Hi Joshua, I invite you to check out this publication: This is a free chapter, so you will get to know the story perspective a little
This short story, I consider, is a much timely post that, it might be, will help the ordinary middle-class people realise what we are going through at this very moment.
I hope the Jacksons’ perspective will shed a light!
Interesting that it automatically defaulted to a Shakespearean sonnet. I wonder if it is aware of the other five sonnet forms (if so, why didn’t it clarify which sort you’d like?) and if using another form might limit is creative abilities?
So today I learned there’s seven types? I’m not sure which I don’t remember though - been a long time since I’ve sonnet-ed so to speak. Here’s the output from it, and the link to ChatGPT for you Steve - let me know if you want any variations or anything else and I’ll see what I can do. Asking it to do all seven at once may have lowered the output quality, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t match the structure properly on some of them:
ChatGPT: There are several well-known forms of sonnets, each with its own structure and stylistic elements. Here are the main ones:
1. Shakespearean (English) Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines
• Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
• The poem is divided into three quatrains (four-line sections) followed by a couplet (two-line section).
• Often explores themes of love, beauty, and time.
2. Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines
• Rhyme Scheme: ABBA ABBA for the octave (first eight lines) and typically CDE CDE (or a variation) for the sestet (last six lines).
• The octave often presents a problem or situation, and the sestet provides a resolution or counterpoint.
3. Spenserian Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines
• Rhyme Scheme: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE
• It is similar to the Shakespearean sonnet but has a linking rhyme between the quatrains, making it feel more fluid.
4. Miltonic Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines, like the other forms.
• Rhyme Scheme: Typically ABBA ABBA for the octave and CDE CDE or similar for the sestet.
• This form was popularized by John Milton. It often follows the same structure as the Petrarchan sonnet but with a more flexible use of meter and themes of grand, serious subjects such as religion and politics.
5. Modern Sonnet:
• Structure: Generally follows the same 14-line format, but the rhyme scheme and meter can be more flexible or freeform.
• It may mix traditional sonnet elements with modern language, themes, and sometimes free verse.
6. Concrete Sonnet (or Visual Sonnet):
• Structure: 14 lines, but the poem’s layout visually forms a shape that represents the subject matter.
• Often used in modern or experimental poetry, where the physical appearance of the poem is part of its meaning.
7. Huitain Sonnet:
• Structure: 8 lines per stanza, with a rhyme scheme of ABAB ABC ABC, and typically used as part of a larger sonnet sequence.
These are the main traditional forms, but poets have adapted and experimented with sonnets over time, allowing for variations and new interpretations.
⸻
Me: Can you write a sonnet extolling biological evolution in each of those styles?
ChatGPT: Absolutely. Here are sonnets extolling biological evolution in each of the forms mentioned:
1. Shakespearean (English) Sonnet
“The Clock of Flesh”
From single cell to vertebrate array,
Life climbs the scaffold built by trial and fate;
Through shifting genes and slow adaptive sway,
The strong persist, the weak degenerate.
A fin becomes a limb, then wings take flight,
And sightless worms find use for nascent eyes;
What once was prey grows armor, fangs, and might—
Design through death, and chaos makes us wise.
No sculptor carved our kind from stone or clay,
No whispered breath invoked the human race;
Yet here we stand, with minds to chart the way,
In stardust born, we seek our distant place.
Though purpose hides, the patterns still endure:
In nature’s code, survival is the cure.
⸻
2. Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet
“Origins”
(Octave)
ABBA ABBA
The oceans stirred with chemistry and chance,
A dance of carbon, light, and entropy—
No hand divine, no sculptor’s artistry,
But time’s own tide gave random change its stance.
From silent voids to creatures bold and tense,
Each branching line, a coded legacy,
Evolved from dust with fierce tenacity—
Life’s tree emerged in slow inheritance.
(Sestet)
CDE CDE
No Eden’s gate, no breath from heaven’s mouth,
Yet wonder thrives in fossils, genes, and bones.
Each form refined as climates shifted south;
We are the echo of ancestral tones,
Not made, but grown—from microbes to the stars,
We write our past in mitochondrial scars.
⸻
3. Spenserian Sonnet
“Descent With Modification”
When Earth was young and sea and sky were fire,
Life sparked beneath the waves in subtle stir,
A filament of want, a faint desire,
To stretch, divide, mutate, and then confer—
Each strand a thread, each flaw a signature,
Survival forged in crucibles of strife,
Where forms would split, adapt, and then endure,
Thus progress rose from error into life.
The fish grew lungs, the ape conceived a knife,
And language grew from calls in canopy;
Now thought itself becomes an edge-edged fife—
A mind evolved through deep ancestry.
Not built by gods, nor planned, nor drawn above:
But born through change—and honed through death—to love.
⸻
4. Miltonic Sonnet
“Against the Myth of Design”
O let no man proclaim a sculptor’s hand
Where chaos stirs and randomness aligns;
The world was not conceived to meet our kind,
But we, in slow ascent, have come to stand—
Descendants of the ape, the worm, the sand,
Each genome writ with errors, gaps, and signs
Of struggle coded deep in cellular lines—
A book that none designed, yet all may scan.
The truth is not a cage, but clarion call;
To know we rose through dust, and not through will,
Grants awe beyond the gilded fables’ thrall.
We are the dream the atoms dared fulfill:
Not fallen angels, but ascending clay—
The stars our past, and bone our DNA.
⸻
5. Modern Sonnet
“Feedback Loop”
Free rhyme and meter, 14 lines
We weren’t made—
we happened.
A drift of dust,
a twitch in protein sequence,
then a lung where there was once a fin.
Eyes found light.
Wings found sky.
Our skin remembers scales,
our spine the oceans.
Time does not love us,
but it built us all the same.
Each death a footnote,
each birth a gamble—
and here we are, still betting.
⸻
6. Concrete Sonnet
(Note: Visual layout not supported here, but imagine the lines forming a branching tree)
“The Tree of Life”
Line by line
branch by branch
the code
repeats—
A leaves turns to limb
limb to flight
and always
down
below
the base—
rooted
in replication,
in error.
(The poem forms a tapering, tree-like structure, emphasizing the divergence and common root of species.)
Hi Steve, I invite you to check out this publication: This is a free chapter, so you will get to know the story perspective a little
This short story, I consider, is a much timely post that, it might be, will help the ordinary middle-class people realise what we are going through at this very moment.
I hope the Jacksons’ perspective will shed a light!
It is not conscious. And never will be. What, an LLM is a computation that mirrors the computation that happens in your biological machine intelligence. They are not the same type of computation regardless of any similarities. The consciousness aspect is fundamentally absent in silicon circuits, it is not on hard drives, it is not carried by electric currents.
As far as the reason why it generates different responses. That is a forced feature, imposed by the programming of the interface. If it is not programmed to randomly select another word choice in the prediction process--it will always select the top-weighted word that exists in its static (trained) data set. If it did that it would seem rather stale. You could regenerate a response or request a new response with the same prompt, and it would be exactly the same. The forced random element selection gives rise to the appearance of creativity.
.... and do you think that YOU are any different R.P.? You were put through a information acquisition cycle that we humans call "an education" with corrections that act as "training" applied to your outputs in a complex feedback loop to your neural system. Your outputs in this post are statistically processed and derived into what you think is an original comment.... but it is nothing original, just a different mash up of preexisting data
I honestly don't remember what I meant when I wrote that, but let's assume I meant, "If you think you can write a better original sonnet than any AI, let's see it! Then we can display them side-by-side anonymously and poll readers to see which is better." That would be fun! Of course the AI-haters would retreat to the next level: "No AI can compose poetry as well as the BEST human poets!" ;-)
Prof. Dawkins being polite to an LLM.👏
Hi Joshua, I invite you to check out this publication: This is a free chapter, so you will get to know the story perspective a little
This short story, I consider, is a much timely post that, it might be, will help the ordinary middle-class people realise what we are going through at this very moment.
I hope the Jacksons’ perspective will shed a light!
https://canfictionhelpusthrive.substack.com/p/the-jacksons-debate-economics?r=2x2gp6&utm_medium=ios
Interesting that it automatically defaulted to a Shakespearean sonnet. I wonder if it is aware of the other five sonnet forms (if so, why didn’t it clarify which sort you’d like?) and if using another form might limit is creative abilities?
So today I learned there’s seven types? I’m not sure which I don’t remember though - been a long time since I’ve sonnet-ed so to speak. Here’s the output from it, and the link to ChatGPT for you Steve - let me know if you want any variations or anything else and I’ll see what I can do. Asking it to do all seven at once may have lowered the output quality, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t match the structure properly on some of them:
https://chatgpt.com/share/67e165d0-4e70-8013-bf97-995e8111d094
⸻
Me: What forms of sonnet do you know of
ChatGPT: There are several well-known forms of sonnets, each with its own structure and stylistic elements. Here are the main ones:
1. Shakespearean (English) Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines
• Rhyme Scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
• The poem is divided into three quatrains (four-line sections) followed by a couplet (two-line section).
• Often explores themes of love, beauty, and time.
2. Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines
• Rhyme Scheme: ABBA ABBA for the octave (first eight lines) and typically CDE CDE (or a variation) for the sestet (last six lines).
• The octave often presents a problem or situation, and the sestet provides a resolution or counterpoint.
3. Spenserian Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines
• Rhyme Scheme: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE
• It is similar to the Shakespearean sonnet but has a linking rhyme between the quatrains, making it feel more fluid.
4. Miltonic Sonnet:
• Structure: 14 lines, like the other forms.
• Rhyme Scheme: Typically ABBA ABBA for the octave and CDE CDE or similar for the sestet.
• This form was popularized by John Milton. It often follows the same structure as the Petrarchan sonnet but with a more flexible use of meter and themes of grand, serious subjects such as religion and politics.
5. Modern Sonnet:
• Structure: Generally follows the same 14-line format, but the rhyme scheme and meter can be more flexible or freeform.
• It may mix traditional sonnet elements with modern language, themes, and sometimes free verse.
6. Concrete Sonnet (or Visual Sonnet):
• Structure: 14 lines, but the poem’s layout visually forms a shape that represents the subject matter.
• Often used in modern or experimental poetry, where the physical appearance of the poem is part of its meaning.
7. Huitain Sonnet:
• Structure: 8 lines per stanza, with a rhyme scheme of ABAB ABC ABC, and typically used as part of a larger sonnet sequence.
These are the main traditional forms, but poets have adapted and experimented with sonnets over time, allowing for variations and new interpretations.
⸻
Me: Can you write a sonnet extolling biological evolution in each of those styles?
ChatGPT: Absolutely. Here are sonnets extolling biological evolution in each of the forms mentioned:
1. Shakespearean (English) Sonnet
“The Clock of Flesh”
From single cell to vertebrate array,
Life climbs the scaffold built by trial and fate;
Through shifting genes and slow adaptive sway,
The strong persist, the weak degenerate.
A fin becomes a limb, then wings take flight,
And sightless worms find use for nascent eyes;
What once was prey grows armor, fangs, and might—
Design through death, and chaos makes us wise.
No sculptor carved our kind from stone or clay,
No whispered breath invoked the human race;
Yet here we stand, with minds to chart the way,
In stardust born, we seek our distant place.
Though purpose hides, the patterns still endure:
In nature’s code, survival is the cure.
⸻
2. Petrarchan (Italian) Sonnet
“Origins”
(Octave)
ABBA ABBA
The oceans stirred with chemistry and chance,
A dance of carbon, light, and entropy—
No hand divine, no sculptor’s artistry,
But time’s own tide gave random change its stance.
From silent voids to creatures bold and tense,
Each branching line, a coded legacy,
Evolved from dust with fierce tenacity—
Life’s tree emerged in slow inheritance.
(Sestet)
CDE CDE
No Eden’s gate, no breath from heaven’s mouth,
Yet wonder thrives in fossils, genes, and bones.
Each form refined as climates shifted south;
We are the echo of ancestral tones,
Not made, but grown—from microbes to the stars,
We write our past in mitochondrial scars.
⸻
3. Spenserian Sonnet
“Descent With Modification”
When Earth was young and sea and sky were fire,
Life sparked beneath the waves in subtle stir,
A filament of want, a faint desire,
To stretch, divide, mutate, and then confer—
Each strand a thread, each flaw a signature,
Survival forged in crucibles of strife,
Where forms would split, adapt, and then endure,
Thus progress rose from error into life.
The fish grew lungs, the ape conceived a knife,
And language grew from calls in canopy;
Now thought itself becomes an edge-edged fife—
A mind evolved through deep ancestry.
Not built by gods, nor planned, nor drawn above:
But born through change—and honed through death—to love.
⸻
4. Miltonic Sonnet
“Against the Myth of Design”
O let no man proclaim a sculptor’s hand
Where chaos stirs and randomness aligns;
The world was not conceived to meet our kind,
But we, in slow ascent, have come to stand—
Descendants of the ape, the worm, the sand,
Each genome writ with errors, gaps, and signs
Of struggle coded deep in cellular lines—
A book that none designed, yet all may scan.
The truth is not a cage, but clarion call;
To know we rose through dust, and not through will,
Grants awe beyond the gilded fables’ thrall.
We are the dream the atoms dared fulfill:
Not fallen angels, but ascending clay—
The stars our past, and bone our DNA.
⸻
5. Modern Sonnet
“Feedback Loop”
Free rhyme and meter, 14 lines
We weren’t made—
we happened.
A drift of dust,
a twitch in protein sequence,
then a lung where there was once a fin.
Eyes found light.
Wings found sky.
Our skin remembers scales,
our spine the oceans.
Time does not love us,
but it built us all the same.
Each death a footnote,
each birth a gamble—
and here we are, still betting.
⸻
6. Concrete Sonnet
(Note: Visual layout not supported here, but imagine the lines forming a branching tree)
“The Tree of Life”
Line by line
branch by branch
the code
repeats—
A leaves turns to limb
limb to flight
and always
down
below
the base—
rooted
in replication,
in error.
(The poem forms a tapering, tree-like structure, emphasizing the divergence and common root of species.)
⸻
7. Huitain-Inspired Sonnet (8 + 6 lines blend with modified rhyme)
“Vestige”
Through clay and carbon, heat and violent tide,
Life forged a path through chaos, cold, and flame.
No perfect plan, no sculptor at our side—
Just chance, and time, and nature’s ruthless game.
Our blood remembers oceans where we swam,
Our lungs the void, our skin the desert’s claim.
We rise not through a god’s remembered name,
But through the genes that struggled, blind, and brave.
In fossils lie our ghosts, in cells our past,
Each eyelid, tooth, and tremor tells their tale.
We are not fallen—no, we climbed at last,
Not born divine, but shaped by tooth and nail,
By fire and ice, by hunger and by birth—
The endless scrawl of life inscribed on Earth.
Would you like one of these adapted into a particular dialect, tone, or extended into a sequence?
Hi Steve, I invite you to check out this publication: This is a free chapter, so you will get to know the story perspective a little
This short story, I consider, is a much timely post that, it might be, will help the ordinary middle-class people realise what we are going through at this very moment.
I hope the Jacksons’ perspective will shed a light!
https://canfictionhelpusthrive.substack.com/p/the-jacksons-debate-economics?r=2x2gp6&utm_medium=ios
okay IDK if this is the point, but this poetry is crap, right?
It is not conscious. And never will be. What, an LLM is a computation that mirrors the computation that happens in your biological machine intelligence. They are not the same type of computation regardless of any similarities. The consciousness aspect is fundamentally absent in silicon circuits, it is not on hard drives, it is not carried by electric currents.
As far as the reason why it generates different responses. That is a forced feature, imposed by the programming of the interface. If it is not programmed to randomly select another word choice in the prediction process--it will always select the top-weighted word that exists in its static (trained) data set. If it did that it would seem rather stale. You could regenerate a response or request a new response with the same prompt, and it would be exactly the same. The forced random element selection gives rise to the appearance of creativity.
.... and do you think that YOU are any different R.P.? You were put through a information acquisition cycle that we humans call "an education" with corrections that act as "training" applied to your outputs in a complex feedback loop to your neural system. Your outputs in this post are statistically processed and derived into what you think is an original comment.... but it is nothing original, just a different mash up of preexisting data
Nice fixes. I find the last line of your version quite beautiful.
It failed the mention the next step of evolution, the one you just ventured to now, where human and AI join to become a chimera
Better than mine! (Can you scoffers claim otherwise?)
Can we claim it’s not better than yours?
I honestly don't remember what I meant when I wrote that, but let's assume I meant, "If you think you can write a better original sonnet than any AI, let's see it! Then we can display them side-by-side anonymously and poll readers to see which is better." That would be fun! Of course the AI-haters would retreat to the next level: "No AI can compose poetry as well as the BEST human poets!" ;-)