5 ms·

I think using AI for a bit more potent spellchecking or style hints is... fine, honestly. I don't usually do it, you can tell from all the silly spelling mistak

I think using AI for a bit more potent spellchecking or style hints is... fine, honestly. I don't usually do it, you can tell from all the silly spelling mistakes I do. But a bit more polishing for your posts is a good thing, not a bad one, as long as it doesn't hide your voice.

the_af 7mo ago
When do you need to spellcheck or polish an HN comment? I've never, ever, ever ever ever, seen anybody complain about spelling mistakes in a comment here. As long as you can understand the comment, people respond to it.
- Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
  Extend spellcheck to asking questions like "does it meet HN rules" "how can I improve my writing" etc. Though these are the kinds of questions that do at very least still meet the spirit of the rule, I suppose.
  - the_af 7mo ago
    Do you really need an automated tool to tell you whether you're breaking common sense guidelines? And why would you want to "improve your writing" for an HN comment? I think people here value raw authenticity more than polished writing.
    - tonyarkles 7mo ago
      > Do you really need an automated tool to tell you whether you're breaking common sense guidelines? I say this on behalf of all of my neurospicy friends… sometimes, yes. Especially having taken a look at the whole list of guidelines, I definitely am friends with people who would could struggle to determine whether a given comment fits or not.
    - BeetleB 7mo ago
      > Do you really need an automated tool to tell you whether you're breaking common sense guidelines? Lots of people break HN guidelines. I see it virtually every day. > And why would you want to "improve your writing" for an HN comment? Some people like to write well regardless of the medium. Why is that a problem for you? > I think people here value raw authenticity more than polished writing. Classic false dichotomy. Asking an LLM for feedback is not making your comment less authentic. As I pointed out elsewhere, it can make your comment more authentic by ensuring that what you had in your head and what you wrote match. Go and study writing and psychology. For anything of value, it's rare that your first attempt reflects what you meant to say. It's also rare that the first attempt, even if it reflects what you meant, will not be absorbed by the recipient. Saying what you mean, and having it understood as you meant it, is a difficult skill.
      - the_af 7mo ago
        > Lots of people break HN guidelines. I see it virtually every day. Yes, and AI won't help here. People will use AI to better break the guidelines. > Go and study writing and psychology Is this a case where you should have read the guidelines? Maybe an LLM could have helped you here? Please don't send me study anything, you know what they say of ASSuming. > Some people like to write well regardless of the medium. Why is that a problem for you? HN is more like talking than writing. And LLMs don't help you write well, they help you sound like a clone, which is unwanted. > For anything of value, it's rare that your first attempt reflects what you meant to say. You can always edit your comment. And in any case, HN is like a live conversation. Imagine if your friend AI-edited their speech in real-time as they talked to you.
        Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
        Depends on how you use the AI. if you use it a bit like you'd ask a human to proof-read your work, AI can actually be quite helpful. The other important thing you can do is have an AI check your claims before you post. Even with google and pubmed, a quick check against sources by hand can take 30 minutes or longer, while with AI tooling it takes 5. Guess which one is more likely to actually lead to people checking their facts before they post. (even if imperfectly!) . I'm not talking about people who lazily ask the AI to write their post for them. Or those who don't actually go through and actually get the AI to find primary sources. Those people are not being as helpful. Though try consider educating them on more responsible tool use as well?
- cogman10 7mo ago
  I've been hit by spelling/grammar noise once or twice. Those are usually downvoted and/or flagged.
  - everybodyknows 7mo ago
    Typos like an/as, of/or, an/and waste the reader's time. That some care be taken to avoid them is no more than common courtesy.
- bryanlarsen 7mo ago
  Obvious spelling mistakes are usually ignored, but there are certain types of writing mistakes that really trigger the type of people that frequent HN. For example, use "literally" for exaggeration rather than in the original meaning of the word and you'll likely trigger somebody.
  - the_af 7mo ago
    I never seen this, unless "literally" really clashed with the intent of the comment (as in, it changed the meaning). It's against the HN guidelines to focus on punctuation, spelling, etc, as long as the comment is understood. And, in any case, it's now against the guidelines to write using an AI :)
    - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
      Perhaps not for the word "literally", but you've never seen anybody make a pedantic correction about word usage?
      - the_af 7mo ago
        To be clear, I've seen it in the wild, but not here where it's discouraged to pick on words instead of focusing on the substance of what's being said.
        bryanlarsen 7mo ago
        I wish I had posted a better example, but I couldn't recall anything at the moment and still can't. It's usually a more interesting complaint than the old man shaking fist at clouds of the usage of the word literally.
        the_af 7mo ago
        OK, but let's dig deeper. Would you prefer to be corrected on some logical fallacy/mistake you made in your argument, by another human being (and yes, maybe get slightly upset about it, we're human beings after all), or have both sides present bot-mediated iron-clad comments, like operators sparring with robots? I prefer the raw, flawed human version. Even if, yes, I make a silly, avoidable mistake, or get upset, or make you upset in the heat of the argument. Maybe when I cool down I will have learned something. I don't want flawless robotic arguments. I want human beings. (Fuck, that last bit sounded like an AI-ism, but I promise it's me, a human!).
- vova_hn2 7mo ago
  I think that people subconsciously perceive grammatically correct and stylistically appropriate writing as more authoritative. And author is perceived as smarter and/or better educated person. At least that was the case before LLMs became a thing, now I'm not sure anymore.
- BeetleB 7mo ago
  People who are particular about spelling do not want to write misspelled words! It's not about whether you/others will tolerate it. I have my standards, and I hold to them. I personally don't use an LLM to spellcheck (browser spellcheck works fine), but I see no problem with someone using an LLM to point out spelling errors. And while I don't complain about others' spelling errors, I sure do notice them. And if someone writes a long wall of text as one giant paragraph that has lots of spelling/grammatical issues, chances are very high I won't read it. Some people write very poorly by almost any standard. If an LLM helps the person write better, I'm all for it. There's a world of a difference between copy/pasting from the LLM and asking it for feedback.
  - the_af 7mo ago
    > I have my standards, and I hold to them. Spellcheckers exist, you don't need an AI to change your voice. Also, if you have standards, you can always train yourself to spell better!
    - BeetleB 7mo ago
      > Spellcheckers exist, you don't need an AI to change your voice. How is using an AI to spell check changing my voice? Yes, thank you - I know spellcheckers exist, as my comment clearly states. The amusing thing is that an LLM who had access to the thread would have alerted you to a basic error you're making. > Also, if you have standards, you can always train yourself to spell better! "You can always ..." is not an argument against alternatives.
      - the_af 7mo ago
        Calm down. You're getting defensive, but it's not warranted. I'm not attacking you. > The amusing thing is that an LLM who had access to the thread would have alerted you to a basic error you're making. I didn't make the "basic error" of assuming you didn't know spellcheckers existed. I was stressing that since spellcheckers already exist, you don't need an AI assisting your comments-writing. Much basic, non-style-altering alternatives exist and are better. > "You can always ..." is not an argument against alternatives. The argument I'm making is that if you care so much about standards you can always hone them yourself instead of taking the lazy way out of having an AI write for you. Alternatively, if you're lazy then your standards aren't too high. And yes, this is an argument against the alternative you're suggesting.
aethrum 7mo ago
The problem is it always hides your voice. Always
- causal 7mo ago
  Yep. I actually prefer seeing imperfect writing, there is signal there that AI would erase.
- sdenton4 7mo ago
  AI doesn't just hide your voice -- it improves it!
- aperrien 7mo ago
  Maybe. But it can also help people find their voice. And I'd rather have comments from someone knowledgeable but unrefined with some good guidance than their silence on that same topic.
- peacebeard 7mo ago
  There is a big difference between "asking an editor for suggestions" and "vibe posting". You don't lose your voice if you ask for advice and manually incorporate the suggestions you agree with. You might lose your voice if you say "Improve my comment to make it better" and copy-paste the result without another thought.
  - Planktonne 7mo ago
    There is theoretically a big difference, but in practice, I think that peopel using AI to 'get suggestions' tend to dramatically under-estimate its impact on their writing. It might feel like just a couple of tweaks, but they add up fast.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - peacebeard 7mo ago
      Your “in practice” is doing too much heavy lifting here. This comes across as more of a prejudice on people than a fair assessment of the tools and techniques.
dgacmu 7mo ago
Would anyone notice if you spell-checked or got narrow feedback about grammar? No. I'm not dang, but perhaps a very reasonable interpretation of the rules is: If the AI is generating the words, don't. If it tells you something about your words and you choose to revise them without just copying words the AI output, it's still your words. (As an experiment, I took that paragraph and threw it into gemini to ask for spell and grammar checking. It yelled at me completely incorrectly about saying "I'm not dang". Of its 4 suggestions, only 1 was correct, and the other 3 would have either broken what I was trying to say or reduced the presence of my usual HN comment voice. So while I said the above, perhaps I'm wrong and even listening to the damn box about grammar is a bad idea.) That said, I often post from my phone and have somewhat frequent little glitches either from voice recognition or large clumsy thumbs, and nobody has ever seemed to care except me when I notice them a few minutes after the edit button goes away.
altairprime 7mo ago
Polish hides your voice. If your composition skills are lacking and you feel that hinders your self expression, set aside some time to improving them: write a short (15 minutes) blog post about some HN topic to yourself in a word doc editor of some sort (Word, Gdocs, LibreOffice, etc); then enable Review Changes and annotate your post for 10 minutes; then, review and accept your changes individually and re-read what you’ve written. AI is being used as a substitute for skills development when it costs nothing but time to get better. If you’ve reached a plateau with the above method, go find an article or book or interview about editing, pay attention to it and take notes, rinse/repeat. Spellcheckers will catch grossly obvious errors, but not phonetic typos. AI grammar tools will defang, weaken, soften, neutralize your tone towards the aggregate boring-meh that they incorporated at training time. Each person will have to decide whether they want individuality or AI-assisted writing for themselves. Sure, some will get away with it undetected, but that’s a universal statement about all human criteria of any kind, and in no way detracts from the necessity of drawing a line in the sand and saying “no” to AI writing here. Consider the Borg. Everyone’s distinctiveness has been added to the Collective. The end result is mediocre (they sure do die a lot), inhuman (literally), and uniform (all variation is gone). It’s your right if you desire to join the Collective and be a uniform lego brick like the others, but then your no-longer-fully-human posts are no longer welcome at HN.
- ordu 7mo ago
  > a word doc editor of some sort (Word, Gdocs, LibreOffice, etc); then enable Review Changes and annotate your post for 10 minutes; then, review and accept your changes individually and re-read what you’ve written. Pffff... I'm not going to install LibreOffice for that, or to figure out how to make Gdocs to work with uBlock. There is a much easier way. Open LLM chat, type there "Proofread please for grammar, keep the wording and the tone as it is, if it doesn't mess with grammar. Explain yourself." and then paste your text. I don't really know what the tools you mentioned do, but any "free" LLM on the Internet will point to things like missing articles, or messed up tenses in complex sentences. You recommend choosing self-improvement, but I just don't believe I can figure out how to use articles. With tenses I think I can learn how to do it, but I'm not going to. I remember there is some obscure rule how to choose the right tenses, but I was never able to remember the rule itself. I'm bad with rules, it is the reason I chose math as my major. There are almost no rules in math, you are making your own rules. The grammars of languages are not like that, they have rules which can't be easily inferred, you need to remember them. Grammars have exceptions to rules, and exceptions to exceptions, and in any case they are not the rules, but more like guidelines, because people normally don't think about rules when they are talking or writing. No way I'm starting to learn rules now, I'd better continue to rely on my skills. But LLMs can help me see when my skills fail me. > It’s your right if you desire to join the Collective and be a uniform lego brick like the others, but then your no-longer-fully-human posts are no longer welcome at HN. I believe you (as most of fervent supporters of the rule here) gone too far onto philosophy with this, too far from the reality and practice. You can't detect AI in my messages, because they are mine. Even when I ask LLM to find words for me, it is me who picks one of the proposed alternatives, but mostly I manage without wording changes. I transfer the LLM's edits by hand by editing the source message, so nothing unnoticed can slip into the final result. If I took the effort to ask an LLM to proofread, it means I care about the result more than usual, so I'm investing more effort into it, not less.
goostavos 7mo ago
You do all of that when leaving a comment on HN? Why...? I'm confused by this need(?) desire(?) to polish things that are irrelevant.
- RealityVoid 7mo ago
  No, I do not, I mentioned asmuch in my post. But I do not hold it against those that do. I think if you want to make a point across, doing this the most effective way without detracting from the point is a good thing. Relevance is in the eye of the beholder.

the_af 7mo ago

When do you need to spellcheck or polish an HN comment? I've never, ever, ever ever ever, seen anybody complain about spelling mistakes in a comment here. As long as you can understand the comment, people respond to it.

Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
Extend spellcheck to asking questions like "does it meet HN rules" "how can I improve my writing" etc. Though these are the kinds of questions that do at very least still meet the spirit of the rule, I suppose.
- the_af 7mo ago
  Do you really need an automated tool to tell you whether you're breaking common sense guidelines? And why would you want to "improve your writing" for an HN comment? I think people here value raw authenticity more than polished writing.
  - tonyarkles 7mo ago
    > Do you really need an automated tool to tell you whether you're breaking common sense guidelines? I say this on behalf of all of my neurospicy friends… sometimes, yes. Especially having taken a look at the whole list of guidelines, I definitely am friends with people who would could struggle to determine whether a given comment fits or not.
  - BeetleB 7mo ago
    > Do you really need an automated tool to tell you whether you're breaking common sense guidelines? Lots of people break HN guidelines. I see it virtually every day. > And why would you want to "improve your writing" for an HN comment? Some people like to write well regardless of the medium. Why is that a problem for you? > I think people here value raw authenticity more than polished writing. Classic false dichotomy. Asking an LLM for feedback is not making your comment less authentic. As I pointed out elsewhere, it can make your comment more authentic by ensuring that what you had in your head and what you wrote match. Go and study writing and psychology. For anything of value, it's rare that your first attempt reflects what you meant to say. It's also rare that the first attempt, even if it reflects what you meant, will not be absorbed by the recipient. Saying what you mean, and having it understood as you meant it, is a difficult skill.
    - the_af 7mo ago
      > Lots of people break HN guidelines. I see it virtually every day. Yes, and AI won't help here. People will use AI to better break the guidelines. > Go and study writing and psychology Is this a case where you should have read the guidelines? Maybe an LLM could have helped you here? Please don't send me study anything, you know what they say of ASSuming. > Some people like to write well regardless of the medium. Why is that a problem for you? HN is more like talking than writing. And LLMs don't help you write well, they help you sound like a clone, which is unwanted. > For anything of value, it's rare that your first attempt reflects what you meant to say. You can always edit your comment. And in any case, HN is like a live conversation. Imagine if your friend AI-edited their speech in real-time as they talked to you.
      - Kim_Bruning 7mo ago
        Depends on how you use the AI. if you use it a bit like you'd ask a human to proof-read your work, AI can actually be quite helpful. The other important thing you can do is have an AI check your claims before you post. Even with google and pubmed, a quick check against sources by hand can take 30 minutes or longer, while with AI tooling it takes 5. Guess which one is more likely to actually lead to people checking their facts before they post. (even if imperfectly!) . I'm not talking about people who lazily ask the AI to write their post for them. Or those who don't actually go through and actually get the AI to find primary sources. Those people are not being as helpful. Though try consider educating them on more responsible tool use as well?
cogman10 7mo ago
I've been hit by spelling/grammar noise once or twice. Those are usually downvoted and/or flagged.
- everybodyknows 7mo ago
  Typos like an/as, of/or, an/and waste the reader's time. That some care be taken to avoid them is no more than common courtesy.
bryanlarsen 7mo ago
Obvious spelling mistakes are usually ignored, but there are certain types of writing mistakes that really trigger the type of people that frequent HN. For example, use "literally" for exaggeration rather than in the original meaning of the word and you'll likely trigger somebody.
- the_af 7mo ago
  I never seen this, unless "literally" really clashed with the intent of the comment (as in, it changed the meaning). It's against the HN guidelines to focus on punctuation, spelling, etc, as long as the comment is understood. And, in any case, it's now against the guidelines to write using an AI :)
  - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
    Perhaps not for the word "literally", but you've never seen anybody make a pedantic correction about word usage?
    - the_af 7mo ago
      To be clear, I've seen it in the wild, but not here where it's discouraged to pick on words instead of focusing on the substance of what's being said.
      - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
        I wish I had posted a better example, but I couldn't recall anything at the moment and still can't. It's usually a more interesting complaint than the old man shaking fist at clouds of the usage of the word literally.
        the_af 7mo ago
        OK, but let's dig deeper. Would you prefer to be corrected on some logical fallacy/mistake you made in your argument, by another human being (and yes, maybe get slightly upset about it, we're human beings after all), or have both sides present bot-mediated iron-clad comments, like operators sparring with robots? I prefer the raw, flawed human version. Even if, yes, I make a silly, avoidable mistake, or get upset, or make you upset in the heat of the argument. Maybe when I cool down I will have learned something. I don't want flawless robotic arguments. I want human beings. (Fuck, that last bit sounded like an AI-ism, but I promise it's me, a human!).
vova_hn2 7mo ago
I think that people subconsciously perceive grammatically correct and stylistically appropriate writing as more authoritative. And author is perceived as smarter and/or better educated person. At least that was the case before LLMs became a thing, now I'm not sure anymore.
BeetleB 7mo ago
People who are particular about spelling do not want to write misspelled words! It's not about whether you/others will tolerate it. I have my standards, and I hold to them. I personally don't use an LLM to spellcheck (browser spellcheck works fine), but I see no problem with someone using an LLM to point out spelling errors. And while I don't complain about others' spelling errors, I sure do notice them. And if someone writes a long wall of text as one giant paragraph that has lots of spelling/grammatical issues, chances are very high I won't read it. Some people write very poorly by almost any standard. If an LLM helps the person write better, I'm all for it. There's a world of a difference between copy/pasting from the LLM and asking it for feedback.
- the_af 7mo ago
  > I have my standards, and I hold to them. Spellcheckers exist, you don't need an AI to change your voice. Also, if you have standards, you can always train yourself to spell better!
  - BeetleB 7mo ago
    > Spellcheckers exist, you don't need an AI to change your voice. How is using an AI to spell check changing my voice? Yes, thank you - I know spellcheckers exist, as my comment clearly states. The amusing thing is that an LLM who had access to the thread would have alerted you to a basic error you're making. > Also, if you have standards, you can always train yourself to spell better! "You can always ..." is not an argument against alternatives.
    - the_af 7mo ago
      Calm down. You're getting defensive, but it's not warranted. I'm not attacking you. > The amusing thing is that an LLM who had access to the thread would have alerted you to a basic error you're making. I didn't make the "basic error" of assuming you didn't know spellcheckers existed. I was stressing that since spellcheckers already exist, you don't need an AI assisting your comments-writing. Much basic, non-style-altering alternatives exist and are better. > "You can always ..." is not an argument against alternatives. The argument I'm making is that if you care so much about standards you can always hone them yourself instead of taking the lazy way out of having an AI write for you. Alternatively, if you're lazy then your standards aren't too high. And yes, this is an argument against the alternative you're suggesting.

aethrum 7mo ago

The problem is it always hides your voice. Always

causal 7mo ago
Yep. I actually prefer seeing imperfect writing, there is signal there that AI would erase.
sdenton4 7mo ago
AI doesn't just hide your voice -- it improves it!
aperrien 7mo ago
Maybe. But it can also help people find their voice. And I'd rather have comments from someone knowledgeable but unrefined with some good guidance than their silence on that same topic.
peacebeard 7mo ago
There is a big difference between "asking an editor for suggestions" and "vibe posting". You don't lose your voice if you ask for advice and manually incorporate the suggestions you agree with. You might lose your voice if you say "Improve my comment to make it better" and copy-paste the result without another thought.
- Planktonne 7mo ago
  There is theoretically a big difference, but in practice, I think that peopel using AI to 'get suggestions' tend to dramatically under-estimate its impact on their writing. It might feel like just a couple of tweaks, but they add up fast.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - peacebeard 7mo ago
    Your “in practice” is doing too much heavy lifting here. This comes across as more of a prejudice on people than a fair assessment of the tools and techniques.

dgacmu 7mo ago

Would anyone notice if you spell-checked or got narrow feedback about grammar? No. I'm not dang, but perhaps a very reasonable interpretation of the rules is: If the AI is generating the words, don't. If it tells you something about your words and you choose to revise them without just copying words the AI output, it's still your words. (As an experiment, I took that paragraph and threw it into gemini to ask for spell and grammar checking. It yelled at me completely incorrectly about saying "I'm not dang". Of its 4 suggestions, only 1 was correct, and the other 3 would have either broken what I was trying to say or reduced the presence of my usual HN comment voice. So while I said the above, perhaps I'm wrong and even listening to the damn box about grammar is a bad idea.) That said, I often post from my phone and have somewhat frequent little glitches either from voice recognition or large clumsy thumbs, and nobody has ever seemed to care except me when I notice them a few minutes after the edit button goes away.

altairprime 7mo ago

Polish hides your voice. If your composition skills are lacking and you feel that hinders your self expression, set aside some time to improving them: write a short (15 minutes) blog post about some HN topic to yourself in a word doc editor of some sort (Word, Gdocs, LibreOffice, etc); then enable Review Changes and annotate your post for 10 minutes; then, review and accept your changes individually and re-read what you’ve written. AI is being used as a substitute for skills development when it costs nothing but time to get better. If you’ve reached a plateau with the above method, go find an article or book or interview about editing, pay attention to it and take notes, rinse/repeat. Spellcheckers will catch grossly obvious errors, but not phonetic typos. AI grammar tools will defang, weaken, soften, neutralize your tone towards the aggregate boring-meh that they incorporated at training time. Each person will have to decide whether they want individuality or AI-assisted writing for themselves. Sure, some will get away with it undetected, but that’s a universal statement about all human criteria of any kind, and in no way detracts from the necessity of drawing a line in the sand and saying “no” to AI writing here. Consider the Borg. Everyone’s distinctiveness has been added to the Collective. The end result is mediocre (they sure do die a lot), inhuman (literally), and uniform (all variation is gone). It’s your right if you desire to join the Collective and be a uniform lego brick like the others, but then your no-longer-fully-human posts are no longer welcome at HN.

ordu 7mo ago
> a word doc editor of some sort (Word, Gdocs, LibreOffice, etc); then enable Review Changes and annotate your post for 10 minutes; then, review and accept your changes individually and re-read what you’ve written. Pffff... I'm not going to install LibreOffice for that, or to figure out how to make Gdocs to work with uBlock. There is a much easier way. Open LLM chat, type there "Proofread please for grammar, keep the wording and the tone as it is, if it doesn't mess with grammar. Explain yourself." and then paste your text. I don't really know what the tools you mentioned do, but any "free" LLM on the Internet will point to things like missing articles, or messed up tenses in complex sentences. You recommend choosing self-improvement, but I just don't believe I can figure out how to use articles. With tenses I think I can learn how to do it, but I'm not going to. I remember there is some obscure rule how to choose the right tenses, but I was never able to remember the rule itself. I'm bad with rules, it is the reason I chose math as my major. There are almost no rules in math, you are making your own rules. The grammars of languages are not like that, they have rules which can't be easily inferred, you need to remember them. Grammars have exceptions to rules, and exceptions to exceptions, and in any case they are not the rules, but more like guidelines, because people normally don't think about rules when they are talking or writing. No way I'm starting to learn rules now, I'd better continue to rely on my skills. But LLMs can help me see when my skills fail me. > It’s your right if you desire to join the Collective and be a uniform lego brick like the others, but then your no-longer-fully-human posts are no longer welcome at HN. I believe you (as most of fervent supporters of the rule here) gone too far onto philosophy with this, too far from the reality and practice. You can't detect AI in my messages, because they are mine. Even when I ask LLM to find words for me, it is me who picks one of the proposed alternatives, but mostly I manage without wording changes. I transfer the LLM's edits by hand by editing the source message, so nothing unnoticed can slip into the final result. If I took the effort to ask an LLM to proofread, it means I care about the result more than usual, so I'm investing more effort into it, not less.

goostavos 7mo ago

You do all of that when leaving a comment on HN? Why...? I'm confused by this need(?) desire(?) to polish things that are irrelevant.

RealityVoid 7mo ago
No, I do not, I mentioned asmuch in my post. But I do not hold it against those that do. I think if you want to make a point across, doing this the most effective way without detracting from the point is a good thing. Relevance is in the eye of the beholder.