ChatGPT's suggestions about my list of comparative rhetoric readings

Just a footnote the previous post: after I finished it, I plugged the comparative rhetoric readings into ChatGPT to get its response to how to organize those readings. It didn't complain as much about the diversity of topics, but it just spat out the list in a different order. I asked it how it decided on the order, and it gave me the following response:

I organized the list of articles and books in a way that provides a coherent flow of ideas and themes. I began by grouping together articles that have similar themes or authors, and then arranged them in a way that makes sense chronologically or thematically.

I started with some articles that introduce the concept of comparative rhetoric and translingual approaches to meaning-making, such as Cushman's "Translingual and Decolonial Approaches to Meaning Making" and Cousins' "Self-reflexivity and the Labor of Translation." Then, I moved on to articles that focus on decolonization and pluriversal rhetorics, such as Cushman et al.'s "Decolonizing Projects: Creating Pluriversal Possibilities in Rhetoric" and Johnson and Endres' "Decolonizing Settler Public Address."

Next, I included articles that examine non-Western rhetorical traditions, such as Lipson and Binkley's "Ancient Non-Greek Rhetorics," Lu's "Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution" and "The Rhetoric of Mao Zedong," and Tomasi's "Rhetoric in Modern Japan." I also included articles that discuss the development of comparative rhetoric and its future, such as Mao's "Beyond Bias, Binary, and Border" and "Thinking beyond Aristotle" and Wang's "Comparative Rhetoric, Postcolonial Studies, and Transnational Feminisms."

Finally, I included articles that explore other related themes such as posthumanism, hybridity, and materialist approaches to activism. The order of the articles and books is not set in stone, and it could be adjusted based on the reader's interests and needs.

This is interesting to me for two reasons: how it says it decided how to organize the sources (sounds pretty reasonable) and the fact that it basically appears to be reflecting on its process. For the fun of it, I asked it what it learned from the process, and it said,

As an AI language model, I do not learn in the same way that humans do. However, I can tell you that organizing sources in a systematic and coherent way helps to make information more accessible and easier to understand. By categorizing sources and grouping them together, it becomes easier to identify patterns, compare and contrast different viewpoints, and draw more informed conclusions. Additionally, organizing sources can help to identify gaps in knowledge or areas where further research may be needed. Overall, a well-organized set of sources can facilitate the research process and ultimately lead to more robust and accurate conclusions.

Well, that's sort of a relief...