䷋ Tangled

Tangle is an excellent newsletter and podcast. Subscribe now. Breaking my 2025 cutoff again, they nerd sniped me, “Let’s see if AI can do my job.” I wrote them, “AI can’t do your job.” Why?

Tangle has a catchphrase close to:

Views from the left, views from the right, and the little bit of my take.

Who does “my” refer to? The founder Isaac Saul mostly, other staff sometimes. “My” cannot properly refer to ChatGPT imitating Isaac. Implicit in the Tangle idea is that whoever’s take it is, it’s their own opinion rewritten and refined but essentially their point of view based on their own experience and understanding. So ChatGPT imitating Isaac cannot write My Take.

They had Chat write a facsimile resembling My Take. Call it My Fake. Isaac critiqued the quality of the writing. That’s not the point. My Fake is a logically different animal: a bat wearing a bird mask is not a bird, never going to be. Even if the Fake and the Take contained identical words, they wouldn’t be the same thing.

Pierre Menard taught us that. Remember the author of the essay calls the imitation infinitely richer than the original. Is it more impressive to be yourself or to play someone else excruciatingly well? Reframe question for an easy answer: it’s differently impressive.