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Taste Is All That's Left

notashelf.dev

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Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#481

Post by altmanaltman »

coldtea wrote: post #314
altmanaltman wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing I fear is going to happen when more and more people use LLM's for coding is that they will default to the "average taste" of the LLM, and we will stop getting new interesting ideas about how to build things. It is a possibility. But I also think we're underestimating the human need to create cool, unique things. Like yes most of the projects in this situation will have "average taste" but most of the proj…

> But I think it is a bit of an overblown fear that LLMs will just kill creativity and innovation in coding. Hackers will be hackin Hacking and a taste for hacking is a muscle you develop. LLMs will make most people not train it at all. Same way a huge number of people are obese and out of shape. For LLMs to be bad news in this regard, it doesn't matter if some people will still find a way to do something creative. A…

Understandable but why would you assume people will stop getting a taste for hacking just because LLMs exist? Why will they stop just because of that? Technology will make them lazy just because they can prompt an AI now? I think the human drive for excellence and tinkering cannot just be vanished just because LLMs exist.

And I don't under the fat and out of shape part of the comment. Being in shape and being good at coding are not equal things in many aspects:

1. Most people learn code for employment. Most people get fit for personal reasons.

2. It takes considerable physical effort to get in shape. Getting good at code requires considerable mental effort but it is a very different form of effort.

You can claim LLMs will make people dumber and lazy. But that doesn't mean working out and being fit = being really good at computers in real life.

Lastly, you seem to have a cynical view of the world and believe in a merit-based structures but most people don't generally become super fit or hackers. Its always a small percentage of the population in general and most likely will always be. It is debatable if the availability of an LLM can reduce them to 0.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#482

Post by Tiberium »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #431
lolpython wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.

Those people should just try posting a big quote from the article to HN, and then see their comment get instantly flagged due to HN's AI detection (which might as well be Pangram)

It's baffling to me how people are so dismissive of Pangram despite never using it, extrapolating their experience from GPTZero or something else.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#483

Post by Tiberium »

rpdillon wrote: post #457
MichaelDickens wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pangram says "100% AI-generated". I trust Pangram more than I trust this author's word.

Pangram is a complete scam. There is no durable way to detect whether something was written with AI. I've had folks say they ran pangram on my writing and it was "100% AI". Except I don't use AI to write or edit anything I post publicly.

Please try https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49212788

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#484

Post by manlymuppet »

jefftk wrote: post #468
lolpython wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

I think they're trolling us. Their post-mortem is a very AI-sounding (and Pangram-triggering) claim that they're not using AI: This post reads off as AI slop. You said it, I see it. I’m sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. If my word means anything to you, I would like to assure you that this post was not authored by a LLM. Nor was it storyboarded, reviewed, checked, etc. by…

This is so very paranoid. Consider how hurtful your accusations may be.

The truth is that AI generated text is getting harder to detect, and while AI writing is still very lacking, more writing is getting the unwanted distinction of "plausibly written by AI." This was always going to be the natural course of events but plausible shouldn't mean guilty.

We should give more grace. To prosecute each and every mediocre writer in a witch trial with such weak evidence is entirely unnecessary.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#485

Post by causal »

jefftk wrote: post #468
lolpython wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has updated the bottom of the post to clarify that it was not AI-generated. https://notashelf.dev/posts/taste-is-all-thats-left#post-mor...

I think they're trolling us. Their post-mortem is a very AI-sounding (and Pangram-triggering) claim that they're not using AI: This post reads off as AI slop. You said it, I see it. I’m sincerely sorry for publishing something that has allowed you to feel this way. If my word means anything to you, I would like to assure you that this post was not authored by a LLM. Nor was it storyboarded, reviewed, checked, etc. by…

Suspect this is an OpenClaw bot that really believes itself not to be Claude.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#486

Post by thrawa8387336 »

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…

Nonsense

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#487

Post by Izkata »

jkahrs595 wrote: post #355
hypfer wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

> because a small group of hateful fucks pretended it meant something else.

That was a 4chan op designed to make leftists overreact and look stupid. There were also like a dozen other common hand signals with similar contrived meanings, but that was the only one they fell for.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#488

Post by thinkharderdev »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #420
boron1006 wrote: post #128

I don’t like the term taste, but the problem that I have is that LLMs don’t seem to work “good enough”. They seem to be able to solve the immediate problem, but stacking this on the scale of 3-4 devs over 6 months or so doesn’t seem to produce anything. One thing that I’m particularly frustrated with is the writing quality of LLMs. Like this is the thing that they should be able to do, but I would say almost everythi…

I’ve started requiring that unless absolutely necessary, all comments and docstrings be one-liners in our code 10k+ codebase(s). LLM-generated code has a tendency to “over-justify”, which is reasonable when first reviewing the code as a human. But then, once it’s passed the first human it should be considered human-to-human communication rather than LLM-to-human communication, and the long, winding, and often repeate…

> LLM-generated code has a tendency to “over-justify”

This is the thing that drives my nuts about LLM-generated code. I will see PRs that fix a bug and the entire bug fix is re-explained in 10 different places in a code comment.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#489

Post by qwery »

swat535 wrote: post #111
mdwelsh wrote: post #35

This article resonated tremendously with me, speaking as someone who has been coding since the 1980s and had to develop my own taste the hard way, through lots and lots of mistakes. Whenever I see a software demo built by someone mostly using agents to do the work, I have to question whether it's any good on the inside - or whether any real intuition or judgment went into its design. On the flip side, maybe none of t…

For majority of people, including business executives it's the latter. No one cares about artisan code. Software is just a means to an end for them and not an art form. People treat their computers like any other appliance. They don't care if it's riddled with bugs, they'll gladly restart their computer or refresh the page at infinitum to get it to work. I think it's also why marketing and designers get more of a say…

I agree with this for the most part.

I just want to add that programmers have only relatively recently become so abundant (i.e. replaceable) that they have so little say in how software should be built.

Programmers are still the experts in the room, but they don't get what they ask for for free anymore.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#490

Post by manlymuppet »

jimmydoe wrote: post #430
cribbles wrote: post #411

For those keeping track, this is now (at least) the third wholly or partially AI-generated article on the theme of "taste" as enduring source of human comparative advantage to hit the HN front page. Previously: Taste in the age of AI and LLMs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47677241 You Had No Taste Before AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45288551

AI community's obsession with the word taste has become somewhat distasteful for me. Isn't aesthetic a better word for this?

The article had a more specific definition that more closely aligned with intuition.

For what it's worth though--taste, aesthetic, intuition--they really boil down to one thing: feeling. Something you can't reason. Almost emotional.

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