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twosdai • yesterday at 6:01 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

I could put zero effort into writing a quick post on some piece of programming knowledge. But if someone needed that information, I suspect that they would feel happy to read the sentences and not care about the process.

I don't think this "effort" argument for technical knowledge pieces makes sense to me. If there is something I need, I do some research and I look for signals of authoritative information. I don't really care about how much effort it takes to write a blog post.


Replies

kelnos • yesterday at 10:05 PM

> I could put zero effort into writing a quick post on some piece of programming knowledge

For starters, if you're writing something yourself, it's not "zero-effort". It might be low-effort, but you still put some effort into it. And low-effort doesn't mean worthless, as you illustrate ("but if someone needed that information...").

Consider that the refrain seems to be: "I won't put more energy reading something than you put into writing it". A "quick" post takes little energy to write, and little energy to read. That's fine!

AlienRobot • yesterday at 6:13 PM

Why do you trust something that is LLM-generated is authoritative?

Even if, on the most good-faith scenario, someone did all the research them told an LLM to add more pizzazz for some reason, there is still a chance that the LLM hallucinate a lie here and there that the author might have skipped when proof-reading if they proof-read it at all.

I can't trust a machine specialized in generating convincing bullshit.