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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)

#101

Post by hi_im_greg_h »

27183 wrote: post #86
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…

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.

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

#102

Post by duckydude20 »

ai slop is sh8t. but using ai to write thoughts in readable way, with flow, no issues on my side.

my english writing is quite bad. if i write article i myself cannot read it. ai helps with the flow, review editing.

nowadays i record audio, stt and then let ai flow it properly.

i hate blog.md like this, given a topic and it does everything.

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

#103

Post by anon84873628 »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #68

LLMs write better than most journalists. It also writes better than majority people in the world when it comes to English as majority are really bad in writing. And of course, LLMs write as you prompt. Personally, I'm happy to read broken English from non English people or good English from English people. But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

I would almost never transmit LLM output without a decent amount of editing. But I also don't understand people who paint it as this horrible offensive unreadable slop.

Calling it better than most journalists is extreme (and probably the reason for down votes), but it must certainly be better than the average person.

We're hearing this criticism from the highly educated professional class people who bother to have their own blog or otherwise spend their time talking about technology online. I mean come on.

To most people, the LLM must feel incredibly empowering, like us wearing a mecha suit. Would we always show restraint and only apply our newfound enhanced physical strength in carefully considered situations?

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

#104

Post by [deleted] »

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,…

[deleted]

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

#105

Post by kisper »

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.

I agree with the gist of your sentiment, but I struggle with how to reconcile it with my use of these tools. My use LLMs is precisely because I can never hope to express myself clearly. I have many fuzzy, disparate thoughts and it was a struggle to express them at all before this time in which I can do a long rambling voice transcription (absent of social pressures) and continue doing the same throughout the exploration and drafting processes. In my view, I give them a seed or a morbidly obese skeleton and LLMs take that into something a lot more coherent for myself and for others. I was passive before in my life, now I’m engaging. As two concrete examples: I never would have sent an email to my city regarding snow removal last winter when their failure to remove snow from the only sidewalk going over the interstate. I never would have pulled together my previous coursework and e-mails to send to my current professors in a petition for transfer-credit equivalency when it became clear that my deteriorating health would not allow me to finish the semester as-is. I never would have remembered all the concerns that I want to bring up at medical appointments. That is not to say these things were ever impossible, there are coping strategies available, and whatnot, but I’m in my late 30’s; I know what I did and not get done in the last 10 years, and “AI”-tooling/environments have helped me express my dreams and passions and concerns, etc., etc., etc. over the past years in a way that was simply not practically available to me, with a new capacity that I simply could not previously hope to match due to limited and fragmented time,attention, and energy. While I was hand-typing this on my keyboard, I could have instead been talking, reviewing, redrafting in spurts as I go about my morning, instead of a solid 45 minutes at max effort on my own part, as I did here (and I don’t feel that I conveyed myself half-as-well here as I could have achieved at much less cost to my energy, etc. by using an LLM). I do take offense when people do not review and vouch for things written on their behalf by LLMs.

How do we make room for their use as a cognitive-prosthesis (if you will allow such framing) without losing humane-ness?

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

#106

Post by [deleted] »

jampekka wrote: post #76
CrimsonRain wrote: post #68

LLMs write better than most journalists. It also writes better than majority people in the world when it comes to English as majority are really bad in writing. And of course, LLMs write as you prompt. Personally, I'm happy to read broken English from non English people or good English from English people. But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

> LLMs write better than most journalists. I used to think this, but now that I've been trying to use them to help with writing, it turns out they are not necessarily that great on the deeper level. The grammar and the surface style are impeccable, but they often struggle with continuity and carrying on a point or an argument.

[deleted]

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

#107

Post by ericbarrett »

If I may compare written work to restaurants, a title and byline are like the storefront; I get an idea of what's being served, and if I'm hungry, I'll walk in and order. Sometimes the meal is amazing. Usually it's pretty good. Occasionally it's bland, or even bad, but not often enough to discourage future ventures; of course, I'm unlikely to revisit that particular proprietor.

With LLM writing there's an additional outcome. I walk in and the walls are pleasant, if beige. I follow the smell and promise of food down a hallway. At the end is an unmarked door, which I open and peek through. Myriad hallways lead away, each more chaotic and disheveled than the last. Say I am very hungry and have the guts to explore; I may find that I can never actually reach the food, that it's just an endless hall of mirrors, presenting structure but with nothing at its core.

Sometimes I do find food, but it's never better than bland.

The facade of these places, at first glance, still looks like human-run restaurants, though we're all learning the tells. Nowadays, when I open the first door and see more hallways, I'll turn around and look elsewhere.

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

#108

Post by anon84873628 »

wavemode wrote: post #75
CrimsonRain wrote: post #68

LLMs write better than most journalists. It also writes better than majority people in the world when it comes to English as majority are really bad in writing. And of course, LLMs write as you prompt. Personally, I'm happy to read broken English from non English people or good English from English people. But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

> LLMs write better than most journalists In my personal experience I strongly disagree. Curious what publications you read wherein this is the case.

I suspect the commenter prefers the concise, factual summary of an LLM.

It is true that modern journalism on the web is trying to get ad impressions. After all, this is how we ended up with clickbait. Sure you still have the Economist and Atlantic (which aren't beyond criticism), but your local county paper is an absolute mess. The content is stretched, meandering, and designed to keep you scrolling through more impressions.

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

#109

Post by p-e-w »

andy99 wrote: post #47
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,…

This misunderstands what it means to be better at writing. Root cause here is that writing is how humans communicate ideas. An LLM written thing isn’t doing that, it’s something equivalent to copy/pasting a Wikipedia article. Even if the writing gets better, it will still be necessarily empty when expanding anything that isn’t completely specified. LLMs seem already to be pretty good at translating, where you already…

> An LLM written thing isn’t doing that, it’s something equivalent to copy/pasting a Wikipedia article.

Nonsense. I’m not sure whether this was ever an appropriate description of what LLMs do, but either way, they have obviously moved way, way beyond that.

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