If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort • Hacker News Board

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#351

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

firmretention wrote: post #310

bandrami wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a pretty good interview question because it tells me if somebody's instinct is to reinvent the wheel or not. What I didn't expect was how many people couldn't say how a wheel even works.

People are not generally answering interview questions based on instinct, but rather based on what they think the interviewer wants to hear to get the job. I would have interpreted this is as a leetcode style algo question and started by treating it as such, even though IRL my first instinct would be "get a lib that does it". Awful, awful strategy.

It appears that either answer would be accepted, and so I'm fine with it. If it really is there is one correct answer then I'm against this. This feels like a problem where a good enough solution can be done in the time of an interview if you do it by hand (though if anyone knows about dates they will expect there is a lifetime of fixing special cases left if you don't use the library)

I prefer fizz-buzz as a question because it is obvious there isn't a library. It is also a problem you should be able to do in an interview. It has enough weirdness that there is no best answer, despite having several workable paths you could try.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#352

Post by dentemple » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #335

"Don't expend more effort than they are" has actually long been a good principle to have internalized. Someone done only cursory research before asking a question on a mailing list? Give a cursory answer. Someone obviously spent hours trying to figure things out on their own? Give them a good chunk of your time. Someone on HN responding to you with single-sentence responses? Either don't respond, or respond in kind.…

> Either don't respond, or respond in kind.

!

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#353

Post by coldpie » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:13 PM UTC

edot wrote: post #11

solfox wrote: post #6

I'd say it's because we're tasking ourselves with dumb stuff. No one half-asses building a shelter that keeps their family alive, or throwing a new favorite bowl on the pottery wheel. But instead of that we're writing posts for Facebook etc etc so we can (???) profit. So of course we want bots to do this all this dumb stuff, and of course we get dumb results.

For some things, yes. But I'm half-assing some really cool stuff right now. Made a scraper to pull my city's meeting minutes, agendas, recordings, made transcripts. Regex for "Flock", found every mention, passed those files into a cheap model (DeepSeek V4), had an understanding of who in my city is down with building the surveillance state and who isn't. I've got research on everyone, and had emails drafted for each…

> I've got research on everyone, and had emails drafted for each one based on what they said. Quotes and figures and all.

Please tell me you did the work to validate that the quotes and figures were not made up by the cheap model. These things make stuff up all the time, you absolutely cannot rely on them without validating the output yourself.

https://arstechnica.com/staff/2026/02/editors-note-retractio...

https://www.loweringthebar.net/2026/06/its-finally-happened-...

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#354

Post by bluGill » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:14 PM UTC

Zambyte wrote: post #307

esperent wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't I rerun the prompt that resulted in your work next year, when models have gotten better? Because you could also just point the better model at the generated code and tell it to improve it, so why save the prompt too?

Because improving a high schoolers project is probably not as good of an idea as giving the original task to a senior engineer.

If the high school project has been improved by many engineers over a few years it likely is complex enough that a senior engineer cannot rewrite it for a reasonable cost. It isn't clear if next years models will be enough better that they can rewrite it for a reasonable cost. If they are they can probably extract the requirements and special cases from the code.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#355

Post by throw4847285 » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #231

I increasingly find that I don't care whether I am talking to an anonymous AI or an anonymous human, and believe that we will increasingly stop caring. Because why not? AI will simply on average be nicer to talk to than most humans, with clearer thinking and better arguments, less contradictions, and easier to comprehend. I don't know how humans could compete with that (but it also does not seem all that horrible, gi…

It's the argument from misanthropy again!

AI is seen as unique innovation, but in terms of the real purpose it serves, it is the logical extension of something like Doordash. "I don't like people. I don't even want to call one on the phone to order a pizza. Make me a tool that lets me avoid that, please."

Let me pose an alternative narrative. Rather than interacting with humans being intrinsically unpleasant (though for some people it is far more unpleasant than others), the technology is lowering your threshold for discomfort, step by step.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#356

Post by threetonesun » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

zetanor wrote: post #56

What I find strange is how rarely LLM output is distributed alongside the LLM input, especially outside of code repos. Why can't I rerun the prompt that resulted in your work next year, when models have gotten better? Are people ashamed of their prompts? Ashamed of having used AI? i unno Prompt used to generate this message: "Create a comment for Hacker News which bemoans the lack of AI prompts being shared with the…

Most of my AI usage amounts to "read this ticket and do the work", the ticket documents the requirements, a better model could, I suppose, do a better job?

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#357

Post by kingkawn » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

jappgar wrote: post #340

gwd wrote: post #335

"Don't expend more effort than they are" has actually long been a good principle to have internalized. Someone done only cursory research before asking a question on a mailing list? Give a cursory answer. Someone obviously spent hours trying to figure things out on their own? Give them a good chunk of your time. Someone on HN responding to you with single-sentence responses? Either don't respond, or respond in kind.…

It takes considerable energy to train models and run inference. You can't dismiss AI generated content as "low effort", but you can dismiss it as a wasteful diversion.

You can’t take credit for other people’s work to displace the absence of your own

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#358

Post by Archer6621 » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

gwd wrote: post #335

"Don't expend more effort than they are" has actually long been a good principle to have internalized. Someone done only cursory research before asking a question on a mailing list? Give a cursory answer. Someone obviously spent hours trying to figure things out on their own? Give them a good chunk of your time. Someone on HN responding to you with single-sentence responses? Either don't respond, or respond in kind.…

These kinds of principles are sensible at their core, and I am a big proponent of the mindset, but the main problem as a sibling comment pointed out in a way is that this assumes that everyone is striving for an honest and accurate correlation between display of effort and value, and that everyone is looking deep enough into and behind that display to recognize the true value behind it. But actual effort, let alone value, is not always clearly visible or honestly displayed, and the perception of it is also subject to your own biases.

You could say that people have the responsibility to demonstrate that they put in the effort and created value, but then you get the situation where people naturally optimize perception of effort or value over actual effort or value, because in the end that is what is rewarded. Then you can also say that people also have the responsibility to look a bit closer before estimating real value, but that takes more effort and people naturally strife towards efficiency. I would guess that the problem today is that the balance between these two is off, and we're doing too much of the former and too little of the latter.

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#359

Post by tristor » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #202

jmeri wrote: post #188

Why should I bother to read something someone else has not bothered to write?

It really depends. In many cases, you absolutely shouldn’t. In some however, you should. For instance, yesterday I sent a lengthy email in a language I barely speak threatening legal action against a business. I had an LLM translate/write it as it’s a language Google translate makes a mess of, every time. So in that case, you’d be advised to read it lest you end up in court.

If you are operating a business in a part of the world where you expect to engage in the court system, you should hire someone that is fluent in the language spoken in that part of the world to act on your behalf. If you cannot afford to do so, or refuse to do so, why would anyway take your legal threats seriously?

Re: If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

#360

Post by gwbas1c » Fri, Jun 12, 2026, 1:29 PM UTC

I thought this would apply to marketing / SPAM.

I find that I actively filter all "computer generated" attempts to contact me: Mailing lists, "engagement" notifications, ect, is pretty much ignored. I only respond to human-initiated contact.

This is especially the case with cold outreach from recruiters: I get a lot of poor AI-generated outreach from recruiters, which are time-consuming on my part to engage with.