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The Case Against Hemingway, and Other Things

PaperTrue
4 min readJul 17, 2019

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No, not that Hemingway. Not the author Ernest Hemingway, undoubtedly an icon of 20th-century literature. No, of course not. I meant this . The editing app. That was a bit of a misleading start, I apologise. But do stay, because I have some compelling things to say.

You know, I’ve always sensed a bit of irony in the idea that something as bland as an online editing software should be named after a literary giant. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the AI boom (I’ve had my fair share of Asimov-esque fantasies for the future of bots), I just don’t think it’s worthwhile if you want to want to write…well.

I’m going to be so bold as to argue that even if machine learning ventures into editing literary texts, a machine will never ever ever do it as well as human beings could. That’s the tea.

No, really. Are you seriously telling me that AI is capable of successfully overtaking the one thing that sets the human race apart? The art of writing. This is a feat achieved by no one other species. For millennia, writing has shown itself to be a potent medium that sheds light upon human complexity. Is it truly fair to give up that quest to machines?

Allow me to elaborate.

We’ve already said that editing is a long process, and has many steps within it. Technical expertise aside, the art of editing is filled with nuance. Ensuring syntax, punctuation, and formatting is only a part of this process. Editing a piece of literature requires an in-depth…

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PaperTrue
PaperTrue

Written by PaperTrue

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