alt Hacker NewsHonest question : does it need to be said ?
It's like the /s sign. Can some people not, for themselves, realize that this text is meant as a more or less a joke ? And before you ask, yeah, I am aware some of the people are on the spectrum, but still...
Is humor that hard to grasp on the internet ?
Replies
Among others, the voices on the internet include:
* some sincere people with very extreme takes,
* some trolls that masquerade as the above, to bully others over their credulousness and lack of guile, which is distinct from sarcasm,
* some trolls that insincerely speak anything that earns engagement,
* and more and more bots that mimic the above
So sadly, the answer to your question is generally yes.
> Honest question : does it need to be said ?
Yes. There are literally people who believe any thinking done without AI is Luddite and subpar.
These are not, in my experience, people who have done any great thinking in their lives. They do tend to tweet a lot.
When I started reading it I thought for far too long that this person is actually stupi^H^H^H^H^H serious. So writing that it is satire is useful for people that do not read enough of the text, and just jump into the comments :) Also, this type of behavior has little to do with the neurodivergent spectrum, if anything it touches personality types, maybe maybe some trauma or addiction, unlikely to be caused by anything in the affective space (episodes would be too short) or psychosis space.
Sadly I have to admit I read it and didn't know it was satire. The way they described using LLMs to to achieve research results sounded plausible enough to me. As an attorney, I also fear a race to the bottom where legal research becomes simply editing the work of AI. Also, the idea of being subject to a test with little relationship to professional practice reminds me of the bar exam; which requires intimate knowledge of almost all areas of the law despite the fact that practicing attorneys generally are only familiar with their specializations (eg, it would be unwise to retain a civil rights attorney to represent you for even a traffic violation); and requires all the knowledge to be memorized, even though it would be unthinkable (and most likely malpractice) for any attorney to practice relying solely on memory.
I also suspect that there are attorneys out there who are starting to use LLMs to generate legal work with a method similar to what the author described (generate prompt, revise minimally). Lawyers are taught to write a certain way which LLMs mirror flawlessly; the surest way to identify LLM generated legal writing is if it happens to hallucinate citations. I used to regularly find hallucinated citations, and occasionally strange reasoning, but both have largely vanished as the LLMS improve.
I think sometimes it is but only if the humor relies on a tone.
When it’s satire I think the main blocker of recognition is if you have an emotional reaction first.
As an example, if you are a diehard AI influencer or something you might miss the joke entirely because of the severity of your initial negative reaction.
Just my two cents. Glad I could contribute to completely beating the humor out of this post :)
> Is humor that hard to grasp on the internet ?
Problem is that the Internet is too big that there actually could be someone writing this as a serious blog post. For this one it was quite obvious at some point, but when only reading the first few paragraphs I am very certain that there could be someone out there meaning it serious (sadly).
> Honest question : does it need to be said ?
At the current time I'm writing this, all other top-level comments are engaging with the article as if it were sincere. So, yes.
It does, but unfortunately, this is in-crowd communication -- it's too high brow to hit anyone that needs to read it. But I enjoyed it, and I'm sure it was cathartic to write
Yes because Poe’s Law has never been more true than the current era.
Humor died few years ago after series of increasingly more improbable events happening. "USA voted pedophile that bankrupted 3 casinos into second term" was stuff out of Onion decade ago, so some researcher walking into job interview with ChatGPT doesn't even move a needle on satire scale.
I got Poe's lawed
1) No it does not have to be said. Nobody is forcing anyone to explain anything.
2) I think that the best satire is fair, and should read to the targets as real commentary. When someone takes your satire seriously, it means that you have successfully commented on reality. Is that inverse Poe's Law?
Otherwise you're just putting words in your enemies' mouths that they would not ever say. I think people do this because they don't have the strength of their own convictions, and wouldn't be able to stand people not getting their joke (and worse, confusing them for extreme believers in something that they disdain.)
To them I would suggest that one doesn't try to make arguments through satire, one rather demonstrate arguments through satire. If you need to make your argument with satire, you actually don't have an argument. Satire without a solid underpinning argument is just propaganda.
As often happens with satire, you could read it as satirizing the idea that people should entirely rely on their own knowledge and memory, without AI assistance. The response to the article depends heavily upon one’s perspective on the subject.
I regularly get reddit comments downvoted by people who don't recognize it's obviously satire.
Sometimes somebody else comments "why is this getting downvoted, it's satire", and that stops or reverses the influx of downvotes.
It's hardly too near on reality to not to say it.
As someone on the spectrum, I can assure you that being on the spectrum is not an obstacle for understanding this kind of humor.
In fact, is the neurotypicals who struggle getting it because they rely on nonverbal cues (like a sarcastic tone of voice), which is missing in text, to detect humor.
Deadpan, dry humor is generally more amenable to the autistic mind, because it doesn't have what we consider noise.
If someone needs a laugh track to tell that something is a joke, then either it's a bad joke that wouldn't be made any better with a laugh track, or the problem exists between keyboard and chair.
exactly!
> Is humor that hard to grasp on the internet ?
Yes. Humor is very hard to grasp via text, especially sarcastic humor, because in person we use voice and body language to signal that something is meant as a joke.
On this site? Yes it does, and even then we have people missing the point in the comments.
When it's this poorly executed, yes it needs to be said.
I was going back and forth on whether it was for far longer than I should have been.
Yes, it does need to be said. Many people will read this article and miss the satire, which is, in part, the intent of sophisticated satire. The point is that it is outlandish and foolish and ridiculous and yet still resembles some serious discourse that real people engage in. So much so that some onlookers can't tell the difference. That proves the satirist's thesis: the real world is full of ridiculous people making ridiculous arguments and they can't even see themselves or their arguments for what they are.
I know real life people who write essays with claims as outlandish as "software engineering is an ableist field" and are dead serious. But that assertion belongs just as well in a satire piece. It can be very hard to tell if you don't have prior context for the author.