How warm should your sleepingbag be?

[BikeliciousBabe]

The OP reads like it was generated by AI.  We are seeing a lot of that over on Bikeforums.net

"Some might shiver the night away under a fluffy down comforter in a room that is a smidgen below 70F, while others will wrap themselves in an old horse blanket and snore all night on an ice floe."

Seriously?  Doesn't sound like anything a real person would write in this context.  I am willing to bet the the thread title is what the program was asked.

[froze]

The OP reads like it was generated by AI.  We are seeing a lot of that over on Bikeforums.net

"Some might shiver the night away under a fluffy down comforter in a room that is a smidgen below 70F, while others will wrap themselves in an old horse blanket and snore all night on an ice floe."

Seriously?  Doesn't sound like anything a real person would write in this context.  I am willing to bet the the thread title is what the program was asked.

That is possible, Quora has been doing that for quite some time, the questions are mostly stupid, but they're designed to get readers, and now forums are taking a page from Quora to get readers and members.

[davidbonn]

I am not an AI.

[ray b]

I am not an AI.

Right.
This is the kind of writer that AI loves to quote.
Thanks Dave.

[davidbonn]

I am not an AI.

More precisely, given how AIs work and are trained they are unlikely to generate odd turns of phrase or similes.

Most LLMs are trained on stuff from the internet and on the average they converge on a ‘voice’ that sounds like a Wikipedia article or a New York Times editorial.

It would be awesome and a practical application of our existing LLM technology if we used it to do ‘writing style transfer’ and modify English text to make it look like something written by Tom Robbins, Joseph Campbell, or Ernest Hemingway.  Although I’d be fearful of it if it could do Jack Kerouac.

Even crazier is if it could do your writing as Cold Mountain (Han Shan) poems.

[canalligators]

It would be awesome and a practical application of our existing LLM technology if we used it to do ‘writing style transfer’ and modify English text to make it look like something written by Tom Robbins, Joseph Campbell, or Ernest Hemingway.  Although I’d be fearful of it if it could do Jack Kerouac.

Even crazier is if it could do your writing as Cold Mountain (Han Shan) poems.

Frankly, I’m tired of informational writing that has to throw in personal interest, statements on the human condition, general fluff, etc.  A description of sleeping bag temperature by Hemmingway would likely be better than one by most magazine writers, but I’d rather have it authored by a good technical writer.  I’ve playes with ChatGPT, and it seems to generate crap that sounds like advertising or a AAA travelogue.  Barf.

[davidbonn]

... I’ve playes with ChatGPT, and it seems to generate crap that sounds like advertising or a AAA travelogue.  Barf.

All LLMs are trained on data scraped from the Internet.  So basically they compose like a typical Reddit poster.  You train on barf and you get barf.

The technically best open-source LLM training dataset is called The Pile.  Left unsaid is what it is a pile of.

[BikeliciousBabe]

I am not an AI.

"Only the real Messiah would deny that he is the Messiah."

[David W Pratt]

Warm enough.
That might be warm enough to be comfortable every night, or, you might save some $$$ on the bag and be a little chilly on one night in 10 or 20.

[OHRider]

Most of my tours lately have been in warmer temperatures -often hot.  For a recent trip on Lake Champlain in VT and NY I bought a Sea to Summit Traveller down quilt rated at 45F.  It got to the low 40's a couple of times and I ended up wearing several layers to stay warm enough.  I'd say the rating was pretty good and I'm always going to have some extra layers for around the campsite.  The quilt is ultra light and packs down extremely small.  My wife needs a much colder bag so she used my 20F rated down bag which packed down to a decent size compared to her old synthetic bag that takes up most of one pannier.

I used the 20F bag on my last big trip from San Diego to El Paso.  I was too lazy to put the fly on my one person tent and the desert definitely gets cold at night- I ended up using my down vest inside the sleeping bag to stay warm enough.  Putting the fly on the tent would have made a huge difference for sure.  It was nice to not have condensation inside the tent and to be able to look up and see the stars so this worked well for me.

Note that I'm using an inflatable pad which doesn't provide much insulation from the ground (especially when it is penetrated by goathead thorns and slowly leaks down at night)!