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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

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Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#371

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

innocentoldguy wrote: post #324
nazgu1 wrote: post #310

I have mixed feelings... I stumbled upon, read a post-mortem that looks even more AI-generated than the article. "That says something about my writing. It says nothing about who wrote it." - Two contradicting sentences, author's writing skills are part of the author as-a-whole "The short sentences, the reversals, the one-word lines" and then "I will write the next one plainer.". - even more? And... I wonder if this i…

I'm a writer with what may be an unpopular opinion. I have a college degree in creative writing; I do technical writing and programming for a living, and I used to publish technical articles on Linux, Python, Elixir, and other topics—complete with em dashes—long before AI was a thing. When confronting AI as a writer and deciding how I feel about it, I've landed on the conclusion that I've never accused mathematicians…

[flagged]

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#372

Post by jottinger »

hypfer wrote: post #340
scandox wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. What fresh hell is this? If this is human then I wish it was AI

> and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use…

sigh The em-dash is something we've read a lot from GOOD PUBLISHED WRITING so we as human authors tend to emulate what we read as good writing. It's a publishing artifact that's migrated. It's not a sign of the apocalypse. Neither is AI, but hey.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#373

Post by jkahrs595 »

hypfer wrote: post #358
jkahrs595 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Th emdash is not something I use ever (before or after AI slop), but telling people not to use it because it’s associated with slop is not the way. It’s like when people tried to tell everyone to stop using the ok symbol with their hands because a small group of hateful fucks pretended it meant something else. It only switches meaning if you let it, and stop using it yourself. What happens when AI adopts something el…

I mean you would stop using the OK Hands thing when trying to communicate with a group that has for (possibly arbitrary) reasons decided that that symbol is bad, and thus anything you say is bad, right? At least temporarily until you got synced up with that group? There is a place for the strategy of just continuing to use something and push through the noise there, but the em dash is not in that place. Common percep…

No, that’s my whole point. I would not stop. If someone tries to attribute malice to something I do that has none, I might explain to them how misguided they are, but I’m not going to give in just because someone can’t be bothered to understand context.

I think it’s fine to use as one of many signals to identify AI (not the only) but, again, avoiding its use is not going to solve anything.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#374

Post by petra »

dmarcos wrote: post #148
madrox wrote: post #142

We've been talking about taste for a year now as it relates to AI, so I'm going to counterpoint it: if competitors can reproduce your features, UX, and visual decisions within days, your taste is not really an advantage. How many apps implemented pull down to refresh once one person did it? How many people even remember (or care) whose taste spawned that UX pattern? [1] AI is not inaugurating an age of taste. It is s…

Also Microsoft couldn’t match Apple taste with effectively all resources in the world. And they really tried. True taste is interesting because is more like a worldview, a modus operandi, a continuous process… those are harder to replicate.

Microsoft's taste was "good enough". They lost because of an app ecosystem, and because of Apple's brand power, the same way beautiful Chinese shoes will lose to Nike.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#375

Post by bigDinosaur »

fodkodrasz wrote: post #289
dmarcos wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Microsoft couldn’t match Apple taste with effectively all resources in the world. And they really tried. True taste is interesting because is more like a worldview, a modus operandi, a continuous process… those are harder to replicate.

Microsoft was superior in both in the windows 95-2000 era, and with Metro (on phone, on desktop it was half-assed). The problem was when they started to try matching Apple, instead of staying true to the core of their own aesthetics. Both the Fisher-Price XP style which was bot zeitgeist, and an attempt to answer for the skeumorphic tragedy apple was pursuing, and the recent floats, spacings, central taskbar mimichki…

I'm not really convinced Metro was better than anything Apple at the time, even though it was refreshing and interesting. Was it actually easier to use? I didn't really find that nor see it with others.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#376

Post by darkwater »

attheballot wrote: post #350
darkwater wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't know, their GH profile [1] and their projects, even the recent ones [2], seem pretty non-LLM. IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism, doubling down on the "AI slop" writing style. [1] https://github.com/NotAShelf [2] https://github.com/NotAShelf/tuigreet

> IMO the post-mortem is more a satirical response to the HN criticism They have edited it again to be slightly more emotional. It's why their "On Taste" closure doesn't actually pertain to Taste anymore. Of course, they wouldn't notice the mismatch - they didn't write it in the first place. They aren't being satirical. They're pissed they got called them out. Were they not, they'd not bother with edits.

Ok but who's pissed off bere? A human or a let-loose agent? Or a human that wrote the post with an LLM although they swear they didn't?

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#378

Post by ghtbircshotbe »

hellojomp wrote: post #8

On the topic of taste, I think of this quote in Susan Sontag's "Notes On 'Camp'" often: “For taste governs every free — as opposed to rote — human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to deve…

I'm a little confused. She follows describing people with good/bad taste immediately with the statement that there is no system for taste. If it is all relative, then how is she determining that someone has good or bad taste? Is there anything between moral relativism and mathematical proof? Just your own ineffable belief that you are right?

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#379

Post by yreg »

hypfer wrote: post #340
scandox wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. What fresh hell is this? If this is human then I wish it was AI

> and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use…

I will continue to use em dashes as I always had, thank you very much.

I couldn't care less if you mistake me for an LLM. That's your problem for being overconfident in your misplaced judgement.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#380

Post by notashelf »

hypfer wrote: post #340
scandox wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. What fresh hell is this? If this is human then I wish it was AI

> and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use…

Em dashes are mine. I will use them whether they have been appropriated by LLMs or not. I used to use commas in their place. That resulted in a much more dense post layout and far less readable text.

FWIW I actually use three dashes (-) and my blog's build system transforms those into em dashes. This is not a defense, but nor is "this character is associated with slop" an argument. Yes LLMs use lots of words, phrases and patterns. Would you rather I stop using altogether? I am all for criticism, but please pick something I can actually change and improve without cutting a part of my style for no reason other than "Claude uses it too!"

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