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

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

#371

Post by snk »

andai wrote: post #261
jeremyjh wrote: post #62

These are all important points and I love the analogy. But there is an even bigger issue with having LLMs write for you: 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 tho…

Yeah, I often find that I think I understand something perfectly until I try to explain it.

I'm quick-witted, outspoken, playful, clever, apparently intelligent; Mensa, Colloquy, like that; not quite clever enough for the triple 9 societies. Morning pages readily enough dispel the illusion. Or coding. I scanned six years of morning pages into a PDF and fed it to Claude to distill for me; apparently, I have several thoughts per year. Damn, I'd hoped for more. Asking Claude Code to critique my code is, ah, good coaching. Ouch.

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

#372

Post by 8bitsrule »

dynm wrote: post #14

I'm a bit skeptical of arguments of the form, "You should not use LLMs without disclosure because LLMs at bad at writing." My reasoning is: If LLMs get better at writing—which I think is extremely likely—will you switch positions and say that now using LLMs without disclosure is A-OK? Surely some people are willing to bite that bullet and say yes. But for most people, my guess is that the answer will remain no. Thus,…

>using LLMs without disclosure is A-OK?

'Without disclosure' is about taking credit for work that isn't yours.

WP defines 'ghostwriter' as: "a person hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are credited to another person as the author."

Anyone could choose to go through life relying on a reputation manufactured from many lies. They might want to think about how hard that reputation will hit the ground, if it does.

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

#373

Post by ricksunny »

“…at worst, they will cause people who see it for what it is to question your authenticity entirely.”

love it. I mean, if a world is going to exist that treats LLM-assisted writing with serenity, the content creator should consider themselves mandated to describe how they used AI to produce their content. Do I need the prompts? Not necessarily, although bonus points for transparency if they do share prompts. But just a high-level articulation about how they leveraged AI, so I as the reader don’t have to lose time wondering how much of the content & (like expository & analysis for nonfiction, plot elements for fiction is the author’s own and how much is the LLM’s.

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

#374

Post by snk »

zahlman wrote: post #213
bbor wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are powerful tools but they do not have any human understanding - that isn't their optimization target. Ofc the rest is all right on, but I'd quibble with this specific idea. LLMs are absolutely targeted at modeling human understanding, which is the same faculty that contains what we call perception (!= sensibility) and intuition (!= rationality). It would be nice to train them to be completely alien from the gr…

> absolutely targeted at modeling Not everyone accepts a simulationist view in which modeling something accurately enough inherently results in creating the actual thing.

Really? How do they distinguish perfect copies from originals?

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

#375

Post by CamperBob2 »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #363
CamperBob2 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm game. Say $1000, donated to a charity of the winner's choice? How do you want to set the bet up, and how do you think it should be decided? To be precise: I will bet that high-level programming languages won't be any less popular as a whole, but the vast majority of code will be written by AI rather than humans, working from specs written in natural language or something very close to it. What we call "source cod…

Seems like a case for https://longbets.org/ You and the other poster just need to find some agreeable benchmark so you can decide who won.

Good idea, I know they've been around for a while. I just signed up under the same username in case 27183 is interested.

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

#377

Post by snk »

jonahx wrote: post #205
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs get better at writing—which I think is extremely likely—will you switch positions and say that now using LLMs without disclosure is A-OK? If LLM writing improves to the point where they can infer the business (or other real world) context and serves the functional purpose of informing others as opposed to being an intellectually lazy piece being produced only for the purpose of being produced, then I’d be f…

I don't think it would be fine. Someone's actual writing (or talking) is a rich stream of information about who they are, their motives, their preferences, modes of persuasion, and so much more. Undetectable LLM writing essentially allows someone to assume another person's identity. That is not good for anyone except the person trying to pull off a "scam" of some sort, in the broadest sense of that term. It's bad for…

Good for privacy and productivity.

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

#378

Post by thaumasiotes »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #367
thaumasiotes wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that nothing in your comment was in any tension with the comment you responded to, and you still don't seem to realize that.

I think you've misunderstood something. The comment I replied to specifies "words and phrases and concepts and cultural references". You only seem to be talking about words (and perhaps exceedingly simple turns of phrase). I was quite direct that I disagree when it comes to (among other things) the more complex idioms and certainly when it comes to any and all cultural references. Imagine a localization attempting to…

Here's what I understand:

- You've got a pet peeve.

- You're going to rant about it, because you want to, whether or not it's relevant to an existing conversation.

- You didn't bother to think about my comments.

- You didn't bother to think about habinero's comment either.

Here is the same passage of the Analects (part of the chapter Gongye Chang) in different translations:

--- Annping Chin ---

Zilu said, "We would like to hear what you would like to see yourself accomplish."

The Master said, "To give comfort to the old, to have the trust of my friends, and to have the young seeking to be near me."

--- David Hinton ---

Adept Lu then said: "No Master, we'd like to hear your greatest ambition."

"To comfort the old, to trust my friends, and to cherish the young."

---

Our focus here is on the second line, what Confucius says. Does he want to trust his friends, or does he want his friends to trust him?

Does he want to cherish the young, or does he want them to cherish him?

We might also ask, though the translators have agreed on this point, whether he wants to comfort the elderly or for the elderly to comfort him. (And we could further ask whether Confucius wants to personally comfort the elderly, or whether what he has in mind is for society in general to do that.)

All three clauses are formed the same way in the original Classical Chinese, and for a couple of interacting technical reasons they are all ambiguous in this way. Translators, as you can see, make different choices.

But of relevance here, when you're doing a translation to English, you have no option but to make a choice. It isn't possible to render the original text 'in literal translation' and append a note explaining what went wrong. You must commit to a meaning behind the text and phrase that meaning in English. You can also append a note explaining that you might have chosen wrong, but English simply doesn't allow you to do anything that parallels the source material.

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

#379

Post by snk »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #49
dynm wrote: post #14

I'm a bit skeptical of arguments of the form, "You should not use LLMs without disclosure because LLMs at bad at writing." My reasoning is: If LLMs get better at writing—which I think is extremely likely—will you switch positions and say that now using LLMs without disclosure is A-OK? Surely some people are willing to bite that bullet and say yes. But for most people, my guess is that the answer will remain no. Thus,…

Personally, I'd be fine with LLM writing if it wasn't so unpleasant to read

When I can get an LLM to write like Isaac Asimov, I'll consider some artificial literary experiments; there were books I wanted him to have written that he did not get around to, quitting at 458.

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

#380

Post by snk »

SecretDreams wrote: post #67
dynm wrote: post #14

I'm a bit skeptical of arguments of the form, "You should not use LLMs without disclosure because LLMs at bad at writing." My reasoning is: If LLMs get better at writing—which I think is extremely likely—will you switch positions and say that now using LLMs without disclosure is A-OK? Surely some people are willing to bite that bullet and say yes. But for most people, my guess is that the answer will remain no. Thus,…

Agreed. LLMs for writing is like intellectual catfishing. You are presenting yourself one way in written form.. but that's not who you will ever be once someone has to actually have a conversation with you. And that's wrong.

That's privacy.
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