Exactly. HN darling Paul Graham writes this way.

I find the constant critique of punchy style a bit tiring. It would be more productive for the grandparent to think about the content and state an opinion.

I find the constant use of punchy style tiring.

Sometimes a "punch in the face" is useful. Makes you re-evaluate things. Being punched in the face all day, every day, is just tiring.

I swear the worst part about llms are their critics.

The link in the article that is right near the words you're talking about links to a wikipedia page that says the book is from 2005. So I conclude it was 2005 or soon after

Do you disagree with the point made?

If I want a boring, rote LLM answer I will prompt it myself. I don’t read blogs to have a middleman between me and a prompt.

LLMs are running a gish gallop at Internet scale. It is not necessary or possible to disprove every sequence of tokens that emerges from one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Forming a human opinion about slop is like asymmetrical warfare. Or maybe a closer analogy is a Gish Gallop. It can be generated with way less effort than it takes to comprehend it, much less form a coherent opinion on it.

Very parallel to the asymmetric bullshit principal

It matters whether something is written using an LLM even if we put aside the ethical aspects. Firstly, if your text is deadly boring to read, your point might not get across optimally and one might not just be interesting reading slop. Secondly, you might just been reading the LLM's opinion, and I'm just not interested neither. Thirdly, even if you are just using the LLM as an assistant, we know that your opinion itself may be influenced by the suggestions and since you are still under the impression you are writing yourself (which you are somewhat, not saying), you may internalize the suggestions as your own opinion. There are recent (probably imperfect) studies about this stuff.

I mostly agree with everything you said. Do you feel the same way about code written by an LLM?

I'm fortunate enough not to have been knowingly exposed to LLM generated code of big enough size yet, and haven't run into studies about this (to be fair, I'm not actively looking for them although I'd be quite interested). I imagine the stakes are quite different for code, it's not really opinions. On the topic of boringness I'm afraid I don't have the required experience to know how LLM generated / assisted code feels when reading it.

In particular, I have never had the curiosity of going to one of those vibe coded weekend projects' repository and peek at the code. Now that I think about it, maybe I should! Thanks for making me reflect on this.

I am concerned that one day I'll run into a PR that superficially looks good but that's badly structured in non immediately obvious ways or that has subtle errors due to the author not knowing well what they are doing. And on the longer term, that a code base with too many such contributions ends up being fragile and difficult to work with.

In any case I suppose I'll be looking for places to work where LLMs are not or little tolerated if they keep being a notable thing in the longer term.

Not quite, but these help

https://poloclub.github.io/transformer-explainer/

https://youtu.be/wjZofJX0v4M?si=gT8Zlz1IY14KV_ju

I tried to upload a 239 KB pdf and it said "Daily processing limit reached".

Yea, looks like a lot of people uploaded articles today. I have a 20 article per day cap now because I’m paying for it.

I could change to a simple cost+ model but don’t want to bother until I see if people like it.

Ideas for splitting the difference so more people can use it without breaking my bank appreciated

You should just whip up some simple cost plus payment, with a low plus.

I'd probably use it now.

cool, thanks

So far i really like what it does for the example articles shown. I want to test it on 1 or 2 articles I know well, and if it passes that test it's a product I'd totally pay for.

appreciate it, thanks

What's the cost per article?

Avg cost $0.65

metoo. I'm very interested to see what it can do.

thanks

I generally agree with the broader point you're making, but I also think there's nothing wrong with pointing out how messed up it is that that's the reality of the choice. The whole point of improving society is to eliminate this kind of dilemma

It’s messed up that this has to be done. But overall positive change.

Why does it have to be done?

Laws, primarily.

There's also a lot of content that companies don't want to host or show to their users in general.

That poor people get the worst of the jobs? What’s the alternative?

Who says this particular job is a necessary one?

What’s your alternative?

Jury duty for all online fora maybe?

Because one could sell DDoS services that overload the target network with porn.

Maybe social media for this content isn’t sustainable or wise?

Maybe social media of the kind which creates this problem isn't sustainable or wise.

You're talking about making the internet as a whole a view-only experience where all content is curated and made by trusted gatekeepers.

As long as a website allows user generated content, there will be this need to moderate it

You’re saying there were no forum boards nor comment sections anywhere? And everyone self hosted every single piece of content they wished to send it into the world?

Maybe. Those could be the case. But ignoring all confounding factors, this phenomenon is possible with numerical experiments alone. One of the meanings of "the Law of Small Numbers".

Basically, the possibility that the small study was underpowered, and just lucky...then the large studies with more power are closer to the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization

Sure, could be just lucky. But if there are several successful small studies, and several unsuccessful large ones (no idea if this is the case here), we should probably look for a better explanation.

It does not require more explanation: publication bias means null results aren't in the literature; do enough small low quality trials and you'll find a big effect sooner or later.

Then the supposed big effect attracts attention and ultimately properly designed studies which show no effect.

I agree with most everything you said. The problem has always been the short-term job loss, particularly today where society as a whole has resources for safety nets, but hasnt implemented them.

Anger at companies who hold power in multiple places to prevent and worsen this situation for people is valid anger.

There's another problem with who gets to capture all of the resulting wealth from the higher tech-assisted productivity.

> The problem has always been the short-term job loss

Does anyone have any idea of the new jobs that will be created to replace the ones that are being lost? If it's not possible to at least foresee it, then it's not likely to happen. In which case the job loss will be long-term not short-term.

As much as I like the article, I begrudgingly agree with you, which is why I think the author mentions the physical constraints of energy as the future wall that companies will have to deal with.

The question is do we think that will actually happen?

Personally I would love if it did, then this post would have the last laugh (as would I), but I think companies realize this energy problem already. Just search for the headlines of big tech funding or otherwise supporting nuclear reactors, power grid upgrades, etc.

In my experience in neuroscience it even differs widely across programs/universities. Some good professors care about giving good talks, and if you're lucky it becomes contagious in the program. Others think less of you if it's clear, some are too naive to realize obscurity is not a virtue.