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billpgtoday at 2:50 PM2 repliesview on HN

Hi. I wrote it, and I'm a human. (Or at least I think I am.)

I did use an AI for spell-checking, punctuation, generally making it flow, but its all my text.

You think a machine is going to come up with "near pointers, far pointers, wherever-you-are pointers"?


Replies

chowellstoday at 3:25 PM

"generally make it flow" is exactly the problem. It's a process of smoothing over any interesting features of the text to replace them with plastic. It's submerging the actual information you wish to convey under a layer of low-entropy noise. The whole signal may still be there, but having to find it under a uniform glossy finish is work for the reader. It's work you didn't need to delegate to the reader.

LLMs generate low-entropy text. That's their entire purpose. But good writing isn't about being as low-entropy as possible. It's about producing peaks and valleys. As a person who's been participating in human-to-human communication your entire life, you probably have a pretty well-developed sense of how to structure the flow of a piece of communication. The small arcs with their ebbs and flows of tension and density provide the reader a rough surface that gives them enough traction to easily move from point to point. Don't let an LLM smooth out all the gaps. It makes it hard for a reader to keep their footing in the text.

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trollbridgetoday at 4:27 PM

Thanks for responding. The problem is:

- the “make it flow” made it flow in an AI generated way like short paragraphs that are one short sentence.

- I now have to decide if this is entirely AI generated and thus not worth my time reading or not.

- I would prefer to just interact with you as a real person; your writing doesn’t have to be perfect for what you write to be worth reading.

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