The New York Times Magazine - USA (2022-05-08)

Illustrations by Giacomo Gambineri 5

Photograph by Andrea Frazzetta

The Thread

My husband and I take a handful of road

trips a year in our converted Sienna min-

ivan. I share some of Weaver’s antipathy

toward ‘‘van life,’’ but maybe to a lesser

degree. My husband might live in our van

entirely if I were a diff erent person. I could

happily live out my life if I never camped

again. But I love him, so we compromise.

The amount we save on accommodations

is usually spent on a nice dinner out. (By

‘‘nice,’’ I mean pub grub — we care more

about the beer than the food.) I get credit

for being a camper without all the campy

stuff (pitching a tent, building a fi re, catch-

ing one’s own dinner, ugh... ). He gets

the pleasure of my company, and we both

get to see some pretty awesome places.

Anyhow, hats off to Weaver for enduring a

week of camping and sharing the delight-

ful tale. (And great photos!) She’s my new

favorite Times writer, and I want to know

when she publishes her fi rst book.

Susan Gilday, Rochester, N.Y.

I do appreciate this piece. You are so

funny, Caity! I hope everyone reads it and

decides against #VanLife-ing. Then I’ll

fi nally fi nd a parking spot on the Yosem-

ite Valley fl oor.

Delia Smith, Los Angeles

What a great and hilarious story! I’m

not a bit surprised that ‘‘van life’’ is not

at all glamorous and is rather tough and

exhausting. There will still be people who

disagree and say your trip was too short

to get used to that life — that you didn’t

have the right van, that the experience

is that the human use of language is tight-

ly intertwined with a deep comprehen-

sion of the world, including fundamentals

such as space and time and objects, which

children appear to be born with, and that

systems like GPT-3 never possess and

never develop. Systems like GPT-3 may

superfi cially appear to emulate the lin-

guistic talents of humans, by mimicking

the statistics of human utterances drawn

from massive databases, but upon closer

inspection, the diff erences between these

systems and humans become readily

apparent — particularly in their frequent

dissociations from reality. Other work

shows that such systems never abstract

basic notions, such as arithmetic, in full

generality. Emulating a regularity for

a certain set of data is not the same as

genuinely deriving the underlying con-

cepts. Johnson’s article is delightfully

entertaining but does not represent how

far the fi eld is from anything like genuine

language comprehension.

Gary Marcus, emeritus professor of

psychology and neural science at N.Y.U.,

and Iris Berent, professor of psychology

at Northeastern University.

RE: THE ISLAND

Rachel Cusk wrote about going away to two

Greek islands.

Thank you for publishing Rachel Cusk’s

refl ection, which was so aptly illustrated

by Kyutae Lee. The artwork mirrors the

beauty of the writing, which reads like

the negation of a negation, such as Bud-

dhists practice in meditation — a rarity

to encounter in any journalistic context.

Ernest Rubinstein, New York

Send your thoughts to [email protected].

‘The human

use of language

is tightly

intertwined

with a deep

comprehension

of the world .’

Readers respond to our stories.

RE: #VANLIFE

Caity Weaver wrote about renting a van and

driving around California.

you had does not refl ect whatever. But

your story is what I have imagined ‘‘van

life’’ to be: cramped, uncomfortable and

the desire to get home despite seeing

some beautiful views along the way.

Thank you for sharing this article. So

sorry that it ended with your severe

back pain. Your friend sounded lovely

and calm, and it made me want to learn

more about meditation.

Nicole, Northern California

This is a light and charming piece, but it’s

also not the fi rst in The Times I’ve read

where the writer confronts nature unpre-

pared. The editorial staff seems married

to the idea that nature is terrifying and

the only thing you can do if forced to con-

front it is make jokes about its horror. I

hope the next essay I read about a week

in nature is about the nature itself and the

reverie it can compel.

Carrie, Petoskey, Mich.

RE: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Steven Johnson wrote about an A.I. program

that writes original prose — and the profound

implications this could have for the future.

A few points mentioned briefl y in passing

in a 10,000-word article — including the

tendency of the system to create toxic

language and misinformation — are far

more important than most readers would

recognize, and the experience that John-

son reports would not necessarily be rep-

resentative. It concerns us greatly that the

public’s perception is now shaped more

by a skilled writer who happens to be an

enthusiast than by scientists who have

explored the system and thought deep-

ly about language. If there is one lesson

from the cognitive science of language, it

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