The thoughts on LLMs I found quite inspiring. Thanks for the quotes!

However, I stumbled at this passage:

"Anyway: I have some Steiner sayings in my mind that I cannot find on the internet, and I can’t remember where I saw them, but I’m sure they’re true. So here’s one of my Steinerbot hallucinations, only I know I didn’t make this up myself. I’m highly confident that he once said the following somewhere.

Language is divided into three great eras. First came the Chinese era, when language had to be beautiful. Next came the Roman era, when language had to be accurate.

Now in our era, and for the future, language must be GOOD, must be seen to be positive and working for the betterment of the world. As an editor, I always ultimately look for the good any particular piece of text might achieve and try to amplify that. This is also the watchword over all my writing. Be good, do good, visible and invisible."

So, after thinking about this for a bit and doing some (AI-enhanced) research, here is my best guess (my own thinking) about those sentences:

GEMINI claims there was a text on QUORA in the context of David Deutschs Constructor Theory, where someone wrote the following:

""Steiner also gives the only picture of the evolution of language I've ever seen that makes sense. He says it is divided into three phases: the Chinese era, when language had to be beautiful, as in angelic; then came the Roman era, when it had to be accurate, and adequate to the material world in building roads and bridges; and now the modern era, when language needs to become good, when people want to see that your words are positive and having a beneficial effect. It's actually going to be the Russian era, Russian is notoriously opaque and poetic and a language of the future. It's not an accident that they don't have the definite article “the”, so they..."

I can't find this online, so either it's no longer there or GEMINI was hallucinating it. (I think the former more probable.)

Anyways, based on my own reading of Steiner I'm pretty sure that it's too free an interpretation of what Steiner actually said. First of all, I think it's the Greek language and culture that's -- acoording to Steiner -- dedicated to the beauty, not the Chinese -- which is not that important in this context, but still... Then, it's also oversimplified to relate the correctness and accurateness of Roman culture and language with the material world building things, because as Steiner stresses one of the main contributions of the Roman culture is in law, which also has to be accurate in order to work and which would incidentally also be the middle part of Steiners social organism.

Imho the most inaccurate part is when the author rephrases Steiner's 'language needs to become "good"' as "when people want to see that your words are positive and having a beneficial effect." I think that's not a useful way of rephrasing what Steiner means with "good", because it sounds way to psychological ("positive") and utilitarian ("having a beneficial effect").

Now, again imho, the when the author writes: "Now in our era, and for the future, language must be GOOD, must be seen to be positive and working for the betterment of the world. --

he repeats this misapprehension. It is NOT about language being "seen to be positive and working for the betterment of the world" - that would be both subjective and utilitarian, that's not what Steiner means, when he uses the word "good". He means in accordance with the higher spiritual laws, and typically it's about the correct development of things (as Steiner's metaphysics is all about evolution).

"As an editor, I always ultimately look for the good any particular piece of text might achieve and try to amplify that. This is also the watchword over all my writing. Be good, do good, visible and invisible."

That's probably a good work ethics, however, I think it's just not what Steiner meant when talking about the evolution of language. When reading, for example in GA 186, Die soziale Grundfragen unserer Zeit in veränderter Zeitenlage, you can see there that Steiner keeps repeating (in 1918) the important thought that people think (subjectively) that what they are doing is good, but it is in fact not, because they have neglected to really confront themselves with the reality and actuality of things. Woodrow Wilson's plan for the Selbstbestimmung der Völker is one of his prime examples. It sounds nice, but it is not in accord with how things really are and therefore doomed to fail and furthermore engender chaos. Another example is the idea that all human beings are equal, while, according to Steiner, they are quite different, especially when comparing the Western hemisphere with the Eastern (which does not mean that they are completely different, so we can still project an idea of human dignity to everyone, but even former German Kanzler Helmut Schmidt still understood that, e.g. most Asian countries would not profit from democracy. Steiner incidentally says in GA 186 that democracy has an innate tendency to selfdestruct -- and look at the problems of democracy in the West).

You cannot use "be good, do good" as a moral rule or codex or even aim/goal -- it's not concrete enough, and in the abstract you could be aiming anywhere, thinking it's the good, while in fact, it's just wishful thinking. "Being good", Steiner would furthermore, I think, reject as the fallacy of wanting to be something while we can only become something, striving towards the good. Doing good could be the consequence of aiming to act according to higher spiritual laws and paying close attention to what is really going on in the world. But Steiner would never subscribe to a subjective interpretation of the good as something I or anyone could easily know.

(Notice, how he often explicitly rejeects moral judgment on certain developments, even when he thinks they are going in the wrong direction.)

So, in conclusion, the quote above is relatively close to what Steiner actually said, and there is an evolution in language with different stresses (even though, obviously (the Chinese and) the Greek languages also try to paint an accurate picture of reality and can also produce ethical insights (think of Aristotle and Konfuzius, to name but two)), but in it's interpretation of what Steiner says it turns into a misapprehension/misinterpretation.

Now, AI "advices" me to me more concise and more polite in my reply, but I'm sure here is not the place to tone down my own voice, which, as I'm not a native speaker of English but of German, may not be 100% congruent with the genius of the English language.