And Another Thing…
And Another Thing... is the sixth novel in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Eight years after the death of its creator, Douglas Adams, widow Jane Belson sanctioned the project to be written by the international number-one bestselling children's writer Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl novels.Belson said of Eoin Colfer, "I love his books and could not think of a better person to transport Arthur, Zaphod, and Marvin to pastures new." Colfer, a fan of Hitchhiker since his school days, said, "Being given the chance to write this book is like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice. For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world."Prepare to be amazed...
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- I tried Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and never really managed to get to the end. I was somewhat disappointed cause I had my expectations up to the Hitchhiker's guide. On the subject of the Hitchhiker's guide, I liked "And Another Thing..." the most(though it was largely written by Eoin Colfer.
- I read the Salmon of Doubt, but I honestly don't remember much of it. I do remember at the time thinking that it was interesting to read it, and I don't remember any revulsion or finding it particularly bad, but clearly it was not particularly noteworthy either. Then it was not a finished novel. That said, it was not presented as a finished novel either, and included various other biographical bits and pieces, and as a whole I like that it is out there in the form it was put out, which was more of a tribute to Adams than an attempt to sell another Douglas Adams novel.
On the other hand, though it is of course quite different from a posthumously released book by the author himself, it is quite relevant given that part of the reason Adams wanted to turn Salmon of Doubt into a Hitchhikers book was that Mostly Harmless was quite bleak (I seem to remember claims he intentionally ended it the way he did to prevent being badgered about another sequel):
I quite enjoyed "And Another Thing..." by Eoin Colfer, written as a sixth book in the HHGTG series. I read it with some trepidation, but enjoyed it. It wasn't quite the same of course, but he managed to match the style surprisingly well, and it did give the series a much more upbeat ending.
I think both are examples that it is possible to do post-humous releases both of the authors own work and sequels without it going badly.
I think that very much boils down to marketing and readers, though. If you read either with the expectation that they represent Adams at his prime, then you're set for a disappointment. If you see them as more material for the specially interested, then to me at least they were worthwhile.
- You should! Make sure you pick up the 6th book by Eoin Colfer (of Artemis Fowl fame), 'And Another Thing...' who's actually done a marvelous of picking up the series where it left off after Douglas Adams' extremely unfortunate passing.
- Well imho, it's a bit of a fundamental problem for a certain aspect of the meaning of "to intuit".
Since we're quoting Douglas Adams in this thread, I'll mention something I posted a while back, with his writings as example. After Douglas Adams passed away, somebody was tasked to "finish" The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy :
> And Another Thing... is the sixth and final novel in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Written by Eoin Colfer with the blessing of Douglas Adams' widow Jane Belson
Being a rather big fan, I immediately bought and read this novel and I have to say that Eoin Colfer did a really really great job, nailing the tone, humour and writing style of Douglas Adams.
IMVHO, he did about as good as anyone could reasonably expect someone to do, when given this task. It was big shoes to fill, and I was impressed.
But it just also wasn't good enough, in a weird way that I found hard to put my finger on at first.
The thing is that Colfer was doing the tone of voice, even came up with somewhat new jokes perfectly in the style of, etc etc. And for the sake of argument let's say he was able to get "arbitrarily close".
But there was always one thing he couldn't do: Actually make something new happen, make a new kind of joke, do a real plot twist, a big reveal, stuff like that. Because then it would deviate from Douglas Adams' work too much.
However, if Douglas Adams was still alive, this limitation would not apply to him: he could make a new kind of joke, do a plot twist, big reveal, and it would become canon.
This the best "good faith" argument I can present for how LLMs lack "intuition", in some sense. Now "intuition" is not a very exactly defined term, but I'm arguing that the thing I'm describing here, is at least a part of intuition, that an LLM fundamentally can't reach (until they start getting their own volition, which I would prefer they didn't).
To address your question:
> Surely the AI can complete the prompt “Generate new research questions based on these observations”?
Yes I imagine it could do that very well. But it would still need a human to decide if the research questions are "relevant" or "within scope" of what the human wants (a.k.a. their volition). Without that filter, the research would just bloom out exponentially, with more and more questions nobody was asking.
And yes, up to some point that "blooming" behaviour is a useful aspect of research, the exploratory aspect/phase, but at some point you need to get back to the "synthesis" aspect/phase, to distill all the explorations back to "stuff that matters". And just like Douglas Adams vs Eoin Colfer, only the human who wants to know something, can decide to widen or change the domain of that synthesis, but if the LLM were to decide this (outside of exploratory phase), it would actually be considered the wrong answer.
And this is not at all to say you can't do research with LLMs, obviously you can. But this is just a thing they can't do, on a real philosophical level. I'm also not saying you can't work around this limitation, you probably can, I'm just saying it exists.
- Yes, the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately-named Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy.
The 'final' was meant as a sly dig at Eoin Colfer's addition to the series, "And Another Thing", which attempted to wrap up the story after Adams' death. I read it shortly after release and didn't give it a fair chance.
