The answer is: “The Dandelion Girl” by Robert F. Young, thanks to a now deleted post below.
I started reading this at work a couple weeks ago, but wasn’t able to finish it at the time. Got a light morning, so I was trying to find it again, but to no avail.
I have a sneaking suspicion of the twist the story was building towards, but I wasn’t sure how the author was going to pull it off, as it seemed to be a textbook time travel paradox.
I thought the title might have something to do with flowers, but including that in my searches did not yield results, even after filtering out all of the “Flowers for Algernon” results, so I might be wrong.
As I specified, I used a tool akin to google.
Thanks for clarifying that only those with a knowledge of 1961 10-page short stories should respond to this post. I’ll delete my response.
I understand this is not everyone’s default assumption online, but, please, give me the benefit of the doubt that I am engaging with you in good faith.
I have no issue with you having used AI to find the result. Truthfully, I’m surprised that the AI was able to find it so easily where a regular Google search, even with search operators, kept returning wildly inaccurate results. What I commented on, couched by attempting to underline my gratitude first and foremost, was that this whole community is built around, “There’s this thing I vaguely remember, can anyone help me find it?”. As you say, yes, clearly AI is well suited to this task, given it found the item in question based on what I wrote in one go. So, almost every post in this community could have “I plugged your prompt into AI and it thinks this is what you’re looking for: […]”. What then, is the point of this community?
I am arguing that this is not the space to be evangelizing chat bots, not because they are an inappropriate tool for this task (or whatever other issues people might moralize about on here), but because to do so actively robs the community of further content, in the sense that the lesson it imparts is, “Don’t ask here, ask ChatGPT”.
Of course, I could be misapprehending your intent. If so, I’d like to know where I’ve gotten off track.
I realise that you probably were not intending any malice, but to summarise what just happened as a third party:
A: Here’s a thing I’d like help finding:
B: Here’s the exact thing you wanted. Here’s how I found it, in case it helps you in the future.
A: Thank you, but the way that you found it was wrong and diminishes the community.
I might be wrong, but the whole point of this community is asking people to help you find something, not asking people to help you find something (terms and conditions apply).
The facts are that someone went out of their way to help you successfully, shared how they did it, and you told them off.
Like I said, I appreciate that you probably weren’t trying to be rude. But just because this is a crowd-sourcing community, it doesn’t mean it’s a memory quiz.
That’s my take anyway.
I can understand that, but, from my biased perspective, that take is either unsupported by what I wrote, or requires a remarkably uncharitable reading. I asked for help, he provided it, and suggested I could use ChatGPT in the future to answer questions like this. I confirmed he had found the correct answer and explicitly thanked him for having taken the time to do so. I did reject his suggestion that I should just prompt a chatbot in the future though. I attempted, clearly unsuccessfully, to couch that pushback by underscoring again (for the second time in as many sentences) my gratitude that he took the time at all, but I stand by my question: what is the purpose of this community if the top level response to most questions is, “you should try prompting ChatGPT. It’s like Google but with faster and better results.”
Despite his assertion that I’m a tech hating Luddite, I have no issue with AI output being cited in this forum. When I balked at being told I should use ChatGPT instead of posting here, he assumed I was rejecting AI altogether and decided to take his ball and go home.
Idk, maybe I’m just having a legitimately unpopular opinion here, but my read is that communities like this one exist, in spite of their gimmick being well suited for a chatbot question, specifically because people want to interact with other humans, not bots. So, I stand by my original point, suggesting an OP in this community should prompt a bot is missing the point: not because AI is bad, but because, if they wanted to avoid human interaction, they would have asked the bot already.
On the bright side, I’m reconsidering my hunger for human interaction and am coming around to the idea that maybe it isn’t worth the effort lol
It’s definitely possible I misinterpreted the sentiment - I’ll highlight some of the phrases that gave me that impression.
Again, as a third party, these certainly come across as you saying that the community is diminished by using AI to find the answers, and that the original respondent was wrong to do so. I don’t think that relies on a particularly uncharitable reading.
I saw the original reply - it didn’t say that you “should use ChatGPT instead of posting here”. It did say that you can use AI to easily answer questions like these, but there was nothing saying that you should use it - just that you could use it.
Anyway, this is a crazy thing to be arguing over. You say you didn’t mean any harm by it, so I’ll take your word for it. There’s enough horrible stuff in the world at the moment without the need for online fighting.
I’m going to tap out now. You’re not blocked, and I’ll read whatever you reply with, but I don’t think there’s much more I can add to this now.
Yeah, that’s definitely how it came across to me too. You’re not alone there
Ok.