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Do your own writing

alexhwoods.com

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Re: Do your own writing

#251

Post by moritzwarhier »

roadside_picnic wrote: post #9

I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…

I can relate to writing being a substitute for rubber-ducking to a certain degree: often I write stuff down solely for this purpose.

Impersonating the reader used to be (still is?) an essential skill requirement for writing prose. And prose here is really a substitute for "informal technical writing".

Re: Do your own writing

#252

Post by xz_tie »

fazkan wrote: post #56

why do I feel that this post itself was written by AI

This is the issue in this AI-everywhere world - I sometimes can't tell if I'm reading something written by a human or generated by an LLM. As a result, I tend to read less or skim faster, coz I don't wanna spend too much time on the latter, which feels like a summary of existing knowledge with less creativity. Over time, I found myself doing less serious reading, reflection, and thinking, and I hate that tbh.

Re: Do your own writing

#253

Post by deevelton »

jonathaneunice wrote: post #228
deevelton wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was curious how it might look if we started seeing prompts/steering inline with the finished product: https://dvelton.github.io/trace/examples/the-post.html

First impression is love that! Need to study it more. We need—or at least I need—a better UI/tool to manage the sequence of edits and collaboration, drafting, rubber-ducking, and evaluation that AI tools provide. Including the prompts and edits is a nice feature, though I would also like more comparison "where we started" vs "where we are now."

I wonder if an animation with the prompts/edits inline and the text morphing might be an interesting UI…fun stuff to think about. Contributions welcome! https://github.com/dvelton/trace

Re: Do your own writing

#254

Post by ori_b »

antasvara wrote: post #237
anon-3988 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between you putting your 5 minute monologue into the LLM to summarize it versus me doing it?

I know what I'm trying to say, so I can sanity check the output. You can't, unless you listen to the monologue. That's why I disagree with people that say "just give me whatever you gave the LLM." That's only useful if you, the writer of the prompt, have no intention of looking at the LLM output before sending it.

I can run it through voice recognition just fine.

Re: Do your own writing

#256

Post by galaxyLogic »

alsetmusic wrote: post #223
galaxyLogic wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think writing is writing to an audience which includes yourself. When you're thinking you are speaking in your mind which means you can not really listen to yourself at that same time. You don't hear yourself from yourself. You are too busy talking (in your head to yourself) that you can not really think about what you just said to yourself. You are producing language, not consuming it But when you read what you ha…

I think this is correct. I told a coworker that when I edit my email drafts they get shorter. He was surprised and said that his get longer. I trim and refine. Sure, I add details that I missed at first. But I also create better structure and remove ambiguity or unnecessary words. Yesterday, I was working on an email for someone who I was trying very hard not to overwhelm with technical details. I cut it roughly in h…

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1196bgx/til_...

:-)

Re: Do your own writing

#257

Post by prodigycorp »

packetlost wrote: post #241
prodigycorp wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitterpilled. Wow, the audio mixing on that clip is great. I miss art like this. I'm afraid that nothing will recapture the way I felt watching GOTS the first time.

There are some many pieces of media that I wish I could fully scrub my memory of to experience for a second time.

You just invented a category for a list! Going to have fun thinking of mine.

Re: Do your own writing

#258

Post by mrroryflint »

riskable wrote: post #236
mrroryflint wrote: post #193

I recently added an AI Policy to my blog ( https://rory.codes/ai-policy ). The assumption now appears to be AI guilty unless proven innocent which I think is a travesty for readers and writers alike.

I use bullet points a lot in my writing and it seems that , specifically is causing people to accuse me of either: * Being an AI bot. * Using an LLM to generate it. It's driving me bonkers!

Yup! I am, ironically, second guessing myself when doing edits now to ensure I don't sound like an LLM...thus altering my natural writing style in places.

Re: Do your own writing

#259

Post by samusiam »

dgxyz wrote: post #19
nerevarthelame wrote: post #12

I agree with most of this, but my one qualm is the notion that LLMs "are particularly good at generating ideas." It's fair enough that you can discard any bad ideas they generate. But by design, the recommendations will be average, bland, mainstream, and mostly devoid of nuance. I wouldn't encourage anyone to use LLMs to generate ideas if you're trying to create interesting or novel ideas.

All LLM output is always dry as fuck quite frankly. At all levels from ideas and concepts through to the actual copy. And that’s dotted with pure excrement. I think the only reason it’s seen as good anywhere is there are a lot of tasteless and talentless people who can pretend they created whatever was curled out. This goes for code as well. If I offend anyone I will not be apologising for it.

> I think the only reason it’s seen as good anywhere is there are a lot of tasteless and talentless people who can pretend they created whatever was curled out. This goes for code as well.

This is an oversimplification.

If you have taste and talent, then the LLM output you get is going to reflect that.

So on the one hand, yes: tasteless and talentless people won't know good output from bad output. On the other hand, people with taste and talent can actually get good output.

Re: Do your own writing

#260

Post by dgxyz »

samusiam wrote: post #259
dgxyz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All LLM output is always dry as fuck quite frankly. At all levels from ideas and concepts through to the actual copy. And that’s dotted with pure excrement. I think the only reason it’s seen as good anywhere is there are a lot of tasteless and talentless people who can pretend they created whatever was curled out. This goes for code as well. If I offend anyone I will not be apologising for it.

> I think the only reason it’s seen as good anywhere is there are a lot of tasteless and talentless people who can pretend they created whatever was curled out. This goes for code as well. This is an oversimplification. If you have taste and talent, then the LLM output you get is going to reflect that. So on the one hand, yes: tasteless and talentless people won't know good output from bad output. On the other hand,…

No it’s not. That’s total rubbish.

You can’t coerce quality creative writing out of it however you attempt to gaslight it into doing so.

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