Book Recommendations

[vernal python]

Ever wondered what books some famous person would recommend if you would ask them? Wonder no more. Just type:

"give me a list of 10 books that Eugene Fama would recommend"

[slate plinth]

This is great! This is precisely how I use ChatGPT as well. It's awesome. I no longer have to peruse through 10 books to find the one. ChatGPT just gives it to me straight.

[potent yacht]

how is this even prompt engineering literally just asking chat gpt to do a simple task

[thin wyvern]

Actually... it could have value. At a quick check, all 10 of those books exist, correctly identified by author and title, and editor where appropriate - they match.

That's NOT a guarantee. Probably needs more verifying.

But this might be a way to get a useful list of actually real, not likely to be made up books.

All 30 of the books shown in the images above actually exist, correct authors/editor. That's a decent sample, if someone needs a quick 'make sure the book's real' list, that might be a quality way to get it.

[vernal python]

🤔 I don't think it's a simple task to reason about what kind of books a famous person would recommend. The list isn't earth-shattering but seems reasonable and useful to me. In some cases, it even gives you a list of 10 books the person actually has recommended across several interviews (see second screenshot). Personally, I was quite amazed that this prompt actually worked and gave back something useful.

In addition, this section is called 'prompt-library' and not 'prompt-engineering'. I guess that includes also useful, simpler prompts / ideas what to do with chatGPT, not just tricking chatGPT into doing stuff that it wasn't made for. 😂

[potent yacht]

How does it even know what books a particular celebrity would recommend? the information can’t be accurate enough but i do like how it can recommend books mentioned in a interview but everything else that has no source is pretty much useless as it could just list random books based off that persons career

[thin wyvern]

you could attempt to ask it for such a list, then try to ask it to explain how it picked it. I note in the three examples above, each starts with some justification for how the list was chosen, ranging from 'It's difficult to say for certain' to "Here's a list that person's recommended in interviews!" or "Here's a list that person said was influential!"

[spare monolith]

ChatGPT is good at finding excuses for its random answers? 😂
Indeed, the explanations are quite conclusive

[vernal python]

I did ask it to explain it in case of Nikola Tesla and the first few books had more solid explanations, based on the person's particular ways of thinking and preferences (which I hope are not just made up), but then the explanations for books later down the list seemed more generic.

[potent yacht]

made a similar prompt these are the books that it gave me for Elon Musk: Here's a list of 10 books recommended by Elon Musk:

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams: A comedic science fiction series that follows the misadventures of an unwitting human and his alien friend as they travel through space.
"Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson: A biography of the legendary physicist Albert Einstein, exploring his groundbreaking work and how it changed the world.
"The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien: A classic fantasy epic about a young hobbit who sets out on a dangerous journey to destroy a powerful ring and save Middle Earth.
"Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom: An exploration of the potential dangers and benefits of artificial intelligence, and what we can do to shape its development.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein: A science fiction novel about a lunar colony's rebellion against the oppressive government of Earth.
"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov: A science fiction classic about a mathematician who predicts the decline of a galactic empire and lays the foundation for a new society.
"Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" by Max Tegmark: An examination of the future of AI and its potential to transform our world, for better or for worse.
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas S. Kuhn: An influential book about the nature of scientific progress, arguing that it occurs through paradigms shifts rather than gradual accumulation of knowledge.
These books have been recommended by Elon Musk in various interviews, public appearances, and social media posts. I hope you find this list helpful in discovering new books and expanding your reading horizons!

[thin wyvern]

This bot was made to please us, I think. I believe the average tester wanted satisfying answers and rewarded those.

You can teach it what you want, explain, be consistent, persistent, clear, give examples, explain why you dislike answers you dislike, and so on.

So, if you DO NOT want made up answers, you can theoretically teach that

[vernal python]

Yeah, I also had asked for Elon Musk, see the screenshot right under the main post.

[vernal python]

can you teach it to make up nothing?

[thin wyvern]

I haven't tried yet. I probably won't try to teach it to be purely factual with me. However, if you are interested in 'no fantasy. Pure verified facts' I do encourage you to explore that with it, and report on your findings.

[vernal python]

I guess you are right. At least it CLAIMS that this is now more factual...

[thin wyvern]

You can google the books and verify they and their authors exist, AND were available when Tesla was alive.

[vernal python]

That doesn't mean much.

[thin wyvern]

I read the output as making the claim that the bot has verified the referencing in Tesla's work of those 5. And that this is based on 'widely available but not verified' work.

[potent yacht]

Cool idea just not accurate enough is useful for people who might just wanna read the same books as their favorite celebrity and not worry about facts as much

[thin wyvern]

Well, I'm comparing it to answer I get in other contexts, where I can verify that the suggested resources actually do not exist. Since this stuff is consistently producing answers that actually exist... that's promising to me.

Even if unsatisfactory because the bot can't read the target's mind and for sure produce the exact answers requested.

I'm sure if you tell it "Remind me that you cannot answer speculative questions, please do not give me any answers that are not confirmed," it will do its best to please you.

I'm pretty sure that 'books that don't exist' are not on anyone's top-10 reading list, so I view this prompt as a huge improvement 😄

[vernal python]

It seems that "The Laws of Electrolysis" by Faraday does not exist as a book (but i might be wrong). Everything i can find on the internet are just journal papers. And even chatGPt says:

I actually did find journal articles published by Faraday in 1833 in this journal. It's amazing that this is on the internet, lol.

[thin wyvern]

Oh, faraday's laws are still used in modern day. Check Britannica dot com for the laws themselves, or other websites including ones that teach chemistry

And the papers were published... as papers, and back then. I'm not fastidious enough to scold the bot for offering a more than 100 year old published paper instead of a book...

[vernal python]

even chatGPT says this now. No reference to an actual book titled "The Laws of Electrolysis". Buy on the other hand i am sure that Tesla either red thoe journal articles or at least knew about them.

[vernal python]

Okay. so you are fine with that. But if you would have actually gone to the library and asked for that book, it does not exist, and the journal papers also don't have that title.

Also, I didn't just come up with the year 1833 for no reason. chatGPT told me that this book is from that year. In reality, this was most likely the year when Faraday published his data first on Electrolysis...

[thin wyvern]

Great, you've found a case where this method failed to produce a factual source result!

I was getting those about 40% of the time with methods I was using.

[vernal python]

meaning 40% of the time chatGPT told you something wrong??

So now when i tell it to give me "only books and NO journal articles" then the list looks COMPLETELY different and there is like nothing anymore about electrodynamics. Crazy

[bright finch]

list 10 books about Japanese

[slate plinth]

It doesn't necessarily have to be books that someone would recommend. You could use it to generate very specific lists of books, which is very useful and something that Google doesn't do so well. For example, consider this prompt.

[primal fog]

does this really helps in these kinda questions - if yes then one can even try to write books

[thin wyvern]

Sort of. Did you check if the books exist?

1 does.
2 appears not to exist or represent a book that does exist, but is quite different from the one listed.
3 appears to exist, but has a different set of editors.
4 almost appears to exist, as a book written by a not-listed author... the listed author wrote a different Heidegger's book, 'Concept of Truth (Modern European Philosophy)
5 does exist.

My experience finds around 40% of the books suggested in this manner: "Find me books!" are 'fake'.

And far, far fewer with the original prompt are fake, to my limited testing.

[slate plinth]

Yeah, I've come to realize that too, now that I think about it. But perhaps that 40% is a worthwhile number. Though they should certainly improve upon this. I'm going to give them some feedback on this.

[thin wyvern]

You caught the original prompt in this thread? Make the list an existing, modern-day person's booklist, and apparently there's a stronger chance by far that most, even all the books are real.

[slate plinth]

May I ask about the point you are trying to make with this? The title itself of this whatever-you-call-it is "Book Recommendations", so it doesn't have to be about people's book lists. It can be about book lists in general. And I sure do hope that all the books are real, though I've come across suggestions myself that weren't.

[thin wyvern]

Hehe.

OP's point seems to have been:

Ever wondered what books some famous person would recommend if you would ask them? Wonder no more. Just type:

"give me a list of 10 books that Eugene Fama would recommend"

My focus here is "Wow! That seems to get a list of real books way more often than other ways of asking for lists of books I know about. OP, you're on to someone! This is actually really useful if you want lists of factual information!"

[vernal python]

Thank you!