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New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

marginalia.nu

401–410 of 643 posts

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#401

Prior to the rise of LLM-written posts and the natural reaction of hair-trigger suspicion, I used to em and en dash fairly often in posts on HN. No reason really other than being a bit of a typography geek who happens to have always used dashes in casual writing instead of semicolons. So when I was setting up a modifier-key keyboard layer with AHK many years ago I put the em dash on modifier+dash just because I could…

Fwiw your comment has lots of human tells and doesn't seem AI generated at all.

Sadly, I think the same is true for my two posts accused of being LLM generated. It's become a bit of a reflexive witch-hunt when just being more than five sentences and basically decent grammar / vocabulary is enough to garner some drive-by accusations. Hopefully, it's a short-term over reaction that will subside.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#402

I had a past life of drumming up community comments for engagment: The only thing that's changed is that humans are getting lazy and using AI. Fake comments have always been a thing.

I'm sure you can't share details but would be cool to hear more about it generally speaking, what worked and not etc. Especially if it involved HN. Our company is being attacked rn in tech media and at least some of it, gut feeling wise, seems obviously sponsored / promoted by competitors. I know that's not surprising, but never watched it happen from this side before.

The key was to present what looked like a lively debate. The dirty trick was to have the "bad side" over state the position horribly. For example, to make Republicans look bad we'd start having their fake personas use subtle racism.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#404
My writing style is influenced a lot by what I read. Because I read a lot of LLM output I use more - phrasing in my writing.

I'm also influenced by the email style of my colleagues, books I'm reading, X, etc.

My literary diet really does show in my writing, so I'll keep up reading the classics to balance out all the LLM content :)

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#405
post #263
post #50

I'm still salty that I can't use em-dashes anymore for fear of my writing being flagged as AI generated. Been using them for years—it's just `alt+shift+-` on a Mac keyboard and I find them more legible in many fonts compared to the simple dash on the typical numpad. It's so sad to me that good typographical conventions have been co-opted by the zeitgeist of LLMs.

I switched to semicolons... They look similar enough in use to string things together. I'm sure AI is coming for those too though, and that will be a grim day because those are my last stand.

There are times when an em dash can be used in place of a semicolon, but I don't think that's the usual LLM usage. Instead it's replacing a replacing a comma, colon, or period.

Unless you're talking about restructuring your sentences to allow for a semicolon; that's fine.

For example that semicolon could have been an em dash, but I don't think it's the type that LLMs over favor.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#406

Prior to the rise of LLM-written posts and the natural reaction of hair-trigger suspicion, I used to em and en dash fairly often in posts on HN. No reason really other than being a bit of a typography geek who happens to have always used dashes in casual writing instead of semicolons. So when I was setting up a modifier-key keyboard layer with AHK many years ago I put the em dash on modifier+dash just because I could…

Exactly what an LLM would say, haha.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

soon were gonna be the ones adding random typos and grammer errors just to blend in. i skip apostrophes and mispell words on purpose already. its strange how fast sloppy writing starts feeling natural (This above line itself was written by AI itself: https://www.kimi.com/share/19c96516-4032-8b73-8000-0000f45eb... ) I don't know if worse grammar could make a difference aside from removing false negatives (ie. nowadays…

Honestly, first paragraph sounds more human and sincere for sure. Also adding better "context" into the discussion, than the usual claims/punchlines of marketing-speak. Maybe it's not exactly the grammar itself but also overall structuring of the idea/thought into the process. The regular output sounds much more like marketing-piece or news-coverage than an individual anyway. I think, people wanna discuss things with…

> I think, people wanna discuss things with people, not with a news-editor.

If I understand you correctly, then Yes I completely agree, but my worry is that this can also be "emulated" as shown by my comment by Models already available to us. My question is, technically there's nothing to stop new accounts from using say Kimi and to have a system prompt meant to not sound AI and I feel like it can be effective.

If that's the case, doesn't that raise the question of what we can detect as AI or not (which was my point), the grand parent comment suggests that they use intentionally bad human writing sometimes to not be detected as AI but what I am saying is that AI can do that thing too, so is intentionally bad writing itself a good indicator of being human?

And a bigger question is if bad writing isn't an indicator, then what is?

Or if there can even be an good indicator (if say the bot is cautious)? If there isn't, can we be sure if the comments we read are AI or not

Essentially the dead-internet-theory. I feel like most websites have bots but we know that they are bots and they still don't care but we are also in this misguided trust that if we see some comments which don't feel like obvious bots, then they must be humans.

My question is, what if that can be wrong? It feels to me definitely possible with current Tech/Models like say Kimi for example, Doesn't this lead to some big trust issues within the fabric of internet itself?

Personally, I don't feel like the whole website's AI but there are chances of some sneaky action happening at distance type of new accounts for sure which can be LLM's and we can be none the wiser.

All the same time that real accounts are gonna get questioned if they are LLM or not if they are new (my account is almost 2 years old fwiw and I got questioned by people esentially if this account is AI or not)

But what this does do however, is make people definitely lose a bit of trust between each other and definitely a little cautious towards each message that they read.

(This comment's a little too conspiratorial for my liking but I can't help but shake this feeling sometimes)

It just is all so weird for me sometimes, Idk but I guess that there's still an intuition between whose human and not and actually the HN link/article iteslf shows that most people who deploy AI on HN in newer accounts use standard models without much care which is the reason why em-dashes get detected and maybe are good detector for sometime/some-people and this could make the original OP's comment of intentionally having bad grammar to sound more human make sense too because em-dashes do have more probability of sounding AI than not :/

It's just this very weird situation and I am not sure how to explain where depending on from whatever situation you look at, you can be right.

You can try to hurt your grammar to sound more human and that would still be right

and you can try to be the way you are because you think that models can already have intentionally bad grammar too/capable of it and to have bad grammar isn't a benchmark itself for AI/not so you are gonna keep using good grammar and you are gonna be right too.

It's sort of like a paradox and I don't have any answers :/ Perhaps my suggestion right now feels to me to not overthink about it.

Because if both situations are right, then do whatever imo. Just be human yourself and then you can back down this statement with well truth that you are human even if you get called AI.

So I guess, TLDR: Speak good grammar or not intentionally, just write human and that's enough or that should be enough I guess.

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context. Not like I have a perfect writing anyway, but at least I could prove that it was self-written, not an auto-generated slop. (Could be self-written slop though :) This applies not only work-stuff itself also to the job-applications/cv/resume and cover-letters.

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (lik…

Your comment made me realise that there's logic to this (like this :), since in HTML we can:

     do this
     and this
instead of: ...

and instead of

You might like Lisp, but what you're saying reminds me of the late 00s/early 2010s xHTML2 vs. HTML5 debate :)

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also used — and "proper" quotes which macOS/iOS puts in for you anyway I also like … This is like ruining swastikas and loading rainbows

The ellipsis problem is solved by using ... instead of the dedicated unicode character

3 characters instead of 1, how can you live with yourself??

Re: New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started making deliberate grammar and spelling mistakes in professional context. Not like I have a perfect writing anyway, but at least I could prove that it was self-written, not an auto-generated slop. (Could be self-written slop though :) This applies not only work-stuff itself also to the job-applications/cv/resume and cover-letters.

unrelated but I've never understood how to put a smiley at the end of parenthetical sentences (which comes up surprisingly often for me since I use smileys a lot and also like using parentheses). Just the smiley as an end parentheses (like this :) feels off but adding another parentheses (like this :) ) makes it look like it should be nested which causes problems since I also tend to nest parenthetical sentences (lik…

I have the same problem. I just ditch the smiley face. :)
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