Comment by getnormality | Hacker News Reader

Comment by getnormality | Hacker News Reader

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The really ironic thing is that this article demonstrates the correct, purposeful human usage of these stock phrases and is getting skewered for it because it superficially sounds like AI. It's not exemplifying what it's criticizing, it's exemplifying the exact reverse of what it's criticizing.

"It's not X, it's Y" is for when you know your reader will think X, and you want them to understand the difference between the X they are expecting and the Y that is actually the case.

Here are the two "not just" passages in the article:

> Driven by this discrepancy, I built a simple tracking script. It was not a sophisticated piece of software, just a tool designed to observe how "users" actually interacted with the website. I was not just counting clicks; I was watching behavior.

> The bots operating today are disturbingly good. They are not just hitting your site and leaving; they are programmed to mimic engagement, making your marketing ROI calculations dangerously inaccurate. I began to categorize them.

Both of these passages are using the "not just X, but Y" trope in a purposeful, meaningful way, anticipating what a typical audience member might assume and signaling for them to adjust their expectation. Not just trying to maximize the usage of the trope with random non-sequitur values of X and Y, as GPT does.

(Oh dear, I just said it too.)

It would be interesting to assemble a corpus of meaningful human text with superficial use of AI tropes, put it side-by-side with true AI slop, and see who can tell the difference. I suspect that, in the coming years, this will be a test posed in higher education and job interviews.

I mostly disagree.

> I was not just counting clicks; I was watching behavior.

This is completely superfluous. The rest of the paragraph is fine, but the only real ChatGPTism is this one.

> They are not just hitting your site and leaving; they are programmed to mimic engagement

In this case it’s a valid sentence. What makes it sound overly AI are the semicolon and the timing, which is exactly the usual “it’s not just {1-5 words}; it’s {1-5 words}”.

Also, perhaps I’m not a typical audience member (I’m not), but I was not assuming any of that. I would try to explain how I parse this kind of language, but the gist is that a 10 sentence word with unambiguous meaning doesn’t really leave space for interpretation. Your attempt to “anticipate what the audience is thinking” is just a writing style, nothing deep about it.

My point mostly being that, as I mentioned in the parent, this is clearly a text written in the ChatGPT style, with simple yet over-expressive language. I personally heavily dislike the style, but I’m a non native speaker used to either scientific or fiction prose. I don’t encounter it too often, and to me it sounds like a parody of Silicon Valley vernacular. Scam alerts immediately start firing in my brain. There’s no “good way” of doing it nowadays.

> What makes it sound overly AI are the semicolon and the timing

It's very disappointing that it now seems to be commonly believed that semicolons and em dashes are a sign of AI. Semicolons have been used as a useful tool for a long time; a comma here would simply be wrong.

I think the problem is the overuse compared to the times before ChatGPT. Same for furthermore, thus, delve and other words. Heck em dashes are so obscure that I doubt 1% of the population knows how to type it on their own keyboard.

Those heavily exposed to media before ChatGPT feel there's a shift on the way sentences and narratives are presented. We usually don't use that many semicolons because we structure our sentences not to use them, same for dashes or other weird constructs used by ChatGPT right now. It's hard to explain with words but there are a lot of tell signs when you start looking for them. And not even talking about the explicit ones like bullet points with "bold title:", one that really pulls the curtain open for me is the phrases that end with "one, two, and three of something". When you see it once it's hard to unsee it used everywhere, even on sites that are supposed to be user content only like here or reddit.

I agree. It's just sad for those of us who've always been fans of semicolons and em dashes and now have to risk looking like we're 'AI' or — worse — unthinkingly adopting the AI tone of voice.

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