4 ms·

> It would be more human to handwrite your blog post instead. “Blog” stands for “web log”. If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blog

by latexr 1y ago

> It would be more human to handwrite your blog post instead. “Blog” stands for “web log”. If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blogs were hand written. > The use of tools to help with writing and communication should make it easier to convey your thoughts If you’re using an LLM to spit out text for you, they’re not your thoughts, you’re not the one writing, and you’re not doing a good job at communicating. Might as well just give people your prompt.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
> there was never a period when blogs were hand written. I’ve seen exactly that. In one case, it was JPEG scans of handwriting, but most of the time, it’s a cursive font (which may obviate “handwritten”). I can’t remember which famous author it was, that always submitted their manuscripts as cursive writing on yellow legal pads. Must have been thrilling to edit.
- latexr 1y ago
  Isolated instances do not a period define. We can always find some example of someone who did something, but the point is it didn’t start like that. For example, there was never a period when movies were made by creating frames as oil paintings and photographing them. A couple of movies were made like that, but that was never the norm or a necessity or the intended process.
- y0eswddl 1y ago
  The fact that this one example stands out so clearly to you gives more Credence to the fact that this is so rare and not a common aspect of blogging.
Aeolun 1y ago
Except the prompt is a lot harder and less pleasant to read? Like, I’m totally on board with rejecting slop, but not all content that AI was involved in is slop, and it’s kind of frustrating so many people see things so black and white.
- latexr 1y ago
  > Except the prompt is a lot harder and less pleasant to read? It’s not a literal suggestion. “Might as well” is a well known idiom in the English language. The point is that if you’re not going to give the reader the result of your research and opinions and instead will just post whatever the LLM spits out, you’re not providing any value. If you gave the reader the prompt, they could pass it through an LLM themselves and get the same result (or probably not, because LLMs have no issue with making up different crap for the same prompt, but that just underscores the pointlessness of posting what the LLM regurgitated in the first place).
jancsika 1y ago
> If you’re using an LLM to spit out text for you, they’re not your thoughts, you’re not the one writing, and you’re not doing a good job at communicating. Might as well just give people your prompt. It's like listening to Bach's Prelude in C from WTCI where he just came up with a humdrum chord progression and uses the exact same melodic pattern for each chord, for the entire piece. Thanks, but I can write a trivial for loop in C if I ever want that. What a loser! Edit: Lest HN thinks I'm cherry picking-- look at how many times Bach repeats the exact same harmony/melody, just shifting up or down by a step. A significant chunk of his output is copypasta. So if you like burritos filled with lettuce and LLM-generated blogs, by all means downvote me to oblivion while you jam out to "Robo-Bach"
- pasteldream 1y ago
  Sometimes repetition serves a purpose, and sometimes it doesn’t.
- DontForgetMe 1y ago
  "My LLM generated code is structurally the same as Bach' Preludes and therefore anyone who criticises my work but not Bach's is a hypocrite' is a wild take. And unless I'm misunderstanding, it's literally the exact point you made, with no exaggeration or added comparisons.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
cerved 1y ago
> If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blogs were hand written. This is just pedantic nonsense
athrowaway3z 1y ago
> If you’re using an LLM to spit out text for you, they’re not your thoughts The thoughts I put into a text are mostly independent of the sentences or _language_ they're written in. Not completely independent, but to claim thoughts are completely dependent on text (thus also the language) is nonsense. > Might as well just give people your prompt. What would be the value of seeing a dozen diffs? By the same logic, should we also include every draft?
- mrguyorama 1y ago
  >The thoughts I put into a text are mostly independent of the sentences or _language_ they're written in. Not even true! Turning your thoughts into words is a very important and human part of writing. That's where you choose what ambiguities to leave, which to remove, what sort of implicit shared context is assumed, such important things as tone, and all sorts of other unconscious things that are important in writing. If you can't even make those choices, why would I read you? If you think making those choices is unimportant, why would I think you have something important to say? Uneducated or unsophisticated people seem to vastly underestimate what expertise even is, or just how much they don't know, which is why for example LLMs can write better than most fanfic writers, but that bar is on the damn floor and most people don't want to consume fanfic level writing for things that they are not fanatical about. There's this weird and fundamental misconception in pro-ai realms that context free "information" is somehow possible, as if you can extract "knowledge" from text, like you can "distill" a document and reduce meaning to some simple sentences. Like, there's this insane belief that you can meaningfully reduce text and maintain info. If you reduce "Lord of the flies" to something like "children shouldn't run a community", you've lost immense amounts of info. That is not a good thing. You are missing so much nuance and context and meaning, as well as more superficial (but not less important!) things like the very experience of reading that text. Like, consider that SOTA text compression algorithms can reduce text to 1/10th of it's original size. If you are reducing a text by more than that to "summarize" or "reduce to it's main points" a text, do you really think you are not losing massive amounts of information, context, or meaning?
  - the_af 1y ago
dingocat 1y ago
> “Blog” stands for “web log”. If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blogs were hand written. Did you use AI to write this...? Because it does not follow from the post you're replying to.
- latexr 1y ago
  Read it again. I explicitly quoted the relevant bit. It’s the first sentence in their last paragraph.

by latexr 1y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

> there was never a period when blogs were hand written. I’ve seen exactly that. In one case, it was JPEG scans of handwriting, but most of the time, it’s a cursive font (which may obviate “handwritten”). I can’t remember which famous author it was, that always submitted their manuscripts as cursive writing on yellow legal pads. Must have been thrilling to edit.

latexr 1y ago
Isolated instances do not a period define. We can always find some example of someone who did something, but the point is it didn’t start like that. For example, there was never a period when movies were made by creating frames as oil paintings and photographing them. A couple of movies were made like that, but that was never the norm or a necessity or the intended process.
y0eswddl 1y ago
The fact that this one example stands out so clearly to you gives more Credence to the fact that this is so rare and not a common aspect of blogging.

Aeolun 1y ago

Except the prompt is a lot harder and less pleasant to read? Like, I’m totally on board with rejecting slop, but not all content that AI was involved in is slop, and it’s kind of frustrating so many people see things so black and white.

latexr 1y ago
> Except the prompt is a lot harder and less pleasant to read? It’s not a literal suggestion. “Might as well” is a well known idiom in the English language. The point is that if you’re not going to give the reader the result of your research and opinions and instead will just post whatever the LLM spits out, you’re not providing any value. If you gave the reader the prompt, they could pass it through an LLM themselves and get the same result (or probably not, because LLMs have no issue with making up different crap for the same prompt, but that just underscores the pointlessness of posting what the LLM regurgitated in the first place).

jancsika 1y ago

> If you’re using an LLM to spit out text for you, they’re not your thoughts, you’re not the one writing, and you’re not doing a good job at communicating. Might as well just give people your prompt. It's like listening to Bach's Prelude in C from WTCI where he just came up with a humdrum chord progression and uses the exact same melodic pattern for each chord, for the entire piece. Thanks, but I can write a trivial for loop in C if I ever want that. What a loser! Edit: Lest HN thinks I'm cherry picking-- look at how many times Bach repeats the exact same harmony/melody, just shifting up or down by a step. A significant chunk of his output is copypasta. So if you like burritos filled with lettuce and LLM-generated blogs, by all means downvote me to oblivion while you jam out to "Robo-Bach"

pasteldream 1y ago
Sometimes repetition serves a purpose, and sometimes it doesn’t.
DontForgetMe 1y ago
"My LLM generated code is structurally the same as Bach' Preludes and therefore anyone who criticises my work but not Bach's is a hypocrite' is a wild take. And unless I'm misunderstanding, it's literally the exact point you made, with no exaggeration or added comparisons.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

cerved 1y ago

> If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blogs were hand written. This is just pedantic nonsense

athrowaway3z 1y ago

> If you’re using an LLM to spit out text for you, they’re not your thoughts The thoughts I put into a text are mostly independent of the sentences or _language_ they're written in. Not completely independent, but to claim thoughts are completely dependent on text (thus also the language) is nonsense. > Might as well just give people your prompt. What would be the value of seeing a dozen diffs? By the same logic, should we also include every draft?

mrguyorama 1y ago
>The thoughts I put into a text are mostly independent of the sentences or _language_ they're written in. Not even true! Turning your thoughts into words is a very important and human part of writing. That's where you choose what ambiguities to leave, which to remove, what sort of implicit shared context is assumed, such important things as tone, and all sorts of other unconscious things that are important in writing. If you can't even make those choices, why would I read you? If you think making those choices is unimportant, why would I think you have something important to say? Uneducated or unsophisticated people seem to vastly underestimate what expertise even is, or just how much they don't know, which is why for example LLMs can write better than most fanfic writers, but that bar is on the damn floor and most people don't want to consume fanfic level writing for things that they are not fanatical about. There's this weird and fundamental misconception in pro-ai realms that context free "information" is somehow possible, as if you can extract "knowledge" from text, like you can "distill" a document and reduce meaning to some simple sentences. Like, there's this insane belief that you can meaningfully reduce text and maintain info. If you reduce "Lord of the flies" to something like "children shouldn't run a community", you've lost immense amounts of info. That is not a good thing. You are missing so much nuance and context and meaning, as well as more superficial (but not less important!) things like the very experience of reading that text. Like, consider that SOTA text compression algorithms can reduce text to 1/10th of it's original size. If you are reducing a text by more than that to "summarize" or "reduce to it's main points" a text, do you really think you are not losing massive amounts of information, context, or meaning?
- the_af 1y ago

dingocat 1y ago

> “Blog” stands for “web log”. If it’s on the web, it’s digital, there was never a period when blogs were hand written. Did you use AI to write this...? Because it does not follow from the post you're replying to.

latexr 1y ago
Read it again. I explicitly quoted the relevant bit. It’s the first sentence in their last paragraph.