Slop Cop • Hacker News Board

Re: Slop Cop

#101

Post by IshKebab » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:38 AM UTC

3eb7988a1663 wrote: post #39

Wow! Did you know that Abraham Lincoln let AI write the Gettysburg Address? 17 patterns identified out of only 305 words. I don't know why I ever let him get the ad revenue.

I tried that but most of those seem to be false positives. It seems to report Triple Construction based just on commas, which were apparently way more common in writing of the time. It also reports em-dashes which are obviously irrelevant in this case.

And nobody is really saying that you need to completely eliminate these constructs. 17 matches out of 305 words is an order of magnitude less than the example it opens with.

Re: Slop Cop

#102

Post by IshKebab » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:40 AM UTC

starkparker wrote: post #20

This is a genuinely useful tool with a shitty self-sabotaging name.

What do you mean? It's a great name. Catchy, rhymes, and immediately tells you what it does.

Re: Slop Cop

#103

Post by shevy-java » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:42 AM UTC

> Companies that utilize these tools will thrive

I read this before but I have some doubts. I recall some companies that were surprised when suddenly the prices were increased. Usual examples include Amazon, Google and some more, but this can happen to any company, including AI slop master companies. I am not at all claiming that the AI slop has zero use cases, of course - there are use cases, so I don't deny that. But the assumption generated here by AI slop, claiming how all the problems will soon have been solved, and risk-free profits are to be made by all companies, is just rubbish nonsense. AI slop is a big liar. In fact: I am beginning to believe that the current US administration is an AI slop brigade. Every time the stock market yields some suspicious profits, it seems to be that the AI slop protects some thieves here.

Re: Slop Cop

#104

Post by zjp » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 7:43 AM UTC

This is the Hemingway Editor by another name, and I have the same complaint about it that I have about the Hemingway Editor. See:

https://zjpea.substack.com/p/an-llm-will-never-say-thou

Re: Slop Cop

#105

Post by gattr » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 8:36 AM UTC

danilocesar wrote: post #90

chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

I've heard this theory in the past: In a couple of years, the corporative communication will work like this: You write a bunch of bullet points and feed them to an AI to create a beautiful and well written email. Your reader will feed that email into his own AI and he will generate bullet points to read.

In other words, just as they did in "Rob Roy": "My factor will contact Your Grace's factor..."

Re: Slop Cop

#106

Post by tedggh » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

lokar wrote: post #48

chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

As a senior engineer I spend a lot of time reviewing and approving technical designs, PRDs etc. Over the years the amount of basic copy editing I have to do has really grown. I sometimes feel like I’m removing 20%+ of the text. And that was before LLMs.

Ask your team to make their documentation at least 30% shorter just before sending. I don’t remember where I first I read this advice for writing code, but it’s been part of my workflow for several years. It’s an arbitrary number, but it forces you think how to make things simpler. I apply the same principle when packing for travel or hiking.

Re: Slop Cop

#107

Post by red_admiral » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 8:50 AM UTC

danilocesar wrote: post #90

chromacity wrote: post #22

Like the original Grammarly, I think this can be useful for business writing because these tools help you get to the point. Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays, but if you're composing an email or writing a design doc, just optimize for reading time and clarity. But for general use, I think this is misguided. The problem with LLM output is not that it's using em dashes or words such…

I've heard this theory in the past: In a couple of years, the corporative communication will work like this: You write a bunch of bullet points and feed them to an AI to create a beautiful and well written email. Your reader will feed that email into his own AI and he will generate bullet points to read.

I've heard the story of the time e-mail was new and one secretary's job was to print out her boss's emails, he'd write a reply below by hand, and she'd type it back in and send it.

Re: Slop Cop

#108

Post by red_admiral » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:02 AM UTC

flexagoon wrote: post #68

slopinthebag wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many students are rewarded for using flowery language in school essays Not to nitpick, but I actually had the opposite experience in uni. My prof docked me marks for my flowery language, and honestly, good for her, my lazy writing style honestly sucks (see how I used "honestly" twice in the same sentence, lol). Not to take away from your post or anything, just realising I got lucky with my prof. I agree that LLMs p…

In uni, maybe. But my experience in middle/high school was that hitting the minimum word count was much more important than actually good writing.

And having a topic sentence, and sometimes even deliberately using rhetorical devices like parallelism that a LLM detector would flag up.

Re: Slop Cop

#109

Post by red_admiral » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:09 AM UTC

The rule of three was actually good and common writing advice in the pre-LLM era. There's psychological studies that show 3 is a good number to grab human attention, which is why you have "an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman walk into a bar" jokes. Even my Algebra professor said that a well-written definition should have three conditions, for example a group is a set with an operation that is (1) associative, (2) has a neutral, and (3) has inverses. I don't think he was completely joking.

(For stories with multiple protagonists, the common choices that seem to work best for readers are 3 or 5. Humans are weird.)

I suspect that LLMs use that rule so much, because it's so common in their training data, for good reasons.

Re: Slop Cop

#110

Post by nxpnsv » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:29 AM UTC

In "fixing" the last sentence in the example I got "One can say that we are at a moment in history." Indeed.