scubbo

Genuine question - is it? Why? If I set out to write a mediocre guide to bicycle maintenance, and through a spectacular series of typos I accidentally write a recipe for a sublime cheesecake, it's still true that I've written a good recipe, even if that wasn't my intent.

(Hopefully we can bypass quibbling about the use of the term "write" in an LLM-assisted context. Readers should feel free to substitute the clunkier phrase "take actions that cause words to be recorded" if they wish)

> It's [...] very difficult to figure out where to "listen"

I don't agree. Or rather, I don't think it's any harder than it has been since the Internet exploded, long before LLMs. It's just based on track record. Read an article; note that it's useful; note the source. See another article by that source; find it useful again; begin to attribute trust to them. Read a less-good article by them; lessen your trust somewhat.

By all means, observe "this person probably didn't edit this after an LLM generated it" and take that as an input to whether you will trust their observations - but you should probably be verifying anything technical that you read anyway. If you consistently observe unhelpful or misleading content from a particular source, you should stop trusting it, regardless of whether that content was human- or AI-generated.

> If an author doesn't try to make "listening" easier, then it puts the value they hold into question if they don't care about it enough themselves.

Again, I don't think that's true. If someone has tweaked and moulded an LLM-content-generation pipeline such that they can generate a piece of technical content that is still genuinely-useful even without a human editing pass to reduce LLM-isms, they're still a useful source. I might justifiably think they're lazy, uninvested, or not an expert in the domain - but it would be foolish to deny the usefulness of their output.

To put it differently - Michael Jordan could wake up hungover and, with one hand behind his back, still kick my ass at basketball. The fact that he's not trying the hardest he could doesn't mean that the scoreboard would be any less valid. Equivalently, caring about the content you create doesn't directly affect the value of what you create (again, I can't stress enough - for technical content only!) - it's probably positively correlated (because it will cause you to take more care), but _not_ a prerequisite.

I'm reminded of a passage in Stephen Fry's "The Liar"[1], which draws the distinction between a book as an object of art, and a book as a vehicle for communication. If the message is worthwhile, I don't care if it was blurted out by a model or if blind monks inscribed it by hand into vellum parchment.

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly correlation - if I _know_ you've taken a lot of effort to write something, the chances are good that there is worthwhile content being communicated. But the correlation is _not_ perfect.

[0] when it comes to technical writing that intends to communicate information. Narrative writing that intends to evoke an emotion or viewpoint is a different story!

[1] https://blog.scubbo.org/posts/books-as-vehicles/

It is not, in fact, _meant_ to be used that way.

> there is only one way to do a thing and no room for a player to invent alternatives.

Sounds to me like you are caught up in trying to chase optimization and bemoaning the fact that there's only one optimal strategy. Do a no trains run! Or a no bots run. Or a 1000x science modifier run, or Lazy Bastard, or Death World, or... there are plenty of constraints, both programmed-in or self-imposed, that can push you out of the "standard" optimal strategy.

I never gave one? For what it's worth, I agree with your second paragraph, despite your first being needlessly aggressive.

Or...to warn people away from ever expecting compassionate or empathetic behaviour from companies, and remind people not to trust them?

Can you say more about this? I've never encountered this problem in nearly a decade of running the same stack.

``` src ├── app │ └── page.tsx └── components └── header.tsx ```

EDIT: Lol. I'm not even going to edit it. Hacker News, you also suck.

https://www.alzinfo.org/donate/donation_form/, in memory of Terry Pratchett.

I'm able to read it while logged out - and if I wasn't, there's xcancel.com, and others.

You're not doing yourself any favours.

> But that's a parasocial experience, not a feature of the words on the page.

So? Consumption of media does not exist in a vacuum - how one feels about the work is inextricably affected by the context in which is was encountered and how one views it. We feel prouder (subconciously or not) of reading works that are considered "great" or "weighty". We feel nostalgia for rereading books from our youth, or affection for a book lent by a loved one.

The writer is not saying that the words _themselves_ were changed by the new information, but that his perception and experience of them was. That experience _is still real_.

> Why do we expect authors to be scrupulously physical

"We" don't. Some people prefer it - others don't care. You're free to fall into the latter camp if you want; but the former is a valid preference, and one which _could_ be served by a market.

> Because to me, authenticity makes for a better reading experience.

This pair of sentences gave me pause, until I realised that they're not in contradiction - the author is deliberately non-judgemental of _others_ making a personal choice that _he himself_ would prefer not to make. Remarkably rare, nowadays.

> The squad brightened up.

> Thoundth good,” said Igor. “What’th in it?”

> “Boiling water,” said the corporal. “It’s what we call ‘blind scubbo’"

Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett (GNU)

Genuine question - why?

No, actually, I've never heard of such a vector. How would that work?