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I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

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Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#121

Post by justonceokay »

recursive wrote: post #116
barbazoo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your body is in good shape, stopping exercise won't make you deteriorate that quickly. What I wonder is, will people get in good shape in the first place. What I mean is as someone with lots of experience, I don't care about me not learning about the basics anymore as much as someone in their 20s and 30s maybe should.

I think this is backwards. Not sure what you mean by quickly. Back when I was in racing shape, if I stopped my training plan for as little as two weeks, (probably less actually, but I'm being conservative here) I would have a measurable drop in fitness. Now, as someone who regularly walks the dog and bikes to work, I've got "less to lose" and probably wouldn't deteriorate as much.

Aerobic fitness is hard to shake, but neuromuscular changes can be lost very quickly

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#122

Post by barbazoo »

justonceokay wrote: post #121
recursive wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is backwards. Not sure what you mean by quickly. Back when I was in racing shape, if I stopped my training plan for as little as two weeks, (probably less actually, but I'm being conservative here) I would have a measurable drop in fitness. Now, as someone who regularly walks the dog and bikes to work, I've got "less to lose" and probably wouldn't deteriorate as much.

Aerobic fitness is hard to shake, but neuromuscular changes can be lost very quickly

And here I was thinking how clever an example I was giving :)

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#123

Post by SoftTalker »

65 wrote: post #85
everdrive wrote: post #35

Not joking, buy and read books. Old books are only written by people. (and the help of an editor)

Or read magazines and newspapers from reputable publications. My grammar and writing have improved tremendously from reading quality magazine articles, e.g. stuff from The Atlantic or The NY Book Review or whatever. Both magazines and books are valid forms of information consumption and books are not the only way to improve your writing, reading, and understanding of the world.

I wouldn't count on current stuff in those publications being free from AI. We're seeing it in peer-reviewed paper submissions so why not in literary forums?

If you limit yourself to stuff from maybe five years ago or older, yeah it's going to be human-written and human-edited (ghostwriting still possible).

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#124

Post by ianseyer »

boca_honey wrote: post #119

>I just wrote what my brain is instructing to type (might not reread it before posting) Why would I put effort into reading something that had no effort put in by the author? This guy needs an editor, AI or otherwise.

"I think that is the beauty of writing, the raw , unedited emotions of the person behind every words either for entertainment or educational purposes, is what makes it special"

- the article, clearly expressing the intent of its own mistakes and contextualizing them in the era of LLM-borne "perfect" text

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#125

Post by viccis »

ArcHound wrote: post #96
piker wrote: post #86

AI for editing is garbage. Chat to it to get ideas maybe, but in its current incarnation it’s just going to degrade anything you filter through it.

I thought it's quite good. Of course, I'm not taking 100% of output, but it takes care of my grammar blindspots (damn you commas and a/an/the articles!). Can you please share what and how gets degraded? Sometimes I don't like a phrase it selects, but it's not common

>damn you commas and a/an/the articles

This sounds like an ESL issue. LLMs are good at proof reading ESL-written English text. They are not as good at proof reading experience English writers.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#127

Post by ttamslam »

crthpl wrote: post #111
aidenn0 wrote: post #82

What does it say about me that when I run my writing through one of those "detect if AI" tools I seldom see a value of less than 70% confidence that the writing was AI generated?

have you tried pangram? it's basically the only good AI detector, and they have nearly 0 false positives

> and they have nearly 0 false positives

I really don't see how this can be possible unless they're accepting abysmal recall? Perhaps I'm missing something fundamental here, but the idea that AI and non-AI assisted text can be separated with "nearly 0 false positives" just says to me that it's really just a filter for the weakest, most obvious AI generated text. Is that valuable?

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#128

Post by kristjansson »

nkrisc wrote: post #97
radimm wrote: post #4

This is exactly same struggle for me. Writing technical content about PostgreSQL and balancing my voice without sounding like LLM written is genuinely difficult. As English is not my first language, I do run into problem where the line between fix my clumsy sentence and rewrite my thought is very thin. Same with writing "boring" technical explanation and more approachable content. I'm getting pushed back for both.

I’ll take a clumsy sentence written by a non-native speaker any day over LLM generated mush. At least I know you chose those words specifically so it gives me some insight into your state of mind and intended meaning. Any native English speaker who doesn’t live under a rock is very accustomed to reading and hearing English from non-native speakers and familiar with the common quirks and mistakes. English is quite for…

> English is quite forgiving as a language

it's a couple mutually-conflicting languages in a trenchcoat; forgiveness and flexibility are perhaps its defining properties.

To the broader issue: "polish" (in any language) is only valuable insofar as it makes the ideas clearer, attests to innate qualities of the author and/or the investment of their time, or carries its own aesthetic value. As LLMs make (a certain kind of polish) cheap to produce, the value of the middle category attenuates to nothing.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#129

Post by kristjansson »

rane wrote: post #18
radimm wrote: post #4

This is exactly same struggle for me. Writing technical content about PostgreSQL and balancing my voice without sounding like LLM written is genuinely difficult. As English is not my first language, I do run into problem where the line between fix my clumsy sentence and rewrite my thought is very thin. Same with writing "boring" technical explanation and more approachable content. I'm getting pushed back for both.

In some specific work contexts, such as writing pull request descriptions, not sounding like AI is something I've given up on trying to optimize. It's simply not worth the effort for me being non-native and writing detailed PR descriptions being so arduous, and the agent already has full context anyway. Obviously any fluff or inaccuracies are aggressively weeded out but I don't care anymore about the AI voice.

> any fluff or inaccuracies are aggressively weeded out

this work is paramount. Without clear evidence of human filtering, a long, well formatted message/PR/doc is likely to reduce my estimate of the value/veracity/relevance of its content.

Re: I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era

#130

Post by piker »

shagie wrote: post #118
piker wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for one example, it inhibits your desire to improve against those very blind spots. In exchange for that your audience gets 3-4x length normalized bullshit to read instead.

> Well, for one example, it inhibits your desire to improve against those very blind spots. I'd contend this is not true. Even professional authors go to an editor who identifies things that need to be fixed. As the author of the text and knowing what it should be, it can be difficult to read what you wrote to find those mistakes. > In exchange for that your audience gets 3-4x length normalized bullshit to read inste…

> Even professional authors go to an editor who identifies things that need to be fixed.

Yes, and these people are good at it. What’s your point?

If you need grammar checking, there are thousands of apps including word processors, web browsers and even most mobile devices that will check your inputs for grammar and spelling mistakes as you type. All of that without burning down the rainforests or neutering your thesis.

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