistant, which is powered by generative AI. Alexa+ was announced to be free for all Prime members.[30]"
It depends what you mean by AI, it mainly uses speech recognition (and then keys certain words to certain actions), latterly Apple (Siri), Google (Home) and Amazon (Alexa) have all been introducing generative AI in various ways into their speech assistants.
Oh dear! Sorry for my miss-remembering. But I'm pretty sure I did read it Lewis. Trouble is, having read practically all of Lewis, it could be anywhere. 'Letters to Malcolm'? Which one of his talks or articles? The search continues .... I wonder if AI can help?
[Having read it:]
It appears someone else, too. I actually don't have Letters to an American Lady. Though I do have his collected letters, so it was probably in there.
It is an idiot about some things that aren't part of the main culture. It doesn't know much where my people are from and our ways. They got us using Duck.ai which is GPT instead of the brandname ChatGPT. The ChatGPT one tracks you bad and profiles you. We get profiled already as brown people so don't want that.
The kids circumvented this by posting its suggested research back in where it gave its answer and then suggested further research!
Repeat.
This puts me in mind of the contrast between the non-digital experience of looking things up in books and writing letters to people we never meet, and the digital experience of doing these things online.
And thinking about the frameworks (regulatory and others) which shape these experiences: To me, this looks like a legal suggestion (if not a legal opinion) that AI is in some way like a human. It strikes me that the perceived quality of being human-like is potentially quite significant, both to the (regulatory) future of AI, but also more immediately to the way that people use it, being the subject of this thread.
Thinking about the question of the OP from a different angle, I've been asking myself whether there any tasks or activities that I currently avoid, that I might be more encouraged to attempt if I had a human assistant with whom I could discuss them or who could talk me through them.
Human help in this area has been very helpful to me in the past. But for me, sporadic and intermittent, and also something I'm mindful I don't want to take advantage of friends with. Of course, if you were able to pay an assistant to do it, that would be different. I've found journalling can help too, getting things down on paper, to look at and sort out visually, but this also requires the consistency of motivation to keep journalling regularly.
So for me, AI is a point in between - unlike journalling, you have the external force of another presence interacting with what you say, which can break through inertia, but the detailed, repetitive sort of one-way support you can use it for is very different from the casual two-way support real life friends might offer each other. And if it's not being helpful, you can tell it quite openly without it taking offence!