zlacker

>>Ozarki+(OP)
Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When I read that the FBI agents had stopped at Bello Coffee while preparing their stakeout, I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there.

Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.

Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes was a fascinating experience, and it certainly made the article suddenly get a lot more immersive!

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/

EDIT: to be clear, I was not present for the arrest. I was reading the magazine, some years after the arrest, but in the same place as the arrest. (I didn’t qualify the events with “I read that...” since I thought the narrative ellipsis would be obvious from context; evidently not.)

>>wolfga+qc
Sorry, it went over my head a bit, you read about his arrest while he was being arrested?

>>syspec+Pi
I had the same confusion initially, interestingly chat GPT gets it:

So while wolfgang42 wasn't there when Ulbricht was actually arrested, their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive.

In short: they were reading about an old event, but it happened to occur in the same spot they were sitting at that moment. Hope that clears it up!

>>Satam+tx
> their realization created a vivid mental image of the event unfolding in that space, which made the story feel more immersive.

Glad that ChatGPT, probably like GP themselves, is a visualizer and actually can create a "vivid mental image" of something. For those of us with aphantasia, that is not a thing. Myself, I too was mighty confused by the text, which read literally like a time travel story, and was only missing a cat and tomorrow's newspaper.

>>TeMPOr+uK
Legitimately and I say this was absolutely no shade intended. This is a reading comprehension problem, nothing to do with aphantasia.

He clearly states that he was reading an article, he uses past tense verbs when referring to Ross, and to the events spelled out in the article. If you somehow thought that he could be reading an article that ostensibly has to be describing a past event as he was seeing it in real time that is a logic flaw on you.

It has nothing to do with what you can or cannot visualize. All you have to do is ask yourself could he have been reading an article about Ross’s arrest while watching it? Since nobody can violate the causality of space time the answer is no.

This isn’t just you this is everybody in this thread who is reading this and going this is a little confusing. No it’s very clearly him speaking about a past experience reading an article about a past event.

>>xerox1+xY
I am as baffled at the responses and appreciated this explanation as it was helpful to me to work on my communication style and expresses a lot of similar frustrations I have. Like what is actually going on here? this isn’t shade at anyone, I just feel like people are losing some fundamental ability to deduce from context what they are reading. it’s doubly concerning because people immediately reach to an AI/LLM to explain it for them, which cannot possibly be helping the first problem.

>>JohnMa+Ya1
If an LLM clears up a misunderstanding, I am having trouble seeing that as a bad thing.

Maybe in 10 years we can blame poor reading comprehension on having a decade of computers reading for us. But it’s a bit early for that.