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New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes

marginalia.nu

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

#541

Post by wiredpancake »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #445
marssaxman wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My teenager recently asked me why I write like a chatbot, apparently unaware that some human beings prefer to write in complete sentences with attention to details like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization, and that LLMs were trained on this sort of writing. This makes me think of the fad where people on youtube will hold a microphone up in frame, because it somehow connotes authenticity. I'm sure some…

2040 at Wal-Mart: - Customer: Excuse me, I'm looking for the Aunt Jemima maple syrup. Can you point me in the right direction? - Employee: y u ask like chatbot

There will be no such thing as an "Walmart Employee" in 2040.

There is a decent chance the term "Employee" as a whole will be eradicated sometime in the next 10 years.

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

#542

Post by [deleted] »

marssaxman wrote: post #301
mrandish wrote: post #272

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…

My teenager recently asked me why I write like a chatbot, apparently unaware that some human beings prefer to write in complete sentences with attention to details like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization, and that LLMs were trained on this sort of writing. This makes me think of the fad where people on youtube will hold a microphone up in frame, because it somehow connotes authenticity. I'm sure some…

[deleted]

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

#544

Post by Aerroon »

recursive wrote: post #420
pvtmert wrote: post #352

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.

This only works as "proof" up until someone innovates an "authenticity" flag on the LLM output.

tbh u can basically do this now lol... no flag needed.

if u want it to sound more real u just gotta tell the bot to write that way. like literally just ask it to throw in some typos or forget to capitalize stuff. or use slang and kinda ramble instead of being all robotic and organized.

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

#546

Post by benatkin »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #445
marssaxman wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My teenager recently asked me why I write like a chatbot, apparently unaware that some human beings prefer to write in complete sentences with attention to details like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization, and that LLMs were trained on this sort of writing. This makes me think of the fad where people on youtube will hold a microphone up in frame, because it somehow connotes authenticity. I'm sure some…

2040 at Wal-Mart: - Customer: Excuse me, I'm looking for the Aunt Jemima maple syrup. Can you point me in the right direction? - Employee: y u ask like chatbot

Wal–Mart?

BTW in their company chat they call it a squiggly even though it's flat. That always bugged me.

Edit: I stand corrected. It wasn't flat from 1966 to 1981 and the cheer started in 1975, and included "squiggly" back then - Sam Walton himself said it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart#1990%E2%80%932005:_Ret...

Edit 2: Both squiggly and the introduction of the cheer appear in the Walmart timeline: https://corporate.walmart.com/about/history

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

#547

Post by eongchen »

I've had to deliberately strip em-dashes from my writing, even though sometimes they're genuinely the right punctuation for expressing a complex thought. The reason? I use AI to polish my professional writing (including this one), and em-dashes are the first thing I remove during review because leaving them in makes it look like I just hit "send" on an AI response without reading it.

The irony is that in tech, almost everyone is using AI to improve their writing at this point. And often it does make things clearer and more concise. But we've created this weird social norm where the output needs to look like it wasn't touched by AI, even when everyone knows it was. So we all spend time manually roughing up perfectly good text to maintain the illusion of authenticity.

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

#548

Post by skeptic_ai »

Lucasoato wrote: post #31
skeptic_ai wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All will be fixed with real id attestation /s

Not exactly, bot farms can still be made with poor people IDs through black market. I don't know what the solution is going to be, but at some point we might forced to accept the reality that on the internet humans and AI won't be distinguishable anymore and adjust our services independently on the client being a person or a machine.

Face ID check every 5 minutes to confirm it’s really you.

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

#549

Post by fn-mote »

bhk wrote: post #538
jeremy151 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right! I kid. I'm also a former avid user of the em-dash, but have mostly stopped using it. I've even started replacing em-dash usage with commas, which often results in a slightly awkward, perhaps incorrect, but quaintly artisanal sentence with a LaCroix-like spritz of authenticity. My double-space-after-a-period though, I will keep that until the end. Even if it often doesn't even render in HTML o…

And by the way, what the Hell is up with all these people claiming that two spaces is an obsolete typewriter-era pre-proportional-font thing? Narrow proportional spaces make two spaces after a period MORE important for visually separating sentences. Is it old fashioned to think logically?

It’s old fashioned to think that space in the input relates to space in the output.

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

#550

Post by throw10920 »

relaxing wrote: post #112
ffsm8 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ynow what's fucked up? I knew within the first few sentences that you're doing that on purpose, but still found myself wondering if you're a an LLM. I mean I knew you weren't, but the question is already so deeply ingrained at this point - and then you use the pullet points to boot... This loss of trust is getting tiresome. Depending on context we've likely all wondered if something is astro turfed, but with the freq…

You have to assume everything is astroturf, and constantly remind yourself not to be swayed by the mood in the room.

This is just factually true, and it's why pleading, pearl-clutching, arguments from emotion, etc. should all be immediately discarded - because you have no idea whether the person on the other side of the account is a spammer, paid propagandist, mentally ill, lying for the lols, or just a bot.

Online, the only thing that matters is the substance of the argument.

Save the emotions for those you know in the real world, who you know are real.

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