The revolt of the reader • Hacker News Board

Re: The revolt of the reader

#241

Post by mikewarot » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #213

kierangill wrote: post #65

My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. A trope typically indicates I’m in for an uphill read. I recently read this William Zinsser quote that inspired a nickname for this: Clotted Claude [1]. > Nobody has made the point better than George Orwell in his translation into modern bureaucratic fuzz of this famous verse from Ecclesiastes: > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is…

> " My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. " I saw a comment on HN that that was roughly "re: ChatGPT, when I write one sentence and I get back three screens of lecture, I don't consider that a 'chat'". I consider that comment often when prompting Claude and hoping for a two line response and getting an "it's important to note that ". At some point it may as well be the teacher in a Char…

>it's important to note that

Here on HN, I've noticed that I pro-actively defend myself against things I think will be said in counter to my comments. I concluded it's being trained into me.

Alternatively, I've been banging on against the same things that I see as insane so long that I know all the objections.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#242

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

esjeon wrote: post #120

kierangill wrote: post #65

My revolt is against the cognitive stress of reading generated text. A trope typically indicates I’m in for an uphill read. I recently read this William Zinsser quote that inspired a nickname for this: Clotted Claude [1]. > Nobody has made the point better than George Orwell in his translation into modern bureaucratic fuzz of this famous verse from Ecclesiastes: > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is…

I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from the very first word. It leaves little room for roaming and guessing, as it firmly nails elements one by one, and, by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I get the full meaning almost immediately. This sentence is not randomly written; this is crafted with…

[deleted]

Re: The revolt of the reader

#243

Post by Seattle3503 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:01 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #156

card_zero wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not that. The first two are people complaining about other people incontinently identifying text as AI, because it's annoying to listen to unreliable hunches and aspersions. The second two are complaining about AI detectors not being very reliable. The claim made in the last one is a casual anecdote about "an AI detector", presumably told because it's amusing. It isn't a vehement statement about how you mus…

Sorry, to me any complaint about people complaining about prose is a vehement statement about accepting AI. I feel that if one doesn't want to send that message, they shouldn't be attempting to convince others that rejection of AI prose must stop.

Yeah, intentionally or unintentionally there is often at motte-and-bailey fallacy flavor to their arguments. The motte is that it can sometimes be hard to identify AI writing, the baily is that we should accept AI wholesale and stop worrying about AI writing.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#244

Post by sunshowers » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:07 PM UTC

benmmurphy wrote: post #215

juliansimioni wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it was “the results speak for themselves” and then simply a (large) number of automated tests run that never had human eyes. Yes, quantity famously has a quality all its own, but perhaps not where correctness checks for something this central is concerned.

I saw 'the results speak for themselves' but for me this article seemed to have less LLM-ese than some of the more recent obvious LLM prose posted to hackernews. As a reader I think its jarring because you just see a lot of articles purportedly written by different people using a very similar voice. I guess pre-LLM you might see this in a newspaper with very strong editorial oversight. So the phenomena is not complet…

My complaint is directed at the Rust Foundation, not the authors, to be clear. Yes, it's free labor, but the Foundation ought to have standards.

I showed Bryan the post while in a meeting room with him, left the room, and a few minutes later heard a very loud, very exasperated primal scream coming from the room!

Re: The revolt of the reader

#245

Post by nwhnwh » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #205

daveguy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that Nazi doesn't mean Nazi anymore. It means neonazi / white supremacist / white nationalist, which is a much broader group of people that, for some baffling reason, are under the impression that people don't care about their fascism and racism anymore.

"You guys are fucking nazis" - said the drunk young guy to the police when he was arrested for fighting outside a bar.

"You guys are fucking dogs" - someone said that the other day, and, of course, it means that the word "dog" lost its meaning.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#246

Post by Seattle3503 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:15 PM UTC

kgarten wrote: post #226

I enjoyed the piece. Yet, what I don't understand is the author's endorsement of Pangram ... I don't like that without interacting with authors they just labeled texts (articles, novels etc.) as AI generated (they got a lot of publicity with it). Yet, given that the work is probabilistic and there's never 100 %, I find that irresponsible. I would have expected that they would have had at least the decency to tell the…

Pangram 4.0 was released after your blog post. I've found it to be an improvement over 3.3

Re: The revolt of the reader

#247

Post by msm_ » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #193

andai wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually found the second one easier to understand. What the hell does "time happeneth" mean? Despite our best efforts, events continue to occur!

> What the hell does "time happeneth" mean? It's perfectly clear from context. Time and chance are the governing factors in success, not intrinsic merit.

It may be perfectly clear to you. For me (a non-native speaker) reading the first verse required a significant focus and I still didn't get what the author meant (only the general vibes).

The second verse was immediately clear.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#248

Post by hombre_fatal » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #237

esjeon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Orwell did a great job there actually. Despite its bizarre look, the sentence is evocative and eloquent. It does make me get a clear mental image from the very first word. It leaves little room for roaming and guessing, as it firmly nails elements one by one, and, by the time I reach the end of the sentence, I get the full meaning almost immediately. This sentence is not randomly written; this is crafted with…

To be gentle, that some here are impressed by Orwell's intentionally bad sentence indicates that they need to improve their reading and writing skills. Using complex words where they don't introduce additional precision or meaning to fake intellectualism is something basic that writing classes warn against. Fun fact for the day, someone coined a word for this type of puffed up, fake intellectual writing: lexiphanicis…

Orwell's bad sentence uses harder words than it needs to, but it reworks the bible verse into direct claims.

Needing better reading skills to understand the bible verse just shows that it's not a good way to communicate. If an HNer wrote like the bible verse, you'd find them insufferably ostentatious. Just like you wouldn't want Claude to use literary flair when you're asking why your production database stopped working.

If you dumb down Orwell's sentence back to simpler terms, it's a point much better communicated than the bible verse.

Frankly the bickering in this thread is due to the original HN comment choosing a bad comparison because both sentences are poorly communicated for different reasons in this context: you wouldn't want Claude to write either.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#249

Post by jimmaswell » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #172

lljk_kennedy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first communicated a feeling. A brief flutter in the soul of a picture of recognition, painted for your mind's eye with care by the author. The second transcribed considerable information bandwidth through intentionally structured word choice for maximal density.

Yeah. The first one was like a minimalist painting, the second like a software specification. I'm pretty sure that the general public does not want to read software specifications.

I can't see how you could apply "minimalist" to that excerpt. It's maximalist, hammering the same point over and over and over when one or two examples with a little more worldbuilding per example would have done better if they were going for "evocative".

If I had to pin a subjective experience to reading it, it would be that of being stuck in a car as a teenager with a parent who's ranting about whatever set them off that day and won't move on from repeating their grievance in different words when you got the point five minutes ago. In contrast, the second feels like having an enjoyable and productive level-headed conversation with someone who respects you and trusts you to understand the words.

Re: The revolt of the reader

#250

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Sun, Sep 06, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #248

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be gentle, that some here are impressed by Orwell's intentionally bad sentence indicates that they need to improve their reading and writing skills. Using complex words where they don't introduce additional precision or meaning to fake intellectualism is something basic that writing classes warn against. Fun fact for the day, someone coined a word for this type of puffed up, fake intellectual writing: lexiphanicis…

Orwell's bad sentence uses harder words than it needs to, but it reworks the bible verse into direct claims. Needing better reading skills to understand the bible verse just shows that it's not a good way to communicate. If an HNer wrote like the bible verse, you'd find them insufferably ostentatious. Just like you wouldn't want Claude to use literary flair when you're asking why your production database stopped work…

I'll point out that the bible verse was a translation for the common folk of their central religious document in an age where Christianity was dominant. Being able to read it smoothly is a very low bar to clear for the educated.