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Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

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Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#161

Post by rexpop »

duskdozer wrote: post #66
rexpop wrote: post #6

> It robs me of getting to know you. Ugh, you are not entitled to get to know me. There is a threshold between all that I share with the world and the rest of me. Hell, not every person gets the same picture , and that's deliberate and healthy --my customers don't get to know what my proctologist knows. My mother doesn't get to know what my wife knows. You don't get to know all of me, because I don't trust you . This…

It's not "getting to know you" in that sense, it's getting to know the public face you present, whether I can trust you , and how I can interact with you most smoothly. If you're my coworker and you don't ever want to talk about your family or friends or personal interests or problems or anything, that's fine.

> getting to know the public face you present

That's exactly what I'm saying!

And by what means am I permitted, your majesty, to construct this face? May I read books to paraphrase? May I quote authors? May I practice at Toastmasters™? Maybe practice with my paychotherapist, or with my speech therapist?

You don't know, and you don't get to know. My interiority is my own.

There is no "the real me."

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#162

Post by no_wizard »

dkubb wrote: post #145
thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The em dash is famous but I've noticed since (I think) December every hustler suddenly at once started using drama dots. Like... That. Rhetorical ellipsis. Like you see in a 12 year old's fanfic. I know one of the AIs had a style change. I think Grok. But it started using drama dots so now they are everywhere. And unlike the em dash, _nobody_ notices. _Nobody_ sees it.

The emdash and ellipsis used to be my bread and butter. I just hope the LLMs don’t come for parenthesis for aside comments.

I’m tempted to start using brackets instead [like this]

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#163

Post by abadar »

borski wrote: post #109
moondance wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to the inclination, but so many new insights and moments of inspiration are necessarily confined to that painstaking iterative line-by-line process of real writing. When you are simply prompting and editing, you will fill the page (and it might even sound like “you”), but you will not have that delightful experience of encountering something unexpected along the way to filling it.

I think you missed my point. I don't go back and have AI re-edit my drafts, on average. I have it give me some words that are on a page so I can say 'this sucks' and engage in writing myself, as opposed to continuing to stare at a blank page. The quality of the AI's writing actually doesn't matter, for me, as much as it might for others, as a result. I write my own stuff. I just find AI helpful to activate me to do i…

Your experience of being better at editing than writing makes me think of advice from Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame) on writing. He says to also read bad books, because if you read only good books, you'll never realize if you unintentionally plagiarized. But if you also read bad books, you'll think, "Jesus Christ, I could write this shit," and feel liberated to analyze their writing and examine why their writing offended you.

I analyze the writing of my LLMs and I get really annoyed and frustrated and I think it's marginally improving my communication.

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#165

Post by rexpop »

em-bee wrote: post #65
rexpop wrote: post #6

> It robs me of getting to know you. Ugh, you are not entitled to get to know me. There is a threshold between all that I share with the world and the rest of me. Hell, not every person gets the same picture , and that's deliberate and healthy --my customers don't get to know what my proctologist knows. My mother doesn't get to know what my wife knows. You don't get to know all of me, because I don't trust you . This…

in some cultures getting to know you is a crucial part of a business relationship. no connection -> no business. likewise for friends (not just your girlfriend), getting to know you is part of developing friendship. so family, friends, work, business, that pretty much covers everyone you deal with on a regular basis. i would go as far as saying that if you don't trust me then you have no business even communicating w…

Yes, and folks are free to decide when and if to end a relationship because they have needs that I'm not meeting.

That's their freedom.

But why speak in such absolutes? Trust is always partial. And, likewise, there's always something one must divulge in order to relate.

But the author's imploring, imperative mood creeps me the fuck out.

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#166

Post by gavmor »

pmoati wrote: post #33

I totally agreed with you. I'm French (nobody is perfect ^^), I'm not so fluent in english and I'm dyslexic, that why I often write my message, then I ask to Claude to translate it in english because i'm feeling I will lose the credibility of my message if there is too much mistake... But you're right, so this message is not translated by LLM :D

Why not just... write French? Why bother translating? Anyone else can translate.

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#167

Post by duskdozer »

rexpop wrote: post #161
duskdozer wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "getting to know you" in that sense, it's getting to know the public face you present, whether I can trust you , and how I can interact with you most smoothly. If you're my coworker and you don't ever want to talk about your family or friends or personal interests or problems or anything, that's fine.

> getting to know the public face you present That's exactly what I'm saying! And by what means am I permitted, your majesty, to construct this face? May I read books to paraphrase? May I quote authors? May I practice at Toastmasters™? Maybe practice with my paychotherapist, or with my speech therapist? You don't know, and you don't get to know . My interiority is my own. There is no "the real me."

[dead]

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#168

Post by latexr »

santamex wrote: post #155
latexr wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have no problem with receiving obviously llm written answers. If I asked you for your particular experience on something and got an obvious LLM reply, I might say nothing or I might ask if it was an LLM, but either way I’m unlikely to ask you something or trust you ever again. Which also works for you, I guess, since it’d be one fewer person taking up your time. But if you had instead told me “I’m too swampe…

I really love my job and I much more love helping people with the work I do. I also much more prefer talking to people directly than writing emails answering, but it is still part of what I do, when you are an expert at something you want to share and multiply this expertise. You can write it down in a book, or at corporations you write documentation, but people prefer contacting someone, because they have always som…

That’s a long answer you copied and pasted between two comments. Yet it didn’t address the points in either. Was an LLM involved in writing that response?

If a couple of hundred people in your organisation contact you regularly to ask about procedures, you have a serious documentation problem. If it exists, it will be subpar and/or insufficient. Better someone realises that before you leave and everyone is left hanging. Or perhaps that is part of the goal?

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#169

Post by Terretta »

borski wrote: post #31

I find that AI is very useful for getting me past the 'blank page' writing block, but inevitably it writes in ways I would never, and so I end up editing it heavily. But, for me, a boy with ADHD, editing something is infinitely easier than writing it from scratch . I think this is the opposite of how most people tend to use LLMs, and I actually think my way is the "better" way. My issue has never been the act of writ…

If our blank page is first filled by the mediocritizer machine, are the ideas even ours?

To be successful in a workplace, team members fall into roles. It's interesting to consider which roles would have an LLM write its median ideas first: https://internalchange.com/order-profiles-training-materials...

Re: Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all

#170

Post by proof_by_vibes »

I really think this gets at the heart of the distinction between language as it pertains to how we connect with others and language that records our observations of the world and its history.

I think the ideal mode for engaging with LLMs should be as interactive encyclopedias. They are excellent at rewarding curiosity when someone passionate about learning sits in the driver seat of this kind of tool. There is something to be said about the benefits of _active_ learning over _passive_ instruction.

Nonetheless, it's impossible to consistently discern fact from fiction when in the form of narrative. As such hallucinations are the key counterexample for why we can't have a world where LLMs can be effective instructors. Because it's one thing to be exposed to the structure of a narrative, and to read it as grammar, but you don't ever know how to _feel_ about these structures until you become tuned to another human being.

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