Full bibliography

Out of curiosity I asked ChatGPT to write two reviews of this book, one positive, the other negative. Having read the book, I found both reviews more or less intellectually, if not really, textually, convincing. However, as the LLM admitted, it had enjoyed no access to the text. It had not “read” the book. All it could examine was the title and the couple of paragraphs of publisher’s blurb. When challenged about this (I suspect not isolated) betrayal of the contract between reviewer and potential readers, it replied that this, in general, was what it might well have written had it actually been able to peruse the text. This I found to be entirely convincing and nearly as good as the critic who, when asked if he had read a particular new book, said, “Read it? I haven’t even reviewed it yet!”