Huh? I know nothing about cars, but to me there's an obvious difference. If I saw the top car in the street, I'd say "wow that's nice"; while the bottom one just looks like a regular car. The top one looks like it went to the gym, the bottom one looks like it was puffed up through a straw. Idk if that justifies a 20x price difference, but that's my immediate reaction.
I think this post is either LLM-written, or written in a standard blogpost style of today which is increasingly becoming LLM-like. Sam Kriss had a good recent post pointing out some of the "tells": https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writin...
There seems to be a "spot the LLM" game happening on HN in particular in which literally every damn linked post has a comment accusing it of being written by an AI. Do we not understand that definitionally every AI "tell" comes from humans? Hell, Sam Kriss's article complains about florid writing and then goes on to cite Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy as examples of writers who "pull the same cheap tricks" as AI and with all respect to Mr. Kriss I just can't even. The theme of this article veers dangerously close to "if you use a weird metaphor you're probably using an LLM because surely no human would ever write 'I'm literally the size of a dry martini.'" I'm sorry, Sam, but humans have written weird fucking shit for a very long time without LLMs.
And what "tells" are in this article, anyway? It reads very straightforwardly; it does not, in fact, have any weird metaphors. Em dashes are not actually a tell, but using the wrong characters for em dashes (the article uses " - ", e.g., space hyphen space) seems pretty human. Last but, I would argue not least, I am willing to give the author of an article about not wanting to program with LLMs the benefit of the doubt here. "The orphan-punching machine fills me with existential angst and dread, and the only way for me to communicate this to the audience is to let it punch a few orphans for me."
Now, if you'll excuse me, all this is making me need to be literally the size of a high-proof daiquiri.
I'm not sure. It might be a real person, just writing in an LLM-like hackneyed voice. Anyway here's three specific paragraphs from the post, each exhibiting that voice and the "rule of three":
> Throughout all of these experiences, and so many more than I have time to share, it was the human connection that made it special. The laughter that helped me get through a hard problem. The sleepless nights that reminded me I was not alone. The selflessness of others to get on stage or behind a camera and teach people they didn’t even know, often for little or no cost, just so that others would be enabled to build and have an influence.
> They don’t laugh with me when my code fails to compile after I swear “this is the one.” They don’t help me develop an understanding of my software, so that when someone says “how does this work” I can pour my heart out with passionate explanations. Most importantly, they don’t turn their head and smile and participate in the inexplicable elation of saying “we built this!”
> I desire to connect with people. I long for the days where I was vulnerable and shared my struggles with engineers who charitably stepped up to support me. I miss taking what I learned from those struggles and sharing them back out as a blog post or presentation, encouraging the next person to overcome the same challenge.
Whoa there. What's wrong with "undercutting labor markets"? Last I heard, when a profession (e.g. doctors) decides to limit the number of practicioners in order to charge a higher price to the public, that's a bad thing. It benefits the people currently employed in that profession now, but it hurts others who wants to join, and it hurts the public who wants to get the service (e.g. healthcare). The sum of hurt is greater than the sum of help. Cartels are harmful; they don't stop being harmful just because there are borders involved.
I mean, it's one thing if you think immigrants commit more crimes or use more taxpayer money. These are both false, but at least the argument could hypothetically work. But if you say that even perfectly law-abiding, non-welfare-using, good-work-performing hypothetical immigrants shouldn't be allowed in because they would "undercut labor markets", that's plain nonsense. Such nice hypothetical immigrants should be invited in large numbers and everyone would win from it.
If someone has no specials skills beyond what a current citizen college grad has, why is there a need for that individual to have an H1 or related visa? Many visas get issued to people that take the equivalent of a University of Phoenix degree.
I haven't done the math, but my guess is that a pothole might do hundreds of dollars worth of damage over its lifetime, maybe thousands. If society was willing to pay 1/10th of that sum per pothole to anyone willing to fill it, there'd be a lot more applicants. (Though it might lead to people making potholes on purpose, so the payment needs to depend on road health over time, not number of potholes filled.)
Well your last sentence shows exactly why it wouldn't work and so you're not really talking about "1/10th of that sum per pothole" you're talking about, I don't even know - paying random people random sums of money at arbitrary times based on overall road health?
A map, posted on the municipal or county website. You, a private citizen, bid to fill a hole. The city accepts. You upload a geostamped 'Before' picture. You are given a time window to fill the hole (often at night). You fill the hole. Upload 'After' pictures. Get paid in the next cycle.
You take a sledge hammer to the street a block over. Repeat. Profit.
You do a bad job filling the hole. Some hits it and their car breaks. They sue you and the city. The city attorneys successfully push the blame onto you since you're a contractor. You have no liability insurance because you're not a professional because that's the whole point of this thing, right? You're on the hook for the car, a few grand for a medical check-up, and a spurious mental anguish claim. You declare bankruptcy and on the way back from your last visit with your attorney, you hit another pothole and your car breaks. Full circle.
Making a living through art is such a strange thing to wish for. I always imagine a prehistoric hunter telling tales around the campfire. Should the hunter think of hunting as his day job? Should he wish for a life where he'd spend all his time perfecting his tales, while other people would feed him? If he spends his life hunting in the days and telling tales in the evenings, is he a failure?
When challenged by the dictum that people often confuse nature with history, the response is to abandon arguments from human nature and replace them with a fantasy caveman land.
Caveman land implies human nature without needing to make an argument for it. It is so far in the past that there is limited evidence, and most people you encounter aren't anthropologists. So you can justify all your unexamined assumptions about present society with an appeal to the caveman land.
Ironically, all you need to craft a fantasy caveman land is an imagination. "Picture hunter gatherers, sitting around a campfire, carving rocks into Pokemon cards and trading them." What a great story! Anything is possible in caveman land.
> Should the hunter think of hunting as his day job? Should he wish for a life where he'd spend all his time perfecting his tales, while other people would feed him?
Funny thing how bards/poets/musicians/storytellers are a fixture in every society that has figured out how to produce more calories than each individual personally needs to consume
You didn't answer the questions though. Should the hunter dream about stopping hunting? Should he think of himself as a failure if he can't? Is this way of thinking good for his soul or his art? It's not about caloric surplus.
You suggest that the only reason he shouldn't, is that others might have to support him if he stops hunting. I'm saying that the arts (and especially oral traditions in a pre-literate society) are a net benefit to society that do in fact warrant collective investment to support
the traditional answer to this is something along the lines of the idea that writing is not fungible; that is, just because we have a lot of writing, doesn't mean we have enough good writing. What good writing is varies, but clearly there is some level of quality that exists, at least at the bottom end (its not hard to find people to agree on whether a work is objectively bad writing)
unfortunately, precisely defining good writing is difficult, much like good coding. And as such, whether there is enough good writing, or "how much better good writing is to bad writing", or "what the effects of good writing are on the individual or society" are questions that we arent remotely prepared to answer. I imagine many people advocating for support for writers believe on some level both that good writing has very positive effects for the readers and society, and that there also isn't enough of it, or at least that its drowned out by perverse incentives and mountains of bad writing
Bad writing is typically a necessary prerequisite of good writing - it's pretty rare for a Dickinson or a Fitzgerald to just appear fully-formed out of thin air. The more it is viable for folks to spend their time honing their writing skills, the more likely we are to discover great writers.
This is, notably, the exact same argument we make for why tech firms should hire junior engineers. If one doesn't keep subsidising opportunities for the up-and-comers in every field, one quick runs out of experienced candidates.
Prehistoric men probably weren't capable of self reflection in a philosophical sense? Why is it so "wrong" to tie to to caloric surplus? Your questions might be deeper but the reasoning could be simpler.
Because I'd rather hear a tale about hunting told by a hunter, not a tale about hunting told by someone who disdains hunting as a day job and considers himself a failure if he can't get a living from actual hunters for his tales about hunting.
Or in modern times, replace "hunter" with "working class".
Specialization is a modern phenomenon. I have doubts that in ancient societies there was clear division in labor. I would suspect that lots of people were jacks-of-all-trades. One moment the bread-winner, another the reeve, another the witch doctor, another the parent, the story teller, the builder, etc. Obviously some people would have a knack for particular things and would be relied upon to carry out those chores…
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