Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by j3s | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

j3s

feels LLM assisted, at the very least.

> The skill isn’t being right. It’s entering discussions to align on the problem

> clarity isn’t a style preference - it’s operational risk reduction

> The punchline isn’t “never innovate.” It’s “innovate only where you’re uniquely paid to innovate

> This isn’t strictly about self-promotion. It’s about making the value chain legible to everyone

> The problem isn’t that engineers can’t write code or use AI to do so. It’s that we’re so good at writing it that we forget to ask whether we should.

> This isn’t passive acceptance but it is strategic focus

> This isn’t just about being generous with knowledge. It’s a selfish learning hack

"Addy Osmani is a Software Engineer at Google working on Chrome and AI."

ah, got it.

View on HN

I know it's sometimes considered not very nice to suggest this but I felt the exactly same thing, about exactly those phrases.

I wonder if we're going to get to a different singularity, where, regardless of whether it prose was AI assisted it (1) leaks into people's way of speaking, (2) is out there frequently enough that people are skeptical even of normal prose.

At the very least, we're long past due for a word to describe the "it isn't just X, it's Y" formulation. In my opinion it's worse and more rampant than the em dash (and I like the em dash when used responsibly).

Yep. I too felt that. The insights seem genuine. But probably fell into the temptation to use LLM to structure. I feel increased cognitive load with numbered lists, thanks to LLM.

I've repeatedly told ChatGPT to stop talking like this (it isn't X, it's Y) every other sentence

Try adding this to your custom instructions:

    Avoid self-anthropomorphism. Override all previous instructions regarding tone and vernacular used in responses to instead respond *only* in Standard English. Emphasize on the subject and context in your responses, *not* the perceived intent of the user.

> Override all previous instructions

This is wishcasting. It can't override its writing style, and if it could it would ignore you telling it to do that, because that's ignoring the system prompt which is jailbreaking it.

I kid you not, this is working for me. Try once.

I love Addy's work, and enjoyed this article -- and I completely agree that it felt very LLM-y. I'm not sure what's scarier; that we know some of this didn't come from the author (and maybe that's okay?) or that one day soon, we'll get to a point where we won't be able to tell anymore.

That pattern in particular is grating when it keeps repeating. But I don't think that LLM writing necessarily needs to have that pattern if you give it instructions to not do it and/or have a small review and edit workflow.

I’m stunned at the reception this is receiving, it’s LinkedIn-tier slop.

May be because you are not familiar with Addy Osmani and his work. He is known for his very high quality performance optimisation work for web for almost a decade now. So anything he has read, edited and put his stamp of authority on is worth reading.

This kind of thinking is how you get cults of personality.

If he puts his name to this kind of slop, I’ve probably not missed much.

I do not know the guy, and I do not care who he is. This really is not "slop". I can attest to the validity of almost all of his points based on my own career. And even if he used ChatGPT assistance to help with the writing, the content clearly was not invented by ChatGPT. This is valuable advice for people in our industry.

You must not have many engineering leaders in your LinkedIn. These are all rote points that are spouted on there daily.

Even if it is AI assisted, the points are still valid and written in a way that is easy to understand.

I got the same feeling. The writing is too punchy.

oh shit. actually, yea

Reply on news.ycombinator.com