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Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

bcantrill.dtrace.org

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Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#151

Post by 27183 »

hi_im_greg_h wrote: post #101
27183 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of times the friction of writing has saved me from prematurely communicating a poorly understood idea must be in the hundreds or maybe thousands. For me when something is difficult to write about, it's a very good signal that I don't understand it well enough. So I think all the things you label as aspects of writing that aren't necessarily "thinking" are nonetheless good for thinking because they provide…

This to me is the key reason people are so obsessed with using an LLM for everything. They’re completely opposed to experiencing any type of friction.

Hence The Great Smoothening of Minds we're all experiencing in this decrepit era. I blame the financial incentive, and welcome its disappearance. There are too many people doing computers just for the big paycheck, it would be more fun without them. Maybe the AI bubble popping will get rid of them.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#152

Post by softwaredoug »

It’s never been easier to differentiate yourself as a writer. You just write with some personality. People don’t want writing that doesn’t look average, but looks novel.

I despair much less for human writers than a did maybe a year ago.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#153

Post by JGregoryH »

It's been odd as I've seen colleagues I generally thought of as intelligent and self aware post glaringly AI generated cliche LinkedIn corporate slop, even accounts from generally respectable and innovative tech companies. I don't know whether they think no one can tell or that they don't care if it is obviously AI? It's truly bizarre and now seems to be the vast majority of posts there.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#154

Post by embedding-shape »

softwaredoug wrote: post #152

It’s never been easier to differentiate yourself as a writer. You just write with some personality. People don’t want writing that doesn’t look average, but looks novel. I despair much less for human writers than a did maybe a year ago.

> just write with some personality

I think that's the first time someone claims that "write with some personality" is some easy thing you just learn somehow. There are authors out there, even ones that make a living on their writing, who still haven't learned to "write with some personality".

What exactly does that mean and how concretely can people actually do this in practice? A few "tips and tricks" might be more helpful than "just write better" or similar stuff.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#155

Post by bcantrill »

raincole wrote: post #24

(2025) Also in the author's latest post[0], they took this[1] self-reported preference poll seriously, which makes it very hard for me to take their articles seriously. [0] https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/05/the-revolt-of-the-re... [1] https://writethatblog.substack.com/p/dev-reaction-to-ai-blog...

And in that piece, I think I explained why it's important to take it seriously even though (and in fact, because!) it's self-reported?

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#156

Post by card_zero »

fwlr wrote: post #88
jampekka wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your thoughts - and you can't always trust the gestalt. I don't disagree, but I think it's often not appreciated how much there…

Strange! I would quite specifically highlight “having to do the reader’s thinking for them”, as well as more generally developing the skill to “communicate non-interactively with an unknown audience”, as extremely valuable upgrades to my thinking.

It's a kind of shared fiction of an imaginary person's thinking, really. The author writes "now, I know what you must be thinking", and hopes the reader will agree "OK, close enough".

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#157

Post by ripe »

jeremyjh wrote: post #114
agile-gift0262 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. And I'd say that at least in my case, it applies to both writing prose and code

Agreed, but a lot of code doesn't need to be understood. Knowing which is which is the art right now.

> a lot of code doesn't need to be understood

Really? I am having difficulty thinking of any examples of code that doesn't need to be understood. If it isn't understood by someone, then how is it even working?

If you mean like a library you are using, where you aren't even reading the internals or might not even have access to it, OK, but that code is stull understood by its authors, surely?

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#159

Post by luxuryballs »

embedding-shape wrote: post #3

What baffles me, isn't just that people don't see the low quality writing themselves, but that they must also be able to identify other's shit "LLM writings" right? And realize how what they put out sounds exactly the same? Or did people completely stop reading what they've "wrote" before hitting that magical submit button?

if they had been half decent at writing before they would notice the quality issue, not being able to see it is also a writing skill issue, now it's just kind of spammy as people are just reaching for the tool in ai nighsosis

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#160

Post by lacunary »

27183 wrote: post #119
stronglikedan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone needs to disclose the tools they used to write something. Nobody ever disclosed Word's grammar suggestions or spelling corrections, or the fact that they used some autocomplete tool to produce code, so we should they now need to start disclosing this tool. Besides, in it's current state, it discloses itself to anyone paying attention. I do think people own the output they produce regardless of th…

I don't really care about the tool per se, but if I'm reading some LLM output you give me its utility is awfully limited if you don't also supply the prompt. That's what I'd like to see normalized: Do not give me LLM output unless you also give me the full prompt text. Without the prompt I cannot discern what you were trying to do, because the LLM output is basically devoid of any coherent voice. Whether it's code, p…

it's often not a single prompt but a tree or rooted DAG of many prompts, with the root node being the final prompt. the prompts on interior nodes might not make much sense without the intermediate responses as well. how would you like this communicated?
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