Hacker News discussion surfaces disagreement on AI's role in writing
2 Sep 18 5:53 AM · 8d ago · 8 comments · 1 source · development 2 of 3
Comments reveal two competing camps: some argue LLMs should be avoided entirely for human-facing writing, while others defend their use for fact-checking and structural feedback. A dominant concern emerges about authenticity and reader fatigue from suspecting AI involvement.
“I fear in the future people will read even less because of how often people cheap out and use AI to write.”
S-E-Pjoeriddles Writer and blogger
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What people said 8 voices · verbatim
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I think style is overrated. Yeah if you write commercially, you are a journalist or a copywriter, sure, you need to write in certain style. There’s rules to this shit. I think it was Hemingway who said that. Then again, the good ones break the rules.Today even if you don’t use LLM’s following certain formal style you end up sounding like ad copy…
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> If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?This isn’t your thought; you are merely regurgitating a sentence we have all heard many times before, practically word for word.Presumably you think there is value in posting yet another copy of that other person’s thoughts in this discussion, despite having spent no time or…
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> If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?Because the value of writing are not the words on a piece of paper but the idea they convey.Politicians speech are not worth listening too because they have a copywriter polish them?Teacher assistant homeworks are not worth to do, because they are made by a TA and not by the…
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It's extremely refreshing reading good human prose isn't it! It's like when I would read a newly-written Paul Graham essay 20 years ago.He also uses rule of three and the phrase "load-bearing", just for fun, which elicited a wry smile from me.Thanks OP for a pleasant start to my day!
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I think it's good advice. I find it a bit funny the author said to not use a single word coming out of the LLM, but they probably did just that because I never heard a human being say "load-bearing" before but now it's all over the place, also used here. Or I don't get the irony.
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> If you can't spend the time to write it, why should anyone read it?100%. We're producing more content, faster, than ever before but ... most of it is just click-producing garbage that won't stand the test of time.
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Thought I'd get an article with tricks how to stop an LLM from sounding like the most obnoxious Linkedin influencer. Instead it says to use it as a copyeditor.Ok - but that's not very useful.
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Writing is thinking. You are outsourcing the process of thinking through your thoughts so you can communicate and understand them.
All 3 developments of joeriddles on using LLMs as copyeditors, not ghostwriters →
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