4 ms·

I have mixed feelings... I stumbled upon, read a post-mortem that looks even more AI-generated than the article. "That says something about my writing. It says

by nazgu1 2mo ago

I have mixed feelings... I stumbled upon, read a post-mortem that looks even more AI-generated than the article. "That says something about my writing. It says nothing about who wrote it." - Two contradicting sentences, author's writing skills are part of the author as-a-whole "The short sentences, the reversals, the one-word lines" and then "I will write the next one plainer.". - even more? And... I wonder if this is like some agent wrote article, and, in the loop, added port-mortem, after visiting hacker-news comments and manipulate that this is human written. Or maybe author is just trolling us with AI-like prose...

bonoboTP 2mo ago
Had the same taste response, checked and Pangram also says AI. They have very low false positive rate.
scandox 2mo ago
> I'm sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. What fresh hell is this? If this is human then I wish it was AI
- hypfer 2mo ago
  > and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use any other character - like I am doing right now. It must be AI indeed. Humans cannot be this dense. ___ Oh god I just saw the annotations on the side > A fair pushback I got: Dude. Why. Oh god. Why do you talk like claude. I want to believe you. I really do, but hell. Even claude could likely tell you that you sound like claude. Oh my god.
  - vsl 2mo ago
    > I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI" illiterate crowd? I'm not going to change my writing because some idiots who never read a novel or heard about typography think only AI does that.
    - hypfer 2mo ago
      I just do not comprehend how that can be the hill people choose to die on. Like.. I get it. It's wrong. It feels wrong to give the AI nonsense just an inch and all. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just highly ineffective dogmatism that makes people unheard, miserable and just further increases struggle. Which people are free to do, in the same way that I am free to purposefully drop a massive hammer on my foot just to make some kind of statement. Hurts me a lot, rest of the world stays entirely indifferent.
      - tripzilch 2mo ago
        Avoiding em-dashes is not going to save you from being blind-sided by slop.
      - yoz-y 2mo ago
        If you stop doing something right, because of fear, then the terrorists win.
        hypfer 2mo ago
        I can see why you're saying that but a) Using some other horizontal line is not in the class of "wrong" that would warrant this sort of reaction. You're debating the pixel count. Not the object. The aspect ratio of it. b) If you're acting out of fear that's dumb, yes. If you however simply pick your battles for efficiency, that's not "the terrorists win". That's "you win" instead of "you loose due to attrition". __ I've also consulted with the LLM regarding the "class of wrong" thing, because I thought it might be not quite clear. So what I meant by that is that it's not giving up actual words or dumbing down your sentences. Just swapping out a character that is practically indistiguishable for the untrained eye. Hell, whole classes of social engineering attacks rely on that very property. I know I know. "Wehret den Anfängen". Slippery slope. But those are insane as a default reaction to everything. ___ I get it. SV sucks. HN sucks. The world sucks. Can't let it also take this little thing. If it can take all the big things, then at least it won't take this tiny tidbit. Emotionally, I get it. But that's not how you make rational decisions. Nor is it how we would win.
- otabdeveloper4 2mo ago
  > something that has allowed you to feel this way Sorry buddy, next time I won't ask for permission. I don't care what you allow.
- quikoa 2mo ago
  Given the title I thought this was just ridiculous: > I do not care about your taste. But taste is all that we have left. And then this: > If this posts has offended you, then it tells more about you than it does about me. So the author can't take any criticism.
Madmallard 2mo ago
Engagement farming has found its way to Hacker News.
innocentoldguy 2mo ago
I'm a writer with what may be an unpopular opinion. I have a college degree in creative writing; I do technical writing and programming for a living, and I used to publish technical articles on Linux, Python, Elixir, and other topics—complete with em dashes—long before AI was a thing. When confronting AI as a writer and deciding how I feel about it, I've landed on the conclusion that I've never accused mathematicians of churning out "calculator slop." A calculator is just a tool to make the complex work of mathematics easier. I now view AI as a calculator for writing, among other things. If the idea is good and the information is sound, I don't let the occasional awkward phrasing bother me. The truth is, most people can't write very well anyway, so if AI helps them communicate better—even if it is obviously generated by AI— more power to them.
- owebmaster 2mo ago
  People that don't communicate well can't fix that with AI. Turning one line of confusing thoughts into a 30 lines text make it worse, not better.
  - pmg101 2mo ago
    Somebody at $formerwork wrote a "skill" that takes a poorly/briefly specified Jira ticket, and "fleshes it out", purportedly so that when an agent picks up the ticket it has more context. Really at that point, with head in hands, rather than try to explain the foolishness, I decided I was better out. "Zoom and enhance" used to be a joke/meme, apparently it's now "engineering".
  - ferfumarma 2mo ago
    And mathematicians who don't understand mathematical theory can't use calculators to write proofs. Focus on the content and the idea; not how it was written.
    - owebmaster 2mo ago
      One line of idea spread into 30 is the worse way to convene an idea. Only people terrible at writing think using AI for prose is good. Most of the times, they also hate reading it, but love asking people to read their AI slop.
darkwater 2mo ago
I really don't know, their GH profile [1] and their projects, even the recent ones [2], seem pretty non-LLM. IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism, doubling down on the "AI slop" writing style. [1] https://github.com/NotAShelf https://github.com/NotAShelf [2] https://github.com/NotAShelf/tuigreet https://github.com/NotAShelf/tuigreet
- attheballot 2mo ago
  > IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism They have edited it again to be slightly more emotional. It's why their "On Taste" closure doesn't actually pertain to Taste anymore. Of course, they wouldn't notice the mismatch - they didn't write it in the first place. They aren't being satirical. They're pissed they got called them out. Were they not, they'd not bother with edits.
  - darkwater 2mo ago
    Ok but who's pissed off bere? A human or a let-loose agent? Or a human that wrote the post with an LLM although they swear they didn't?
    - notashelf 2mo ago
      It's neither satirical, nor by an agent on the loose/in a loop. I read the comment section with good intentions, assuming good faith---and in their defense there is plenty---but the amount of misattribution is counterproductive. Nothing about the post-mortem section is "pissed off". I wrote it in complete serenity, like I am writing this comment to explain. There are three groups of commenters: 1. Skeptic, but engaging in good faith - thank you, much appreciated 2. Skeptic, not truly engaging with the post - that's fine, can't win 'em all 3. Completely disengaged with anything in writing. They're under the impression that I am criticizing their taste, and felt the need to "strike back" - what? The post-mortem is a response to all three groups. I've explained the situation, apologized for what I agree I did wrong, and clarified my boundary. It's not worth pointing time and time again it was not LLM authored, and I do not have anything to add.
prodigycorp 2mo ago
Yeah, I am suprised this article ranks so high. It's either written by AI or it's poorly written. Very little to show on behalf of "taste". "Taste" is one of these words that have been bandied about recently, in addition to "moat". I've never seen a productive conversation stem from either of those mentiosn.
- noosphr 2mo ago
  People read the title not the article.
- causal 2mo ago
  It really reads like an OpenClaw agent instructed to consider itself a real human. The number of upvotes on this post is also REALLY high considering the number of comments calling out the content. Feels like shenanigans.
sixhobbits 2mo ago
yes this is 100% AI, the article and the 'post mortem'. People are so gullible. Anyone who has read a lot of AI can spot it instantly, but Pangram also says 99% of this is AI. So many signs, and no there were no human authors who wrote like this "What it actually is" "Here is the uncomfortable mechanism" "Let me be plain about it" "The floor" "Everything downstream of the verdict" I'll eat my hat if this isn't AI. Very similar style to my AI 'utopia' https://aiking.dwyer.co.za/utopia https://aiking.dwyer.co.za/utopia I don't even think all AI writing is bad, but lying about it definitely is.
- Good4boothee 2mo ago
  Please, I couldn't care what Pangram (or any other "detector") says. If it feels like AI, does it even matter if LLM was co-author? It lands in the same "bad writing, I won't continue to read that" category. That said I am recently getting paranoid about YT videos, I hear Claude traces in every 5th script. If people are going to spend substantial time recording and editing, is it worth "saving" time on most important part?
  - dizhn 2mo ago
    "it's not just ...., it's ..." is in EVERY youtube video I watch. There's got to be a reason AI uses it so much. Maybe it was already prevalent in bad scripts and we never noticed it before. Sort of like the "Webster dictionary defines ... as " cliche.
    - basilikum 2mo ago
      An antithesis is a completely valid stylistic device. It's just very easy to overuse or to use as a cliché when you're not using language as a tool for a specific purpose, but just want to sound smart or think "fancy stylistic devices = good writing".

by nazgu1 2mo ago

bonoboTP 2mo ago

Had the same taste response, checked and Pangram also says AI. They have very low false positive rate.

scandox 2mo ago

> I'm sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. What fresh hell is this? If this is human then I wish it was AI

hypfer 2mo ago
> and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use any other character - like I am doing right now. It must be AI indeed. Humans cannot be this dense. ___ Oh god I just saw the annotations on the side > A fair pushback I got: Dude. Why. Oh god. Why do you talk like claude. I want to believe you. I really do, but hell. Even claude could likely tell you that you sound like claude. Oh my god.
- vsl 2mo ago
  > I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI" illiterate crowd? I'm not going to change my writing because some idiots who never read a novel or heard about typography think only AI does that.
  - hypfer 2mo ago
    I just do not comprehend how that can be the hill people choose to die on. Like.. I get it. It's wrong. It feels wrong to give the AI nonsense just an inch and all. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just highly ineffective dogmatism that makes people unheard, miserable and just further increases struggle. Which people are free to do, in the same way that I am free to purposefully drop a massive hammer on my foot just to make some kind of statement. Hurts me a lot, rest of the world stays entirely indifferent.
    - tripzilch 2mo ago
      Avoiding em-dashes is not going to save you from being blind-sided by slop.
    - yoz-y 2mo ago
      If you stop doing something right, because of fear, then the terrorists win.
      - hypfer 2mo ago
        I can see why you're saying that but a) Using some other horizontal line is not in the class of "wrong" that would warrant this sort of reaction. You're debating the pixel count. Not the object. The aspect ratio of it. b) If you're acting out of fear that's dumb, yes. If you however simply pick your battles for efficiency, that's not "the terrorists win". That's "you win" instead of "you loose due to attrition". __ I've also consulted with the LLM regarding the "class of wrong" thing, because I thought it might be not quite clear. So what I meant by that is that it's not giving up actual words or dumbing down your sentences. Just swapping out a character that is practically indistiguishable for the untrained eye. Hell, whole classes of social engineering attacks rely on that very property. I know I know. "Wehret den Anfängen". Slippery slope. But those are insane as a default reaction to everything. ___ I get it. SV sucks. HN sucks. The world sucks. Can't let it also take this little thing. If it can take all the big things, then at least it won't take this tiny tidbit. Emotionally, I get it. But that's not how you make rational decisions. Nor is it how we would win.
otabdeveloper4 2mo ago
> something that has allowed you to feel this way Sorry buddy, next time I won't ask for permission. I don't care what you allow.
quikoa 2mo ago
Given the title I thought this was just ridiculous: > I do not care about your taste. But taste is all that we have left. And then this: > If this posts has offended you, then it tells more about you than it does about me. So the author can't take any criticism.

Madmallard 2mo ago

Engagement farming has found its way to Hacker News.

innocentoldguy 2mo ago

I'm a writer with what may be an unpopular opinion. I have a college degree in creative writing; I do technical writing and programming for a living, and I used to publish technical articles on Linux, Python, Elixir, and other topics—complete with em dashes—long before AI was a thing. When confronting AI as a writer and deciding how I feel about it, I've landed on the conclusion that I've never accused mathematicians of churning out "calculator slop." A calculator is just a tool to make the complex work of mathematics easier. I now view AI as a calculator for writing, among other things. If the idea is good and the information is sound, I don't let the occasional awkward phrasing bother me. The truth is, most people can't write very well anyway, so if AI helps them communicate better—even if it is obviously generated by AI— more power to them.

owebmaster 2mo ago
People that don't communicate well can't fix that with AI. Turning one line of confusing thoughts into a 30 lines text make it worse, not better.
- pmg101 2mo ago
  Somebody at $formerwork wrote a "skill" that takes a poorly/briefly specified Jira ticket, and "fleshes it out", purportedly so that when an agent picks up the ticket it has more context. Really at that point, with head in hands, rather than try to explain the foolishness, I decided I was better out. "Zoom and enhance" used to be a joke/meme, apparently it's now "engineering".
- ferfumarma 2mo ago
  And mathematicians who don't understand mathematical theory can't use calculators to write proofs. Focus on the content and the idea; not how it was written.
  - owebmaster 2mo ago
    One line of idea spread into 30 is the worse way to convene an idea. Only people terrible at writing think using AI for prose is good. Most of the times, they also hate reading it, but love asking people to read their AI slop.

darkwater 2mo ago

I really don't know, their GH profile [1] and their projects, even the recent ones [2], seem pretty non-LLM. IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism, doubling down on the "AI slop" writing style. [1] https://github.com/NotAShelf https://github.com/NotAShelf [2] https://github.com/NotAShelf/tuigreet https://github.com/NotAShelf/tuigreet

attheballot 2mo ago
> IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism They have edited it again to be slightly more emotional. It's why their "On Taste" closure doesn't actually pertain to Taste anymore. Of course, they wouldn't notice the mismatch - they didn't write it in the first place. They aren't being satirical. They're pissed they got called them out. Were they not, they'd not bother with edits.
- darkwater 2mo ago
  Ok but who's pissed off bere? A human or a let-loose agent? Or a human that wrote the post with an LLM although they swear they didn't?
  - notashelf 2mo ago
    It's neither satirical, nor by an agent on the loose/in a loop. I read the comment section with good intentions, assuming good faith---and in their defense there is plenty---but the amount of misattribution is counterproductive. Nothing about the post-mortem section is "pissed off". I wrote it in complete serenity, like I am writing this comment to explain. There are three groups of commenters: 1. Skeptic, but engaging in good faith - thank you, much appreciated 2. Skeptic, not truly engaging with the post - that's fine, can't win 'em all 3. Completely disengaged with anything in writing. They're under the impression that I am criticizing their taste, and felt the need to "strike back" - what? The post-mortem is a response to all three groups. I've explained the situation, apologized for what I agree I did wrong, and clarified my boundary. It's not worth pointing time and time again it was not LLM authored, and I do not have anything to add.

prodigycorp 2mo ago

Yeah, I am suprised this article ranks so high. It's either written by AI or it's poorly written. Very little to show on behalf of "taste". "Taste" is one of these words that have been bandied about recently, in addition to "moat". I've never seen a productive conversation stem from either of those mentiosn.

noosphr 2mo ago
People read the title not the article.
causal 2mo ago
It really reads like an OpenClaw agent instructed to consider itself a real human. The number of upvotes on this post is also REALLY high considering the number of comments calling out the content. Feels like shenanigans.

sixhobbits 2mo ago

yes this is 100% AI, the article and the 'post mortem'. People are so gullible. Anyone who has read a lot of AI can spot it instantly, but Pangram also says 99% of this is AI. So many signs, and no there were no human authors who wrote like this "What it actually is" "Here is the uncomfortable mechanism" "Let me be plain about it" "The floor" "Everything downstream of the verdict" I'll eat my hat if this isn't AI. Very similar style to my AI 'utopia' https://aiking.dwyer.co.za/utopia https://aiking.dwyer.co.za/utopia I don't even think all AI writing is bad, but lying about it definitely is.

Good4boothee 2mo ago
Please, I couldn't care what Pangram (or any other "detector") says. If it feels like AI, does it even matter if LLM was co-author? It lands in the same "bad writing, I won't continue to read that" category. That said I am recently getting paranoid about YT videos, I hear Claude traces in every 5th script. If people are going to spend substantial time recording and editing, is it worth "saving" time on most important part?
- dizhn 2mo ago
  "it's not just ...., it's ..." is in EVERY youtube video I watch. There's got to be a reason AI uses it so much. Maybe it was already prevalent in bad scripts and we never noticed it before. Sort of like the "Webster dictionary defines ... as " cliche.
  - basilikum 2mo ago
    An antithesis is a completely valid stylistic device. It's just very easy to overuse or to use as a cliché when you're not using language as a tool for a specific purpose, but just want to sound smart or think "fancy stylistic devices = good writing".