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America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

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Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#41

Post by rubenflamshep »

0x3f wrote: post #23
RankingMember wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM? The topic seems super interesting otherwise and would benefit from the real human voice. OP, can you elaborate on why you decided to go this direction?

> Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM? What diference does it make as long as the content is interesting and the tone not grating? It's possible for a human being to use an LLM but guide it to a well-written piece that's worth consuming.

Nah, if a human can't be bothered to write it themselves, I can't be bothered to read it.

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#42

Post by pickleglitch »

onlypassingthru wrote: post #19
pickleglitch wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Pointless? Have you noticed which energy companies are making record profits? Who is filling demand for oil & gas if the ME refineries are blown up or blockaded?

Perhaps "for no good reason" would be a better way of putting it.

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#43

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

RankingMember wrote: post #20
magnio wrote: post #4

If you wanna read an article containing essentially the same information without the pesky LLM voice: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/december/m...

Why would anyone spend the time to read something so long that's been generated by an LLM? The topic seems super interesting otherwise and would benefit from the real human voice. OP, can you elaborate on why you decided to go this direction?

because it is a propaganda piece

the cheaper it is made, the more effort can be spent elsewhere

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#44

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

ofcourseyoudo wrote: post #35
magnio wrote: post #4

If you wanna read an article containing essentially the same information without the pesky LLM voice: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/december/m...

The kneejerk accusations of LLM even when it passes easily-available tests is intellectually lazy and does not belong on HN.

> The methodology, not just the man

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#45

Post by onlypassingthru »

pickleglitch wrote: post #42
onlypassingthru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointless? Have you noticed which energy companies are making record profits? Who is filling demand for oil & gas if the ME refineries are blown up or blockaded?

Perhaps "for no good reason" would be a better way of putting it.

I think the record profits would be very good reasons. Using "Drill Baby, Drill" as a campaign slogan was not a pointless turn of phrase. Also, the world's largest proven oil reserves, which happen to be in Venezuela, are now de facto controlled and refined in... the US. Lucky coincidence?

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#46

Post by onlypassingthru »

js2 wrote: post #40
512akHaf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is LLM with a clever prompt that avoids the most egregious tells (though "load-bearing" appears). The number of times the article goes on complete tangents, introducing new irrelevant names and the general useless level of detail, all in perfect verbose English points to an LLM. So does the upbeat and persuasive style. If you write that level of detail, use a historian's style and footnotes. Do not use the synthet…

Where the heck did LLMs (Claude in particular) pick up the "load-bearing" tic I wonder? I'm over a half century old and read a lot, and I don't think I've ever seen load-bearing used so much before I noticed Claude using it all the time a few months back.

Claude is obviously planning to become a structural engineer.

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#47

Post by axus »

magnio wrote: post #4

If you wanna read an article containing essentially the same information without the pesky LLM voice: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/december/m...

Thanks to your link, I read both. There's distinct information in each of them, I'd say its worth reading both.

The blog author is an "LLM enthusiast", at a minimum I'll give them credit for pointing their agent at an interesting set of Wikipedia articles. Maybe a blog platform tied to Markdown format is going to produce similar looking posts.

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#48

Post by jmilloy »

magnio wrote: post #4

If you wanna read an article containing essentially the same information without the pesky LLM voice: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2025/december/m...

I'm not getting LLM-voice, but I do find it hard and unpleasant to read. This usni article is much better.

Re: America's Greatest Strategic Blunder: The Imprisonment of Qian Xuesen

#50

Post by Apocryphon »

elevation wrote: post #36
512akHaf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is LLM with a clever prompt that avoids the most egregious tells (though "load-bearing" appears). The number of times the article goes on complete tangents, introducing new irrelevant names and the general useless level of detail, all in perfect verbose English points to an LLM. So does the upbeat and persuasive style. If you write that level of detail, use a historian's style and footnotes. Do not use the synthet…

The thought occurs that some day we'll be nostalgic for the quaint LLM speak of yore.

I've thought that a lot of present LLM-speak is a distant descendant of the heyday of the "Now See This", Buzzfeed, et al clickbait that was en vogue about a decade or dozen years ago. A sort of chirpy contrarian provocation to drive reader engagement. "You won't believe how this X" begets "this isn't just Y -- it's Z." So it will be a style that eventually leaves as new models are trained on other writing.
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