Taste Is All That's Left • Hacker News Board

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#561

Post by didibus » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:22 AM UTC

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #558

didibus wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a quote I forgot that says: "There is a Quality to Quantity". I think it was from a Chinese person, as they took manufacturing of cheap things, low quality stuff, but managed to scale it to mass quantities. I agree with that, it may not be reliable, full featured, well designed, ergonomic, etc. But quantity enables things and thus is a quality in itself. It allows use-cases that benefit from accessible cheap…

> There's a quote I forgot that says: "There is a Quality to Quantity". > I agree with that, it may not be reliable, full featured, well designed, ergonomic, etc. But quantity enables things and thus is a quality in itself. It allows use-cases that benefit from accessible cheap software. The underlying assumption here is that the quantity delivered is acceptable and does not worsen the customer experience. To continu…

You're just saying quantity is not always a desirable quality. That's true, and hence it's not every use-case that would favor quantity over other qualities. But there also exists those which do, and trading other qualities for quantity can be a good trade off.

> the quantity delivered is acceptable and does not worsen the customer experience

No, it will explicitly worsen the customer experience in other ways, but it will also give them a benefit: access to something they couldn't afford at all before.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#562

Post by MajorTakeaway » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 6:21 AM UTC

kyle-rb wrote: post #544

hellojomp wrote: post #8

On the topic of taste, I think of this quote in Susan Sontag's "Notes On 'Camp'" often: “For taste governs every free — as opposed to rote — human response. Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion — and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas. (One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to deve…

Wow a lot of emdashes, are we sure she didn't use Claude?

You sure you know what syntax is?

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#563

Post by morganf » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 6:54 AM UTC

causal wrote: post #523

creshal wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sceptical, where are all these essays he was supposed to have learned this very distinct style from? I certainly don't remember seeing them.

Yeah if you look back at earlier posts on the same blog, definitely not the same style. I'm guessing the author is either lying to save face or has spent so much time with Claude that they cannot distinguish Claude's voice from their own (we're all vulnerable to this).

I read some of his older posts and came to the same conclusion.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#564

Post by neuroticnews25 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:24 AM UTC

vsl wrote: post #354

hypfer wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and this post will go down as my not-the-proudest, however, I take your criticism to heart—although not personally—and strive to improve. I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. I don't care if it is the "right" thing to use there. The character has been associated with slop. Why do you keep using it without even just acknowledging that you did. Just use…

> I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI" illiterate crowd? I'm not going to change my writing because some idiots who never read a novel or heard about typography think only AI does that.

Only times i've ever used the emdash was to signal sophistication. It's not like it makes the text any more understandable. Of course some people may have more practical reasons to use it, and there's nothing wrong with more or less conscious status signaling, it's probably unavoidable. But every status signal that's cheap to fake is going to get faked, and that's exactly what happened. Now you don't even have to know about its existence to use it, and in the effect it has shifted to signal low cultural capital. In a few years it will probably get RLHFed out of the default LLM tone. Next step is also already happening: people countersignaling by consciously still using it, showing that they can afford it, because they're unmistakably not pushing AI slop.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#565

Post by neuroticnews25 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 8:26 AM UTC

yoz-y wrote: post #387

hypfer wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just do not comprehend how that can be the hill people choose to die on. Like.. I get it. It's wrong. It feels wrong to give the AI nonsense just an inch and all. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just highly ineffective dogmatism that makes people unheard, miserable and just further increases struggle. Which people are free to do, in the same way that I am free to purposefully drop a massive hammer on my foo…

If you stop doing something right, because of fear, then the terrorists win.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#566

Post by basilikum » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 10:18 AM UTC

innocentoldguy wrote: post #525

basilikum wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculating is not math. Calculators make mathematicians better mathematicians by allowing them to spend their time on actual mathematics. Writing is thinking. LLM writing makes authors worsr authors and even dumber people overall. Also a calculator gives the same answer as a human (except for human errors where the calculator isa strict improvement). LLMs absolutely do not give the same output as humans.

Isn’t that expected, though? If 100 of us were to write a five page essay on the chaffing mechanics of an Underoos wedgie, the likelihood that any of them are the same is pretty small, isn’t it?

They don't just give different implementations of the same categorical output, but categorically different output. LLMs do not write like humans.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#567

Post by Citizen_Lame » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 11:48 AM UTC

causal wrote: post #523

creshal wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sceptical, where are all these essays he was supposed to have learned this very distinct style from? I certainly don't remember seeing them.

Yeah if you look back at earlier posts on the same blog, definitely not the same style. I'm guessing the author is either lying to save face or has spent so much time with Claude that they cannot distinguish Claude's voice from their own (we're all vulnerable to this).

Looks like he is just lying, whole thing reads like pure AI slop. What a distinct lack of taste.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#568

Post by liampulles » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

I think the main difference between me and Claude's work is that it doesn't find a needlessly complex solution offensive, and is happy to contribute that complex solution and to then move on and build further on it. After all, it works.

The problem comes later when the code no longer reveals the domain and the processes of the business, and where changes start affecting other expected business behaviors (at least that is what I think would happen, I find the code too distasteful to let it get that far).

Yes, that's partly a sense of qualified taste I've built through experience, but I think it also comes from trying to actually understand user needs better. E.g. Our finance department says they wants a daily report of invoices, but what do they ACTUALLY NEED? Maybe the problem to solve is to allow more flexibility with billing dates, or increase billing strike attempts, etc. That stuff sometimes doesn't come out until you really ask because of all sorts of organizational and social beliefs, fears, etc. Practicing that and recognizing the signs means you can do that rethinking earlier on in the process, before dev starts.

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#569

Post by juliendorra » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

RussianBot9580 wrote: post #524

manlymuppet wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing to consider is that LLMs have become a premier source of reading for the public. If more of what you read is AI generated, how you write is going to be significantly influenced by that. One (slightly frightening) possibility is that many people write like LLMs even without assistance from LLMs. AI writing may have just become the norm for some. Maybe that's what's happening here.

LLM style is in many ways "The Atlantic from Temu". Nearly every article in The Atlantic sounds the same - I think we all know the cliches I am talking about. This doesn't mean that every author underwent a lobotomy (I hope). It just means there's a group of editors enforcing a common style. Joining these editors used to take years of training in order to write like they do. Now we have their wisdom available on the…

Magazines’ style is generally good but affected, with some distinct quirks mixed in. These quirks have been also picked up in the training and their automated repetition at scale made it weird and "AI-style"

Re: Taste Is All That's Left

#570

Post by satvikpendem » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

Krei-se wrote: post #549

hexedpackets wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can only guess what products you use, but I'll take a stab by naming some big ones: Spotify - https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/spotify-says-its-best-deve... Netflix - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/22/netflix-all-in-on-leveraging... Stripe - https://stripe.dev/blog/minions-stripes-one-shot-end-to-end-... Discord - https://discord.com/blog/developing-rapidly-with-generative-...

These are grown and stable platforms now getting additions with the help of AI (which is not wrong) but they are not built by one. Its like saying you live in a 3D printed home because you added a 3D printed decoration + the house is structurally stable == its a stable 3D printed house.

This is goal post moving; partially built still means built.