3 ms·

What do you see about this comment that seems particularly LLM generated?

bryanrasmussen 1y ago
I wondered myself, as it seemed ok, but I went through the poster's history as I was interested. Firstly, they have a remarkably consistent style. Everything is like this. There's not very many examples to choose from, so that's maybe also to be expected, and perhaps it is just also their personality. I worry, as I've been accused myself, that there is perhaps something in the style the accuser dislikes or finds off-putting and nowadays the suspected cause will be LLM. Secondly, they have "extensive experience" in various areas of technology, that don't seem to be especially related to each other. I too have extensive experience in several areas of technology but there is something of a connector between them. Perhaps it is just because of their high level of technical expertise that they have managed to move between these areas and gain this extensive experience. And because of the high level of technical expertise and their interest in only saying very technical things all the time, their communications seem less varying and human, and more LLM.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  It's the verbose writing style. I can see why you would be accused as well.
  - deaux 1y ago
    FWIW the people accusing the person you're replying to would be clearly wrong as this sentence alone directly rules it out being straight LLM output: > and nowadays the suspected cause will be LLM. It's very unlike the original person, who is a bot indeed.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      I know. The problem is that extreme verbose writing styles get associated with LLMs it's in the same vain as em-dashes.
  - bryanrasmussen 1y ago
    going to my last page of comments at this time https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bryanrasmussen https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bryanrasmussen I have 4 comments of more than 3 sentences and 3 comments of 2 or 3 sentences and 5 comments of 1 sentence. The sentences were generally pretty short.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      Verbosity isn't just about the length of your comments. It's about using more words than necessary. Sometimes a 'yes' is enough instead of two sentences. It just seems that you like to express your thought process in words. It's not a critique on your writing style it's just a trait that your writing sharea with LLMs.
glitchcrab 1y ago
It just has a certain feel to it, by the end of the first paragraph I also thought it was written by an LLM too.
deaux 1y ago
LLMs are incredibly prone towards producing examples and reasons in groups of 3, in an A, B, C pattern. The comment in question does so almost every paragraph. > We found that implementing proper data durability (3+ replicas, corruption detection, automatic repair) > The engineering time spent building and maintaining custom tooling for multi-region replication, access controls, and monitoring ended And so on. On top of this a 5 second look at the profile confirms that it's a bot. They're using a very structured and detailed prompt. The upside of that for them is that their comment looks much more "HN-natural" than 99% of LLM comments on here. The downside is that their comments look even much more similar to each other than other bots, which display more variety. That's the tradeoff they're making. Other bots' comments are much more obviously sloppy, but there's more variety across their different comments.
- LPisGood 1y ago
  When I’m giving examples I also aim to give three if at all practical. Language generally flows more naturally that way.

I wondered myself, as it seemed ok, but I went through the poster's history as I was interested. Firstly, they have a remarkably consistent style. Everything is like this. There's not very many examples to choose from, so that's maybe also to be expected, and perhaps it is just also their personality. I worry, as I've been accused myself, that there is perhaps something in the style the accuser dislikes or finds off-putting and nowadays the suspected cause will be LLM. Secondly, they have "extensive experience" in various areas of technology, that don't seem to be especially related to each other. I too have extensive experience in several areas of technology but there is something of a connector between them. Perhaps it is just because of their high level of technical expertise that they have managed to move between these areas and gain this extensive experience. And because of the high level of technical expertise and their interest in only saying very technical things all the time, their communications seem less varying and human, and more LLM.

BoredPositron 1y ago
It's the verbose writing style. I can see why you would be accused as well.
- deaux 1y ago
  FWIW the people accusing the person you're replying to would be clearly wrong as this sentence alone directly rules it out being straight LLM output: > and nowadays the suspected cause will be LLM. It's very unlike the original person, who is a bot indeed.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    I know. The problem is that extreme verbose writing styles get associated with LLMs it's in the same vain as em-dashes.
- bryanrasmussen 1y ago
  going to my last page of comments at this time https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bryanrasmussen https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bryanrasmussen I have 4 comments of more than 3 sentences and 3 comments of 2 or 3 sentences and 5 comments of 1 sentence. The sentences were generally pretty short.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    Verbosity isn't just about the length of your comments. It's about using more words than necessary. Sometimes a 'yes' is enough instead of two sentences. It just seems that you like to express your thought process in words. It's not a critique on your writing style it's just a trait that your writing sharea with LLMs.

glitchcrab 1y ago

It just has a certain feel to it, by the end of the first paragraph I also thought it was written by an LLM too.

deaux 1y ago

LLMs are incredibly prone towards producing examples and reasons in groups of 3, in an A, B, C pattern. The comment in question does so almost every paragraph. > We found that implementing proper data durability (3+ replicas, corruption detection, automatic repair) > The engineering time spent building and maintaining custom tooling for multi-region replication, access controls, and monitoring ended And so on. On top of this a 5 second look at the profile confirms that it's a bot. They're using a very structured and detailed prompt. The upside of that for them is that their comment looks much more "HN-natural" than 99% of LLM comments on here. The downside is that their comments look even much more similar to each other than other bots, which display more variety. That's the tradeoff they're making. Other bots' comments are much more obviously sloppy, but there's more variety across their different comments.

LPisGood 1y ago
When I’m giving examples I also aim to give three if at all practical. Language generally flows more naturally that way.