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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

#141

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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

In many kinds of writing, perhaps most, communicating your state of mind to the reader is a primary goal. Even a smart LLM fundamentally degrades this, because to whatever degree that it has a mind it isn't shaped like yours or mine. I've had a number of experiences this year where I get to the end of a grammatical, well-structured technical document, only to find that it was completely useless because it recited a bunch of facts and analyses but failed to convey what the author was thinking as they wrote it.

(Of course, that may well be exactly what you're looking for if you're writing an audit report or something.)

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

#143

Post by BeetleB »

beej71 wrote: post #72
thepasch wrote: post #8

I never use an LLM to paraphrase my own voice as a matter of principle, but I’ve still been repeatedly accused of doing so because I happen to always have written structured posts, used “smart quotes,” and done that negative comparison thing (it’s genuinely not just fluff, it’s a genuinely useful way to— ah god damn it). Sigh.

I refuse to cater to the "em dashes are AI" crowd. And I was just noticing that my home-built blog render pipeline produces dumb quotes and that was embarrassing to me. Needs to be fixed. (Counterpoint, dumb quotes are 7-bit clean and paste nicely... Hmm.)

> I refuse to cater to the "em dashes are AI" crowd.

I wrote a plugin for my blog that converts all hyphens (surrounded by whitespace) into em-dashes.

https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2025/Dec/a-proclamation-regardi...

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

#144

Post by ghywertelling »

Amekedl wrote: post #31
aledevv wrote: post #20

I want to emphasize a thought you expressed: > "..but maybe it's a good thing that most of us don't allow this technology to reframe our thoughts." No, you're not the only one experiencing this: I too had the same concerns as you: with every new thought, every new creation, I had to ask the AI's opinion, as if I were no longer able to judge, to decide, without consulting the AI (...just to be safe, you never know...)…

depending how hard the "the brain is a muscle" saying applies, there is no way using LLMs/chatbot systems/AI is not going to deteriorate your brain immensely.

In I,Robot, Will Smith prefers to drive himself because he doesn't trust AI. But we are moving towards self driving as it would be more safer. Would you trust a calculation more if it was done by hand using log tables? Having vehicles allowed us to create sports like dirt bike riding or monster truck racing. Yes something is lost but something is also gained. We move up the layer of abstraction.

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

#145

Post by jhhh »

I miss the text only reading era. This is a blog and should not need to have JavaScript enabled to render text to a page. I would rather not have to be annoyed by flavor of the month duplicate scroll bars, cookie banners, newsletter pop-ups 5 seconds in, scroll to the top pop-ups, idle overlays, highlight helper bars that break copy paste, etc. This blog didn't have all of those but had some. I'm sure the metrics look great because I had to load this page four times. First initially, and then disabling JavaScript and realizing it doesn't load anything at all. A third time re-enabling JavaScript and then deleting all the annoying elements, and then a fourth time to make sure my cosmetic filter is applied correctly. 4x the interactions! Must be doing something right.

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

#147

Post by balkanist »

kristjansson wrote: post #136
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.

The relative value of those things are shifting. As the cost of polished LLM drivel falls to zero, some might prefer even the most unedited, off-the-cuff human writing to the slop.

[flagged]

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

#148

Post by bluebarbet »

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?

What it says (and this fact is not popular around here) is that you write better than the average person.

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

#149

Post by elbasti »

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.

There are some people that believe that writing is an act of creative expression. In other words, that writing is primarily about the act (and as such, it's a quite selfish activity). Editing destroys the expressive act and must be avoided.

These people's writing is usually incoherent and they are very proud of it. If you've ever read a bad new-age self-help book you've probably encountered writing like this.

Good writers understand that writing is about communication. The initial act of writing (ie, word puke) is worthless. What matters most is a piece of writing's ability to communicate clearly.

This writing is usually pleasant, concise, and clear.

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

#150

Post by gwern »

jhhh wrote: post #145

I miss the text only reading era. This is a blog and should not need to have JavaScript enabled to render text to a page. I would rather not have to be annoyed by flavor of the month duplicate scroll bars, cookie banners, newsletter pop-ups 5 seconds in, scroll to the top pop-ups, idle overlays, highlight helper bars that break copy paste, etc. This blog didn't have all of those but had some. I'm sure the metrics loo…

You'll love GreaterWrong, then: https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/BJ4pnropWdnzzgeJc/i-am-de...
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