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But meeting in the middle only works if you honestly believe the middle is a valuable place to be. I don't want to dissect your writing too much, but let's look at one example.

> The issue with most of these articles is that they seem to demonize the technology, and systematically use demeaning language about all of its facets.

This is very confident, strident language. You clearly believe that there is a faction of people demonizing technology, akin to luddites, who are not worthy of being taken seriously.

> This one raises a lot of important points about LLMs, but...

So here you go for the rhetorical device of weighing the opposing view. Except, you don't weight it at all. You are not at all specific about what those points are. It's just a way to signal that you're being thoughtful without having to actually engage with the opposing viewpoint.

> I do think that safety is important... But I think it's better not to be a luddite.

Again, the rhetoric of moderation but not at all moderate in content.

It was a clear mistake to think that this was LLM writing. But I suspect the reason I made this mistake is that AI writing influences people to mimic surface level aspects of its style. AI writing tends to actually do the "You might say A is true, but B has some valid points, however A is ultimately correct." Your writing seems like that if you aren't reading it closely, but underneath that is a very human self-assuredness with a thin veneer of charitability.

Yeah I definitely misread their post.

Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that.

For the future, try to avoid prevaricating when you actually have a clear sense of what you want to argue. Instead of convincing me that you've weighed both options and found luddism wanting, you just come off as dishonest. If you think stridently, write stridently.

A Hidden Machine. That's right, a being that can cut, fly, surf, strength, and flash! Terrifying.

Sounds like a lovely co-op building, or perhaps a retirement community for aging hackers.

Thanks LLM!

I think the social aspect is underreported. I think this applies even for people using Claude Code and not just those treating an LLM as a therapist. In other words, I wonder how many of these people can't call their doctor to make an appointment or call a restaurant to order a pizza. And I say this as someone who struggles to do those things.

People claim that DoorDash and other similar apps are about efficiency, but I suspect a large portion is also a desire to remove human interaction. LLMs are the same. Or, in actuality, to create a simulacrum of human interaction that is satisfying enough.

If I were to go off into the woods, take a lot of drugs, and write my own crank manifesto, the central conceit would be that ADHD is the key to understanding the entirety of Silicon Valley. A bunch of people with stimulus driven brains creating technologies that feed themselves and the rest of the populace more and more stimulation, setting a new baseline and requiring new technologies for higher levels of stimulation in an endless loop until we all stimulate ourselves to death. Delayed gratification is the enemy.

This is similar to how we have already found hacks in our evolutionary programming to directly deliver high amounts of flavor without nutrition, and we've been working on ever more complex means of delivering social stimulation without the need for other human (one of the key appeals of AI for many people, as well).

Of course these are all the ravings of a crank and should be ignored.

"Addicted" "Superpowers" "manifest with my mind" "it feels amazing"

Why does it sound like you're on drugs? I know that sounds extremely rude, but I can't think of any other reasonable comparison for that language.

It's hard to take these kinds of endorsements seriously when they're written so hyperbolically, in terms of the same cliches, and focused on entirely on how it makes you feel rather than what it does.

The New Yorker posts digital articles in advance of the release of the print edition.

At the bottom of this article it says: Published in the print edition of the April 13, 2026, issue, with the headline “Moment of Truth.”

As someone who reads the print magazine every week, I always scroll down to check if the article will be published and skip it if so (so I can read it when my magazine arrives).

Truly a unique individual on every level.

I say this with no malice, but you are weird. Being weird is cool! Reading nothing but historical manuscripts is rad! But the historical lens and the literary lens, as you yourself stated, are totally different.

Though, honestly, it would be fun to read reviews of ancient texts that are written like modern literary reviews. I guess we do get that, but only for new translations of the Odyssey or Beowulf or whatever. Those essays often dive into both the translation and the text in its original language (if the reviewer is fluent enough).

I bet you would love the Cairo Genizah.

I'm sure you're sick of comments about moderation, but I will say, this makes me more sympathetic to the position you're in.

It's an interesting dilemma. Many very respected publications use provocative titles because of the attention economy. And I'm sure you have good data that provocative titles lead to drive-by comments and flame wars.

But I don't think big_toast was entirely wrong that there is a side effect of sometimes burying articles that are by their nature provocative. And how do you distinguish a flame war over a title from a flame war over content? That's not a leading question. I don't know.

But isn't that circular? If the ranking algorithm used by the mods tends to devalue articles like this because they don't trust the user base to comment intelligently, doesn't that alter the culture of this site to make that more true?

I suspect that they are perfectly capable of clicking an archive link or better yet logging in as they are already a subscriber. Maybe, like me, they enjoy reading the physical magazine.

Exactly what a SWE would say.

A new Ronan Farrow piece is a rare gift (and Marantz is no slouch). Can't wait to read this in the physical magazine when it arrives!

Yes, I read reviews to learn if a book is good or not. Quotes from the book that are carefully selected often help to showcase what the author is capable of, on top of a clear description of their writing style. I want the reviewer to sell me on what moved them.

That is different than whether or not the reviewer was compelled by the ideas in the book. If the reviewer is a good writer, then I've learned something. Then, I know that somebody who is a good writer thought the ideas in a book were interesting, which by the transitive property, implies the author being reviewed is also a good writer. In this case, I don't think the reviewer is a very interesting writer, so I'm not convinced that they are a good judge of interesting writing.

This review is just a plot synopsis. There are no quotes from the book to give me a sense of the quality of the writing. The review feels targeted at somebody who is already bought into the premise, not somebody from the outside who wants to know if "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is a good book or not. In that sense, it totally fails as a book review.

I don't think that's what they meant by major.

I agree that many of the books they're likely talking about are bad, but at least be correct about what makes them bad!

Uh, Steven Spielberg is all over E.T. For one thing, he storyboarded the big special effects sequences. He collaborated closely on the screenplay because it was drawn from his own childhood experiences. He was the final say in casting. His relationship with editor Michael Kahn is famously collaborative.

I think comparing your telling an LLM what to do and Steven Spielberg directing a movie just shows a total lack of understanding of how movies are made, and also inflates your own sense of your self.

Writing is editing.

Actually, unless they are self-published, most "new-age self-help" books are pretty thoughtfully edited. They are persuasive writing, whose goal is to convince you to believe in a framework that is not supported by evidence. Dismissing them for being incoherent is actually a mistake, in that it shows a lack of understanding of their appeal.

Though, I must admit, I'm not sure exactly what you meant by "new-age self-help" books, so I took a guess.

I'm starting to fear that LLMs are especially popular with people who can't call a doctor's office to make an appointment or tell a waiter they brought the wrong food. I struggle with those things, but I know that it's better to push myself outside of my comfort zone.

Are LLMs mainly a tool for people with atrophying social skills who want all interaction to happen via a text prompt that always responds in the most soothing way? I can't think of another reason to replace human therapy with an LLM.

I wasn't even alive at the time, so I've only experienced the whole punk and post-punk scene after the fact. I always found myself way more drawn to post-punk music, and it's nice to know that you really did have to be there to experience how radical punk felt, regardless of its origins. The waves of musical scenes that spread out from that initial punk moment took that energy and ran with it in some radically different directions.

For example, I love the B52s, and it's easy to forget that they were responding to punk. This video of a show from 1980 is one of my favorite concert videos ever, as it captures that energy that is missing from the studio albums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXfkG7q_0s

I highly recommend Simon Reynold's history of post-punk, Rip It Up and Start Again. An oversimplified version of his argument is that punk as a movement barely existed. It was an extremely brief cultural moment, represented by a small number of bands, the most influential of which (The Sex Pistols) was basically manufactured.

There wasn't enough to that initial punk sound other than energy and posturing. What punk really did was act as a catalyst for an explosion of musical creativity that followed.

Software engineers idolize Tesla because they see themselves as the Tesla (a selfless devotee of the abstract idea of technology) against evil Edisons (businessmen who only care about money and steal other people's ideas). They've basically projected the Jobs/Woz divide back onto two historical figures who, in reality, barely interacted.

The funniest part is that The Oatmeal comic didn't invent this concept, but drew on pre-Internet narratives put forward by The Tesla Society, who were mailing busts of Tesla to universities around the country since the 70s at least. And that organization is explicitly nationalistic and religious, tied to other Serbian-American heritage organizations, and doing events with the Orthodox church.

But CGI in most big blockbusters is bad, and people still complain about it.

This is so whiggish that it made my whig fly off my head when I read it. I spend a lot of time on HN, so I'm gonna need to secure my whig somehow, because this happens a lot.