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I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

marcusolang.substack.com

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Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#411

Post by lupire »

mmooss wrote: post #365
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] I'm a native English speaker that studied writing in university [...] As a native English speaker who studied writing at university, do you think "who" should be used with people while "that" should only be used with things or the other way round. Or should I just not care? Edit: missing things

I think you might intend to compare 'that' and 'which'? Common advice is to use 'that' with people and 'which' with objects, though that isn't necessarily followed and omits many nuances. Use 'who' with people especially, often with other living beings ('my dog, who runs away daily, always is home for dinner') or groups of them ('the NY Yankees, who won the championship that year, were my favorite'), but never with o…

Elements of Style is reviled by modern linguists and writers.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#412

Post by next_xibalba »

phantasmish wrote: post #212
komali2 wrote: post #80

> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…

Obsession with short sentences and generally pushing extreme simplicity of structure and word choice has been terrible for English prose. It’s not been terrible because most people aren’t aided by such guidance (most are) but because the same people who can’t be trusted to wield a quill without the bumper-lanes installed see a sentence longer than ten words, or a semicolon, or god forbid literate and appropriate nuan…

Having read a fair amount of Faulkner, I have to respectfully disagree. Or, at least, point out that are diminishing returns to flowery, complex writing.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#413

Post by lupire »

bakugo wrote: post #236
rossant wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the LLM refrain from improving a sentence that's already really good? Sometimes I wish the LLM would just tell me, "You asked me to improve this sentence, but it's already great and I don't see anything to change. Any 'improvement' would actually make it worse. Are you sure you want to continue?"

> Why can't the LLM refrain from improving a sentence that's already really good? Because you told it to improve it. Modern LLMs are trained to follow instructions unquestioningly, they will never tell you "you told me to do X but I don't think I should", they'll just do it even if it's unnecessary. If you want the LLM to avoid making changes that it thinks are unnecessary, you need to explicitly give it the option t…

This is not true. My LLM will tell me it already did what I told it to do.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#414

Post by somenameforme »

phantasmish wrote: post #212
komali2 wrote: post #80

> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…

Obsession with short sentences and generally pushing extreme simplicity of structure and word choice has been terrible for English prose. It’s not been terrible because most people aren’t aided by such guidance (most are) but because the same people who can’t be trusted to wield a quill without the bumper-lanes installed see a sentence longer than ten words, or a semicolon, or god forbid literate and appropriate nuan…

The internet has been even worse. We tend to speak literally and simply. And I don't really know why that is. Perhaps it's because if there's something beyond the overt, it might go completely missed.

For instance Mark Twain is basically full of endless amazing quotes with lovely nuance, yet in contemporary times how many people would miss the meaning in a statement like "Prosperity is the best protector of principle"? I can already see people raging over his statement, taken at face value. Downvote the classist!

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#415

Post by PunchyHamster »

phantasmish wrote: post #212
komali2 wrote: post #80

> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…

Obsession with short sentences and generally pushing extreme simplicity of structure and word choice has been terrible for English prose. It’s not been terrible because most people aren’t aided by such guidance (most are) but because the same people who can’t be trusted to wield a quill without the bumper-lanes installed see a sentence longer than ten words, or a semicolon, or god forbid literate and appropriate nuan…

Another annoying fact is that using a bit rarer words sometimes triggers weirdos into thinking you somehow want to brag or use that kind of language to "look smarter". Like a crab bucket for language.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#416

Post by esafak »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #325
dgan wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself fluent in English, I watch technical talks and casual youtubers on English daily, and this is the first time I encounter this word lol. The only "stride" I know relates to the gap betweeb heterogeneous elements in a contiguous array

> I consider myself fluent in English, I watch technical talks and casual youtubers on English daily, and this is the first time I encounter this word lol. > The only "stride" I know relates to the gap betweeb heterogeneous elements in a contiguous array I am also not a native English speaker, but I got to know the verb to "to stride" from The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn is originally introduced under the name "Stride…

Or since we're in a techie forum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strider_(1989_arcade_game)

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#417

Post by komali2 »

somenameforme wrote: post #414
phantasmish wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsession with short sentences and generally pushing extreme simplicity of structure and word choice has been terrible for English prose. It’s not been terrible because most people aren’t aided by such guidance (most are) but because the same people who can’t be trusted to wield a quill without the bumper-lanes installed see a sentence longer than ten words, or a semicolon, or god forbid literate and appropriate nuan…

The internet has been even worse. We tend to speak literally and simply. And I don't really know why that is. Perhaps it's because if there's something beyond the overt, it might go completely missed. For instance Mark Twain is basically full of endless amazing quotes with lovely nuance, yet in contemporary times how many people would miss the meaning in a statement like "Prosperity is the best protector of principle…

"Prosperity is the best protector of principle" taken out of context can be used in many ways, including by a rich person arguing that rich people have better morals, and poor people have worse ones, and that's why they're poor.

The context is really necessary.

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#418

Post by [deleted] »

brycewray wrote: post #185
Yizahi wrote: post #117

While author is correct in general, I would like to add a counter-point regarding em-dashes specifically. Yes, many people use them like this - and many website frameworks will automatically replace a keyboard not-really-a-minus symbol with em-dash. So that is not a sign of the LLM generated slop. What LLMs also do though, is use em-dashes like this (imagine that "--" is an em-dash here): "So, when you read my work--…

> LLMs often use em-dashes without spaces before and after, as a period replacement. Now that is only what an Oxford professor would write probably, I've never seen a human write text like that. So those specific em-dashes is a sure sign of a generated slop. Evidently, you've never read text from anyone whose job requires writing, publishing, and/or otherwise communicating under rules established in (e.g.) the Chicag…

[deleted]

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#419

Post by chistev »

komali2 wrote: post #80

> There were unspoken rules, commandments passed down from teacher to student, year after year. The first commandment? Thou shalt begin with a proverb or a powerful opening statement. “Haste makes waste,” we would write, before launching into a tale about rushing to the market and forgetting the money. The second? Thou shalt demonstrate a wide vocabulary. You didn’t just ‘walk’; you ‘strode purposefully’, ‘trudged we…

" Proceeded to" is wrong?

Re: I'm Kenyan. I don't write like ChatGPT, ChatGPT writes like me

#420

Post by elliotec »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #343
elliotec wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should just not care. Both are acceptable, "that" is a little less formal and probably more common in everyday speech.

Thanks. Is that true only for American English or other areas too? I've only noticed this the last couple of years on HN. Before that "who" and "that" were used more carefully. Or at least I had the feeling it was. Sometimes I wondered if it's just whatever people's autocomplete happens to spit out first.

It's true for all of English, even historically. Ignore the grammar police. The differentiation between "who" and "that" in this particular context is extremely low on the list of things you'll ever need to worry about.
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