Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#811

Post by visarga » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:28 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #359

I'm absolutely 100% for this policy. My only caution is that good writers and LLMs look very similar, because LLMs were trained on a corpus of good writers. Good writers use semicolons and em-dashes. Sometimes we used bulleted lists or Oxford commas. So we should make sure to follow that other HN rule, and assume the person on the other end is a good faith actor, and be cautious about accusing someone of using AI. (I…

> My only caution is that good writers and LLMs look very similar, because LLMs were trained on a corpus of good writers.

People moving to careless writing for authenticity while good writing will be considered AI? funny. We want authentic human thought but can only detect human style.

This reddit thread that came out today is the perfect inversion of the discussion here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPromptGenius/comments/1rr19k...

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#812

Post by kruffalon » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:30 AM UTC

caditinpiscinam wrote: post #745

We've all heard the phrase "the sum of all human knowledge". I've been feeling more and more that generative AI represents the average of all human knowledge. Which has its place. But a future in which all thought and creativity is averaged away is a bleak one. It's the heat death of thought.

But it's a weird kind of average... Not the 3 from 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 but rather like the bland tv-dinner which tastes non-upsetting for most people.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#813

Post by altairprime » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

sam345 wrote: post #778

Good addition but to be fair HN guidelines have become so quaint particularly as they are now rarely enforced or even acknowledged. E.g. "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. " And " Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. " These are viola…

How often do you report the violations you see every day to the mods? (The ‘flag’ button is not yet suitable for that purpose.)

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#814

Post by EarlKing » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:36 AM UTC

kruffalon wrote: post #812

caditinpiscinam wrote: post #745

We've all heard the phrase "the sum of all human knowledge". I've been feeling more and more that generative AI represents the average of all human knowledge. Which has its place. But a future in which all thought and creativity is averaged away is a bleak one. It's the heat death of thought.

But it's a weird kind of average... Not the 3 from 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5 but rather like the bland tv-dinner which tastes non-upsetting for most people.

An intellectual Mode rather than a Mean or a Median?

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#815

Post by planb » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

uni_baconcat wrote: post #754

For quite a while, I like use LLM to refine and fix my grammar issue, but my colleagues and professors reminds me that it was way too obvious. They said they can tolerate some mistakes in my words, but no tolerance for AI generated content.

As a non native speaker, I sometimes use LLMs to search for a way to formulate my thoughts like I intend them to be received by the reader. I'd never just copy the verbatim LLM output somewhere, it always sounds blunt and not like me, but I gladly apply grammar corrections or better phrasing.

I'd normally not do this for a text of this length, but just for fun, here's what ChatGPT suggests:

As a non-native speaker, I sometimes use LLMs to help me find wording that conveys my thoughts the way I want them to be understood by the reader. I would never copy the output verbatim, because it often sounds blunt and unlike me, but I’m happy to use grammar corrections or improved phrasing.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#816

Post by red_hare » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

caditinpiscinam wrote: post #745

We've all heard the phrase "the sum of all human knowledge". I've been feeling more and more that generative AI represents the average of all human knowledge. Which has its place. But a future in which all thought and creativity is averaged away is a bleak one. It's the heat death of thought.

I feel the same about Claude Code. It's a fast but average developer at just about everything and there are some things that average developers are just consistently bad at and therefore Claude is consistently bad at.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#817

Post by thirtygeo » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:44 AM UTC

ModernMech wrote: post #766

caditinpiscinam wrote: post #745

We've all heard the phrase "the sum of all human knowledge". I've been feeling more and more that generative AI represents the average of all human knowledge. Which has its place. But a future in which all thought and creativity is averaged away is a bleak one. It's the heat death of thought.

The soft gaussian blur of all human knowledge.

Racing towards average!

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#818

Post by greggsy » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:47 AM UTC

It’s almost certain that this exact thread is currently being used to train comment bots.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#819

Post by surume » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:47 AM UTC

AI assistance does not eliminate human authorship. A comment may be drafted or refined with tools but still reflect the user’s own ideas and judgment. Prohibiting any AI assistance would be difficult to enforce and would likely exclude normal writing aids that many people already use. The more relevant standard is whether the commenter stands behind the content and participates in the discussion.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#820

Post by altairprime » Thu, Mar 12, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #702

primitivesuave wrote: post #566

The most telling sign of a human commenter is brevity. Consequently, I hardly ever spend the time to write out long and detailed HN comments like I used to in the pre-LLM era. People nowadays have a much harder time believing that an Internet stranger is meticulously crafting a detailed and grammatically-airtight message to another Internet stranger without AI assistance.

This is interesting to me because I'm a degenerate "massive comment" guy. People have gotten mad at me for it before, I'll take a comment from them, break it down, address it portion by portion with citations, and then ask their thoughts. It's probably an obsessive level of engagement that people aren't really interested in, which is fair, but I don't know how else to get my point across in its totality. Also there's…

One suggestion from a fellow longwrite: Tweak that to “leave an opening for their optional reply” so that it’s okay if they don’t respond, so that you aren’t creating discomfort and pressure by the comment length, and you should see an easing both of pressure on yourself and on others. One of my most frequent longwrite sigs is “Reply optional as always” :)