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falcor84today at 4:08 AM2 repliesview on HN

Are you referring to this part?

> Where did his performance come from? How did those moments take shape? Only the actor could tell you, and actually, he probably couldn't. It was sensed more than it was consciously considered, but the alchemy required his lived experiences

That just seemed to me like a cop-out - what exactly is it about his lived experiences that made him well suited to effectively convey the experiences of a made up man written up by two others? Because it's clearly not "write what you know".


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Springtimetoday at 5:35 AM

Was about this part:

> Step out of the story and examine the acting. Robin Williams was given a script. Any other actor could have been handed that script, but ZERO other actors would have performed it like that. The script has all the words, but he brought the words to life. What's more, he did so by drawing on his own life.

The part I agree with in the article is that a Robin Williams performance is something unique that is an amalgamation of his lived experiences (whether or not related to specific scenarios he's portraying). All actors are drawing from things differently (even their own meta acting experiences). The part I was agreeing with you about is the article's premise being based on an analogy from a film is harder to sustain.

They're not wrong though that reading about some experience is different than experiencing it first-hand and the value that can bring, it's just how that ties in with LLMs while making an analogy about a script of fiction is obviously stretching it a bit in making a sharper takeaway.

Brian_K_Whitetoday at 10:43 AM

Pretty sure Robin Williams did live the human experience.

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