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Can you all help me play detective?
I check my name alert once a week or so, to make sure I'm not being misquoted or mis-attributed (if it's just a plain old personal attack, I usually ignore it). This week, the following quote popped up on a Christian news and opinion site called The Washington Stand. Link to the page is below.
Here's the challenge: I have no memory of writing the words that the author, Hannah Tu, quotes as mine, and there doesn't seem to be a way to contact either the author or the site to inquire.
I have written a whole lot of words in the past thirty-five years, so it's entirely possible that I did write this and I've just forgotten it. But I can't find this quote anywherein my published works or in my electronic archives, and somehow it doesn't quite sound like me (although if I wrote it in a post-baby haze, it could well be).
So can anyone point me in a useful direction?
Postscript: I ran the quote through an AI detector and it came up as "95% AI generated", which has never happened with anything I've written myself. Those tools are not infallible, but it does make me even more skeptical.
Postcript #2, which is actually even more interesting: A very old friend of mine located the quote. It's for an essay I wrote in 2001 that was published in 2002 in an anthology edited by Leland Ryken, www.google.com/books/edition/The_Christian_Imagination/kd0WKh3Sr-AC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=bauer
So I did write it, long ago, and yes, I was in a post-baby haze.
Did you clock the date? 2001 writing, 2002 publication. AI detection tools say that there's a 95% chance that quote was generated by AI, 25 years before AI generation was even possible.
I really did think this was a fake quote, for what it's worth. I don't feel much reassured by the reality...
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We have two major issues to consider. The first is that sin and evil are real parts of our experience. The second issue is that, since we are sinful people, we are more or less drawn toward expressions of darkness. So how do we acknowledge the first issue without encouraging undue interest in the second? More specifically, how should Christians approach themes of light and darkness in creative expression?
Susan Wise Bauer, Ph.D. and author of “The Well-Trained Mind,” frames the question excellently: “But moral evil, the wickedness we inflict on each other is most troubling for the storyteller. Tales of physical and metaphysical evil can ultimately become stories of goodness, as victims exercise strength, faith, and compassion in response to the difficulties they face. But how can descriptions of moral evil be anything but destructive for readers? What good can come from a careful chronicling of murder, and abuse, or a faithful investigation of the twisted thought paths of a serial killer?”
**
Dragons to Be Slain: The Role of Sin and Evil in Storytelling
washingtonstand.com
We have two major issues to consider. The first is that sin and evil are real parts of our experience. The second issue is that, since we are sinful people, we11 hours ago
Oh sheesh. Now I've just read the whole actual article. How does this person actually think Anne (in Anne of Green Gables) didn't actually suffer true traumatic hardship? Did she not READ about the abuse, the fear, the ... everything ... that informed every one of Anne's actions throughout that first novel? This person is not even a credible source.
Those postscripts that resolve the mystery are fascinating.
Wow. That's crazy. Are you one of the many authors whose works were used to train AI? How ironic is that. Our work trains the beast and then we get pegged as the beast ourselves...
I don't know, but it doesn't sound like you to me either, and there's a comma missing (but that could be a typo on anyone's part)... you don't generally mess up on punctuation! Also, the points contradict each other ... "most troubling for the storyteller" and "how can [these] ... be anything but destructive for readers?" are presupposing an answer and not the argument you would craft without a much more nuanced approach than one paragraph. (ETA: FB spell-checked me on "typo" of all things, and I had to put it back to typo!)
How strong are the name/image/likeness laws in VA?
I believe this is the website of the same Hannah and she has a contact form: hannahtu.com/about
If there's a 95% chance your quote was written by AI (as you state) yet the quote was published in 2002, it seems there's a good chance it was used to "train" AI. But write the same quote today and you'll likely be accused of using AI to write.
Susan, it doesn't sound like your writing style at all. I know that isn't definitive, but I am skeptical, and if the author is attributing a quote to you, that person better be able to produce proof.
Curious which AI detector gave you that result...
I agree your work was used to train AI. I have a theory that more often than we suppose, AI stumbles on examples of the erudite, “old fashioned” ways of expression assuming it’s fake within the framework of today’s writing (scribal) milieu. Long ago, an eighth grade teacher encouraged my occasional waves of elegant phrasing. She said she could tell I’d read great authors of the past. Now I dread those inspired phrases when they come and try to focus on pasting scraps on collages instead.
Thank you for sharing. I think I’ll have my 16-year-old follow this thread. (He has been mostly homeschooled, but is attending traditional public school this year. Earlier this week he was discussing his dread that his instructor might assume he is using AI to write his English essays.)
I don't know enough about AI and AI detection to comment on that part. However your quote makes me think about how pointless it is for us to obsess over crime (Clancy trial, Miller documentary, and just True Crime genre is general!) these days. It says another about our mental and emotional and spiritual state!
Listening in on this…
"Frankenstein" when run through an AI detector comes back as absolutely AI. Those detectors are trash.
Last day of August haul! I'm thinking dinner: roasted butternut squash soup, crispy okra on the side, buttermilk biscuits and fresh muscadine grape jelly.
What are you eating, where you're at?
2 days ago
Willamette valley Oregon: Today we had fried rice with leftover rice from earlier, ham from the freezer, some yellow wax beans from the garden and garlic chives and tarragon, also from the garden. With a side of green (Costco) and beefsteak tomatoes with smoked salt (thank you, garden)
Here are our garden ingredients for an Indiana curry.
The asparagus are ready for harvest here on the first day of spring! Victoria, Australia.
Chicken and gnocchi soup with cheese and apples on the side. KC MO
I'll be there for dinner at 6! 🙂
Roasted acorn squash and fresh blueberries
So many tomatoes here in Michigan! (And basil to to go with them.) I need to do some hot water bath canning but have no time, so I made my Californian husband happy with a big batch of salsa de chile de árbol. Between the kids and him, it won't last through one week and we'll empty many bags of tortilla chips. I also made a pot of red pepper/tomato basil bisque for one meal and Pizza Margherita for another.
I’m Zone 6b, and I planted later than usual. We have lots of tomatoes, cukes, okra, and some Persian melons right now. Sweet potatoes should be ready to harvest soon.
Zone 6A Michigan. From the garden, we will be having noodles from spaghetti squash with marinara (homegrown tomatoes, basil, oregano, and garlic), roasted broccoli, and watermelon. The only things not from the garden are the mozzarella and parmesan.
We're eating nachos - I didnt grow the ground turkey, cheese, avocados, or corn tortillas, but grew and/or made the other ingredients: refried beans, lettuce, tomato, salsa, guacamole. In SC
We had roasted tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch! I made some fried green tomatoes earlier this week and we've been eating a lot of ratatouille. So grateful for this little fertile patch of soil we have!
i had marry-me-lentils and goldenberries for breakfast and thinking i might bake a pizza in my vacant granny-flat because i do not run my oven in the summer. Did you know that in places like Turkey, a local bread bakery takes your tray of kebabs or vegetables or whatever you want to bake, and bakes it for you for a dollar? because most people don't have ovens. People go stand in line to pick up the tray of food they dropped off there earlier in the day. It's the best thing I ever saw in my life. They aren't baking bread in the afternoon and evening, so they become the neighborhood oven. a Dollar.
That looks fabulous.
Fried green pepper sandwiches.
That sounds so delicious! Yum!
Wow.......that sounds amazing. What are we eating? Nothing that freshly delicious. 🫣
I do have a few more posts on history that I intended to put up this week, but y'all will have to wait because I want you to listen to this instead.
Those of you who grew up in 1970s evangelicalism might particularly appreciate this Sunday post. There are many parts of my fundamentalist/cult-adjacent/Gothardized upbringing that I have rejected. Not my faith, just to be clear. But a huge raft of the hanging-on accoutrements, such as not listening to "secular music." Or so my parents informed me, when I was a child. I realized later in life that this was a quite flexible category, as we had a ton of Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and Simon and Garfunkel records that I was free to put on the turntable. (Is Gilbert and Sullivan secular? Maybe a grey area there.)
But we listened to a *lot* of Don Francisco.
I just looked him up. He's eighty now, apparently still working in Louisville. Don Francisco was one of the soundtracks of my youth.
I still love so many of his songs. And I had no idea that Dolly Parton sang "He's Alive" at the 1990 Dove awards.
So join me in today's flashback.
3 days ago
We listen to this song (Dolly's version) every Easter morning as soon as we get home from church. ❤
My favorite realization of adulthood is that nothing is really secular (at least not in the way we were taught to use the word). There is either sacred or profane and a whole lot more things fall into the sacred category than I ever imagined.
I still keep Don Francisco's "He's Alive" on my playlist. 😊 Definitely part of the soundtrack of my youth.
Definitely goosebumps!
Love love love Dolly. So happy I got to see her in concert. Thanks for sharing.
“Cult-adjacent” I appreciate that term.
“Everybody else but me… 🎶 … everybody else but me… 🎶 He was talkin’ to the hypocrite and Pharisee… everybody else but me.” 🎶
Gilbert and Sullivan secular? The Mikado appears to have escaped being put on the little list.
😂 Gilbert & Sullivan were “on the little list” in our house too!
Auditions with her songs 😭
I listened to this very recording yesterday in my Dolly remembrance. It’s fantastic!
I’m a little younger than you and from East Tennessee so I always just assumed this was Dolly’s song. Every Easter it runs through my head a thousand times. 🎶 He’s alive! He’s alive! He’s alive and I’m forgiven! Heaven’s gates are open wide! 🎶
Don Francisco's music was a formative part of my upbringing as well and I still love and listen to him even while casting to the side many of the rigid stances I grew up with in the midst of fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Those songs, including "He's Alive," were an important part of my formation as what I identify as now a Christian who has also gone through Catholic RCIA. I think what sets his music apart is the lyricism combined with the musicality which is so different than the monotonous, rave type music that has been popular for a long time in contemporary Christian circles.
I remember watching this performance! I had Don Francisco's cassette recording, but I still hear Dolly's voice when I think of this song.
Fantastic performance. I’d forgotten about this too. Your brother introduced me to Don Fransisco.
Dan Watts Have you heard this?
Love that song. He’s alive and I’m forgiven, Heaven’s gates are open wide ❤️
Don Francisco= soundtrack to my childhood 🥰
I also listened to a LOOOOOT of Don Francisco! His music is still good even if his theology is not.
Her loss has hit us hard in East Tennessee.
So beautiful like the woman she was
That performance gave me goosebumps.
Yeah me too. Everything from the leaving fundagelicalism but not Jesus, no secular music, and liking Don Francisco. Escaped an abusive Gothardite husband. Currently studying theology, cult recovery, related psychology/sociology and constantly seeing how many (not all of course) secular songs or movies or novels are healthier and more godly than many of the "Christian" ones...including hymns and worship songs even, with very unhealthy and unscriptual ideas in them.
I had no idea! Thank you for sharing this
Don still lives in Colorado, but is no longer in Louisville.
