3 ms·

Maybe to establish a ring of accounts that duck underneath the vote ring detection metrics and that you can then use to upvote people’s stories? (For a small f

by jauco 2y ago

Maybe to establish a ring of accounts that duck underneath the vote ring detection metrics and that you can then use to upvote people’s stories? (For a small fee of course) This attempt probably will be flagged by dang since you called it out, but given enough effort they may even construct bots that generate the proper curious discussion that we like here, and have a small (but lucrative) rounding error in voting behavior.

4ggr0 2y ago
yeah, but this looks like a very poor attempt. i mean i'm not a HN-veteran or anything but it seems like you need a way more sophisticated mechanism to get around HN/dang restrictions :D but you're right, if the bots get better, it will get harder. i actually wanted to respond to one of the comments to talk about the butterfly effect etc., but thought the comment seemed very artificial. then i saw the other comment which was almost an exact carbon-copy, just a bit shorter, by a different, new account. so, i was almost baited by a bot to actually respond and waste my time.
- sdwr 2y ago
  Interesting to hear "baited to waste my time", if the parent post is a bot. I "cheat out" writing my comments. They're mostly for the audience, and only a little bit for the person I'm replying to. Do you write for the person you're replying to?
  - 4ggr0 2y ago
    > Do you write for the person you're replying to? good question. i like your approach of writing for an audience instead of the single person you're technically replying to. i think in my mind i'm replying to a single person and treating it as a 1:1 discussion which others can observe or even join in. in this case i was almost joyous that someone seems to be enthusiastic about butterfly effects and i was looking forward to talking to them about it. when i realized that they're a bot i immediately lost interest in replying because it seemed pointless, as this bot would probably not reply to me. but you're right, someone else could've/would've replied to me. and theoretically, you could be a bot. everyone else in this comment section could be a bot. maybe i'm the only human on HN. or maybe i'm a bot as well... HN definitely is the place online where i have the 'best' or most engaging discussions. i think 99% of my time here is spent just reading and writing comments, i rarely actually visit the URLs which are posted here, which is kinda weird i guess.
swader999 2y ago
Yeah, built up over time for astro turfing and pushing narratives.
Waterluvian 2y ago
I’m sure this is a worn out discussion point, and touches on some deep philosophical issues. But if bots could be entirely indistinguishable from humans and generate curious discussion, would I really care that they’re bots? None of you know me. I might be a bot. But do I not generate curiosity? Do I not get downvoted on occasion? As a language model I—-
- netsharc 2y ago
  To go on a further tangent, I noticed an AI-generated video of a girl in a bikini on Instagram, and it was arousing. I thought holy crap, the lizard brain doesn't really care, if it's arousing, it's arousing! (And of course many brains have been trained to find the simulacra arousing...)
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    We’ve been doing this to ourselves forever. Whether sexually or tricking ourselves with sweeteners or whatnot. Our brain has a pretty loosely typed interface.
  - 4ggr0 2y ago
    i gotta admit that i visited an AI-generated pr0n-images site a couple of weeks ago and was surprised that my brain did not care, at all. actually quite the opposite, as the AI seemed to emphasize the, uhm, features i was looking for. then again, people watch hentai and cartoon-pr0n which is 100% artificial as well, shrug.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  Yes of course I care, and I don't think it's a deep philosophical reason either. I think it's more practical A great deal of my friendships have been formed online with people on forums, reddit, in games, in IRC channels or Discord. If you view these sorts of comment threads as pure input/output mechanisms for having interesting conversations then yeah maybe it doesn't matter if the other posters are bots If you are open to making a real human connection, maybe a new friend to meet up with while travelling or to game with online, or maybe someone to start a project with or just an interesting person to talk to, who is real, then it's terrible to have bots muddying things Edit: and on a forum like HN, you never know if a connection might turn into a job or other economic opportunity either. But they wont from bots

by jauco 2y ago

4ggr0 2y ago

yeah, but this looks like a very poor attempt. i mean i'm not a HN-veteran or anything but it seems like you need a way more sophisticated mechanism to get around HN/dang restrictions :D but you're right, if the bots get better, it will get harder. i actually wanted to respond to one of the comments to talk about the butterfly effect etc., but thought the comment seemed very artificial. then i saw the other comment which was almost an exact carbon-copy, just a bit shorter, by a different, new account. so, i was almost baited by a bot to actually respond and waste my time.

sdwr 2y ago
Interesting to hear "baited to waste my time", if the parent post is a bot. I "cheat out" writing my comments. They're mostly for the audience, and only a little bit for the person I'm replying to. Do you write for the person you're replying to?
- 4ggr0 2y ago
  > Do you write for the person you're replying to? good question. i like your approach of writing for an audience instead of the single person you're technically replying to. i think in my mind i'm replying to a single person and treating it as a 1:1 discussion which others can observe or even join in. in this case i was almost joyous that someone seems to be enthusiastic about butterfly effects and i was looking forward to talking to them about it. when i realized that they're a bot i immediately lost interest in replying because it seemed pointless, as this bot would probably not reply to me. but you're right, someone else could've/would've replied to me. and theoretically, you could be a bot. everyone else in this comment section could be a bot. maybe i'm the only human on HN. or maybe i'm a bot as well... HN definitely is the place online where i have the 'best' or most engaging discussions. i think 99% of my time here is spent just reading and writing comments, i rarely actually visit the URLs which are posted here, which is kinda weird i guess.

swader999 2y ago

Yeah, built up over time for astro turfing and pushing narratives.

Waterluvian 2y ago

I’m sure this is a worn out discussion point, and touches on some deep philosophical issues. But if bots could be entirely indistinguishable from humans and generate curious discussion, would I really care that they’re bots? None of you know me. I might be a bot. But do I not generate curiosity? Do I not get downvoted on occasion? As a language model I—-

netsharc 2y ago
To go on a further tangent, I noticed an AI-generated video of a girl in a bikini on Instagram, and it was arousing. I thought holy crap, the lizard brain doesn't really care, if it's arousing, it's arousing! (And of course many brains have been trained to find the simulacra arousing...)
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  We’ve been doing this to ourselves forever. Whether sexually or tricking ourselves with sweeteners or whatnot. Our brain has a pretty loosely typed interface.
- 4ggr0 2y ago
  i gotta admit that i visited an AI-generated pr0n-images site a couple of weeks ago and was surprised that my brain did not care, at all. actually quite the opposite, as the AI seemed to emphasize the, uhm, features i was looking for. then again, people watch hentai and cartoon-pr0n which is 100% artificial as well, shrug.
bluefirebrand 2y ago
Yes of course I care, and I don't think it's a deep philosophical reason either. I think it's more practical A great deal of my friendships have been formed online with people on forums, reddit, in games, in IRC channels or Discord. If you view these sorts of comment threads as pure input/output mechanisms for having interesting conversations then yeah maybe it doesn't matter if the other posters are bots If you are open to making a real human connection, maybe a new friend to meet up with while travelling or to game with online, or maybe someone to start a project with or just an interesting person to talk to, who is real, then it's terrible to have bots muddying things Edit: and on a forum like HN, you never know if a connection might turn into a job or other economic opportunity either. But they wont from bots