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Mostly, I have other, more important stuff going in my life. I did write a lot of this post myself, but used AI to flesh out some of the details because otherwi

by yosito 11d ago

Mostly, I have other, more important stuff going in my life. I did write a lot of this post myself, but used AI to flesh out some of the details because otherwise between my perfectionism and tendency to overthink blog posts, I would have never gotten around to publishing this.

muglug 10d ago
Did you read it or, if English isn’t your first language, have someone who writes English well read it? I’ve had a lot of useful feedback on stuff I’ve written that way.
schrijver 10d ago
If you think other things are more important than writing, why would you expect anyone to take the time to read it ? It’s just not a very efficient strategy, it might work for some readers, but as the comments show it’s a big turn off for many. Where it says “There’s one honest footnote”, that’s really grating, like the other commenter I also stopped reading there. That’s not necessary rational, it’s just that we are social creatures that are really sensitive to those kind of surface level cues in communication, to gauge credibility. I’m sure many authors today use LLM in brainstorming, research, ask it to steelman an argument etc and no readers complain because it doesn’t impact the authorial voice. The problem then is with letting LLM ‘fleshing out the details’: you end up having the LLM’s style and words all over your text. You can’t really do that without your authorial voice loosing credibility. I think next time, you have to go over it and edit it and make it sound like you. If you don’t want to that, the good news is that I think people will start to get less critical of sloppy writing, as long as it sounds human. So you could sound convincing while leaving some details raw and not have the LLM have a go at it.
- yosito 10d ago
  My approach is more "ship fast, iterate later". Your criticism of AI slop is valid and I share it. I've manually re-written the post today, no more AI slop. Of course, that came with the opportunity cost of not spending time on 100 other projects competing for my attention. AI has enabled me to do a lot more with my limited resource of attention.

by yosito 11d ago

muglug 10d ago

Did you read it or, if English isn’t your first language, have someone who writes English well read it? I’ve had a lot of useful feedback on stuff I’ve written that way.

schrijver 10d ago

If you think other things are more important than writing, why would you expect anyone to take the time to read it ? It’s just not a very efficient strategy, it might work for some readers, but as the comments show it’s a big turn off for many. Where it says “There’s one honest footnote”, that’s really grating, like the other commenter I also stopped reading there. That’s not necessary rational, it’s just that we are social creatures that are really sensitive to those kind of surface level cues in communication, to gauge credibility. I’m sure many authors today use LLM in brainstorming, research, ask it to steelman an argument etc and no readers complain because it doesn’t impact the authorial voice. The problem then is with letting LLM ‘fleshing out the details’: you end up having the LLM’s style and words all over your text. You can’t really do that without your authorial voice loosing credibility. I think next time, you have to go over it and edit it and make it sound like you. If you don’t want to that, the good news is that I think people will start to get less critical of sloppy writing, as long as it sounds human. So you could sound convincing while leaving some details raw and not have the LLM have a go at it.

yosito 10d ago
My approach is more "ship fast, iterate later". Your criticism of AI slop is valid and I share it. I've manually re-written the post today, no more AI slop. Of course, that came with the opportunity cost of not spending time on 100 other projects competing for my attention. AI has enabled me to do a lot more with my limited resource of attention.