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Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

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Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean. Flowery and fluffy. I don't see any clear giveaways, but it feels like it and is a bit annoying to read because the information in there isn't very dense.

the "why it matters" subtitle near the end seems very much like claude to me

That falls into the general category of 'authority groping' (yes, I coin my own terms) where a prediction engine without real reasoning, must apply numerous tricks to convey confidence, authority and substance where there may be less or none. Similar to the constant negative-propositions or "not" statement, where usually one to three things that do not apply are articulated, which has the result of credibility accumulation, I suppose, by showing "hey, I am right about not just one thing, but four!" hence the saturated styles we tend to see.

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stake the claim then. I’ve also read a fair bit of LLM text and this didn’t trip anything for me. Edit: after reading the author bio and the other articles, I agree with this assessment. Though I will admit, this particular article didn’t jump out as AI to me.

It's Claude. I picked up on it too (I am also a heavy Claude user) The title alone gives it away. Sentences like this also trigger my daily annoyance: "Researchers found an elegant way to test it, and the timing was almost too convenient." Me: "Almost too convenient is expressing an opinion. Rewrite this to be straight forward, succinct information" Claude: "You're right, and I was wrong. That's the second time you'v…

And the nonsensical, chatty slang

> Let me ...

As if Claude actually needed the human user's permission or cooperation to do so.

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it more accurate to say we went from wolves to dogs? Dogs are not a group of species. The domesticated dog is a species. Also canines seem to hybridize well, suggesting they aren't truly differentiated anyways.

Biology is quite arbitrary. For instance the dingo is basically just a wild dog, looks like a dog, can breed and create fertile offspring with dogs, yet is considered its own species. So I prefer things that are more visceral in nature. There are lots of dogs that look a lot like wolves, but going from a wolf to a chihuahua is just kind of mind boggling in terms of the degree of change over such a small window of tim…

Same thing happens with plants on a similar timescale right? Cultivars look nothing like their wild relatives at this point.

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#66

Interesting that being sealed for 5 million years did not yield any life forms more complex than insects. Maybe sun and space are importance factors for intelligence.

Yes, but an alternative would be that if an organism is perfectly fit for its static environment (that hasn't changed in 5 million years) then there is no benefit to evolving novel features.

More likely a dynamic environment is most important for intelligence.

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#67

Speleology aside, just a few days ago in one of HN discussions I was told LLM-produced content is already indistinguishable from human-made. But I'm sure I would have pretty good chances to correctly guess even the exact brand which helped to write this sloppy text. And it's the same with many stories I read.

I know what you mean. Flowery and fluffy. I don't see any clear giveaways, but it feels like it and is a bit annoying to read because the information in there isn't very dense.

I saw a great video on YouTube by languagejones, and he asks: do we have to tell the difference between an LLM and an idiot?

The writing is just bad. I think this is clear to everyone, so I guess we could stop at that

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#68
For some reason, I feel sad. I was always fascinated when finding an article about newly found discoveries on Earth, and the comments from Hacker News were usually helpful and adding more to the stories.

Now, we talk about whether such discovery was written by LLM.

Does it really matter?

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#69
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have there been many nuclear reactor meltdowns prior to Chernobyl?

You could just look for isotopes from the atmospheric nuclear tests that were conducted? Doesn't need to be a reactor I would assume?

Yes.

But also, finding something from within the last hundred years doesn’t say an awful lot about something claimed to have been a closed system for millions of years.

Re: Workers Drilling in Romania Broke into a Cave Sealed for 5.5M Years

#70
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have there been many nuclear reactor meltdowns prior to Chernobyl?

Before 1986 there have been twelve "public" core meltdowns, and at least six, likely more, incidents not public on nuclear subs, etc. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident... You should look up how many live armed nuclear bombs have been accidentally dropped on mainland US soil. More significantly, there's been a lot of above ground and atmospheric tests that have draped residuals across the…

There have been natural nuclear reactors, but I don’t think any suffered a catastrophic event.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

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