You can just say it • Hacker News Board

Re: You can just say it

#201

Post by kigiri » Sat, May 30, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

tsunagatta wrote: post #75

roenxi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's one of those sentiments where people say it but they probably don't mean it literally. Much like if your boss asks for honest feedback giving it to them with both barrels is a career limiting move. You make subtle mistakes in how you perceive the world, the interlocutor makes similar mistakes and the damage those mistakes do is limited if you follow some structural rules of how to communicate (aka polite…

I am not the author but I have used that quote before, and no, I mean it literally. I would prefer any words that came from your own brain over the output of a statistical model. I don't mind if it's short, or didn't take much time, or doesn't have much thought put into it, I want it to be yours. The subtle mistakes in how my interlocutor perceives the world and communicates themselves are the entire point.

I had a case in my job of an HR guy that was so bad a communication everything was super confusing and we always had issues and tension. Once GPT came out he clearly just copy / pasted LLM output and I was very conflicted because it felt insulting but it was the first time I was actually able to understand what he intended to say...

I sadly would prefer LLM output over prompt because I'm pretty sure the prompting was a process with him he would prompt, get a bad LLM output, seeing the LLM wasn't understanding force him to clarify and we ended up with actually understandable content.

Re: You can just say it

#202

Post by docmars » Sat, May 30, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

Quote: "This line of thinking boils down to, “Humans are valuable if they produce high-quality output.” This argument dangerously depends on the existing-but-narrowing human-AI capability gap. The gap certainly existed in the past (2023-era ChatGPT). It may still exist now. I do not know if it will hold in the future."

I still don't agree with this, because even the best engineers are producing poor output from AI, unless they spend a reasonable amount of time refactoring and cleaning up the output.

To expect a non-engineer to have the same wisdom to architect and structure their output in a sustainable way that will stand the test of time (and inevitable future changes), they're just fooling themselves.

For anyone who's been using LLMs long enough for development, we all know how sloppy the output is unless you have a mountain of formatting and organizational rules in place, and even then, it's anyone guess how well LLMs can actually follow them as a project scales.

Yes, value the human first, but there are strong reasons we've always emphasized mature patterns and idioms in codebases that help them remain maintainable so they can scale and transform with as little friction as possible, and without reaching a point where nobody has the stomach to keep working on it.

Just because we can try to have AI unwind the hairy mess, doesn't mean it's any easier for AI to navigate it than we do. It's a liability that the AI mistakes one naming conflict for another, when the context rot hits the fan — and after months of tossing unreviewed PRs over the finish line without a single thought, it's only a matter of time before your non-engineers are the worst offenders for introducing bugs and eroding the quality.

It doesn't matter how good the models appear to get (it truly is a facade), without judgment and wisdom, they still don't produce nearly the same quality as an experienced engineer, unless they're heavily steered.

Do they catch more potential bugs and edge cases than a human might? Definitely, but it's going to vomit its solutions in all the weirdest places doing it, and now suddenly you've got a 100k LOC pull request to (not) read.

All I can say is, good luck!

Re: You can just say it

#203

Post by throwaway_19sz » Sat, May 30, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #200

dataflow wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The private act of thinking does not involve a round trip to a corporation's servers; that would make the whole term meaningless. Firstly, this is just wrong. People can and do search stuff online as they're writing something up. Second, your distinction is the one that's meaningless. The LLM could be running locally on a private machine...

1. Yes, but the research isn't part of the 'private act of thinking'; it's an input to it. 2. It could; it basically never is though, so let's deal with the general case.

You’re missing the point. OK, it’s not ‘thinking’ in a pure sense; the point is it’s private notes. If someone says something to you, they are allowed to privately prepare it first (thinking, jotted notes, LLM rewriting, running it past lawyers, whatever) and you don’t get to see all that. That’s how it has always been.

Just because someone says/writes something to you doesn’t mean you have any moral right to see all the things they considered and then decided not to say.

Re: You can just say it

#204

Post by arjie » Sat, May 30, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC

triyambakam wrote: post #4

Citing "God created man in his own image" for robustness doesn't really land well. I'm not even an atheist either.

I agree. The evidence for that claim is weak and if it is cited to be the basis of the first claim the likelihood of the rest forming an accurate model is low. Thank you for the comment. I might have otherwise wasted more time on the linked post than I did.

Re: You can just say it

#205

Post by throw283745 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

fcarraldo wrote: post #124

nojs wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“tell my obnoxious boss to fuck off about the tps reports” isn’t a great career move for them though

I would rather my reports tell me to fuck off than to generate something telling me to fuck off in polite but insincere terms full of emojis and em dashes. Honesty is valuable.

I'm the opposite. If you're going to say something mean or obnoxious, then I would rather you say it politely with a lot of emojis.

Re: You can just say it

#206

Post by throw283745 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:04 PM UTC

hxtk wrote: post #81

cautiouscat wrote: post #19

This quote from the authors friend really hit home with me. > “If you’re going to use an LLM to write me an email, I’d much rather you just send me the prompt; at least then I’d have an idea of what you actually meant to say.” I’m not saying there’s no merit in adding a bit of politeness and professionalism to your communication, which I’m sure the prompt itself lacks. However the root of what you’re trying to convey…

When I read what someone has written, I learn things beyond its literal text from the fact that I’m reading it, which implies it was worth effort for them to put into so many words and send to me through the medium they chose and put the level of care that they chose into their wording. The LLM erases those choices and erases the cost of verbosity so there’s much less for me to learn from a message, and much less I s…

I use LLM to summarize a lot of emails, so it doesn't really matter how it's written.

I wonder if there could be just some type of open agreement we're both using LLM and then they can communicate with one another more effectively.

Re: You can just say it

#207

Post by emodendroket » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #190

emodendroket wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you personally do; most people would react more poorly to "find a polite way to tell this guy to fuck off" than the output of that prompt.

That's the most contrived counter-argument... We've been writing business emails for 40+ years. Anyone with -2 stddev IQ and above would know to tweak a 10-word prompt to a more polite version before sending it

It's an extreme expression but "soften this message" is a common goal.

Re: You can just say it

#208

Post by filoeleven » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #147

laughinghan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You make subtle mistakes in how you perceive the world, the interlocutor makes similar mistakes And the LLM makes subtle mistakes perceiving what you were trying to say, and I make subtle mistakes perceiving what the LLM generated. It's interesting that you seem to think an LLM would be better than you at understanding what someone was trying to say. I have complete, 100% certainty that if a personal friend of mine…

Emotional intelligence includes things like being able to perceive and manage your own emotions; it is hard to know what that would mean for an LLM. They don't have hormones or much of an ego. They also aren't usually in a position to perceive body language or tone. But in terms of reading comprehension I haven't seen anyone who does a better job than an AI. It's a skill that technically caps out quite quickly, all y…

> But in terms of reading comprehension I haven't seen anyone who does a better job than an AI

You've clearly never seen a CoPilot summary of a Teams meeting.

Re: You can just say it

#209

Post by filoeleven » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

singingtoday wrote: post #48

reaperducer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I just find it a little insulting if someone sends me an AI response. If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it.

I'm dyslexic. I put every comment through the LLM, or other tools. Including this comment. I understand where you're coming from but please believe me when I tell you that if I write comments myself nobody will understand them and it just turns into an argument where people claim I say things that I didn't say. By filtering my comments through an llm, I have reduced this issue significantly.

I was going to ask: what does an LLM get you that a regular spell checker does not? Then I recalled all of the comments I've read over the years about "loosing to much money do to a rouge actor." The capability of an LLM proofing correct words and not just correct spelling is genuinely helpful here. Seems like a good fit for a small local model.

Re: You can just say it

#210

Post by PuppetSoup » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

jatora wrote: post #121

wise0wl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the novelty that you're chasing. Deeply consider what it is that you are enjoying, because it's not very different from doom scrolling or quickly stale bubble gum. Maybe AI produces pop music that supplants the long-standing music industry. I couldn't give a shit if it does. Pop music is nepotism and exploitation with the random artist who sneaks through. I love music, but it is the feeling, experience, and emot…

>I love music, but it is the feeling, experience, and emotion of the creator that comes through that I enjoy. This belief is not true and I will fight to the bedrock of psychology and nature against this until the ridiculous sentiment is eradicated from humanity's lexicon. There are fundamental aspects to our perception, across all senses, that lie underneath human creation. You enjoy the warmth of the sun, the cool…

> These all evoke the sense and appreciation of beauty while being completely removed from a creator.

Why is it so black and white? There are things like warmth of the sun, that I enjoy without the creator. There are also art and music that I didn't appreciate at first before knowing the story and the creator behind them. Then I understood where the piece of art came from and what were the emotions behind it when creating it.