Let Me Ch... (blog.alxgsv.com)

The author was an LLM.

Is the joke that it took me like 3 minutes to write this? If so, I think that's a bit unfair to the author. I think this is something that was at least shaped. But I feel very confident its LLM written. If it isn't LLM written, then I also think it is bad writing, but that's a separate point.

I agree that pangram is not infallible. It has a reported FP rate of like 1/10,000, which is decidedly not zero! Having used AI to write fiction before, and working with LLMs all day, I do feel pretty confident in my ability to detect them. Pangram is just a way to make sure I am not totally ungrounded. Moreover, I don't actually particularly care if someone uses an LLM in the process of writing their work. What I care about is how it sounds. This story reads like an LLM wrote it, optimizing towards what a novice writer would find appealing.

The problem is that enjoyment has, oddly enough, been misallocated to all the liminal spaces and moments in life. So most optimization tends to elide enjoyment.

Enjoyment elision is the number one cause of meat suit user dissatisfaction. The engineers insist it's not a compiler design bug, stating that those moments of enjoyment are, in fact, unreachable. The UX team says it's not the user's fault either, as it's a fully intended UX choice. The current proposed solution is to push this issue upstream, requesting that all enjoyment be moved from the journey to the destination.

I don't think it's that bypassing enjoyment is trivial.

It's that enjoyment is a secondary function to contentment and the user is allowed to pursue this secondary function according to their own desires. It is just that we often aren't taught the value of or the techniques involved in finding enjoyment.

Consider a professional athlete, a recreational league player, someone who watches their favorite team, and a team manager.

They are all engaged in their activities, originally, because of some enjoyment derived from the game.

But how often does each of them enjoy playing the game?

The recreational player probably gets more fun out of playing the game than the ones who choose to watch, even if they played in highschool.

When was the last time the player enjoyed the ritual of watching a game they aren't involved in?

The one who goes to every game probably gets more enjoyment from watching the game than a player on the sideline.

How often does a player enjoy arm-chair calling another game as opposed to a manager?

But, what happens as we age or in the face of injury? We learn to adapt to enjoying other aspects of our favorite activities. We do so because we are forced to without realizing that we could have been enjoying watching the game just as much as we do now post-injury.

We see this in streaming and video games: People who watch endless hours of games they'll never play, and streamers who never watch others play.

We see this in labor. As the buddhists say, "Before enlightenment; carry water, chop wood. After enlightenment; carry water, chop wood." Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life, in other words.

The difference between a miserable manager and a jovial janitor is their ability to find enjoyment.

On the contrary -- AI would either replace you completely OR (more likely) allow you to produce more per unit time. There was never any thought or suggestion to reducing the total amount of time you would work.

I had to skip lots of it. Funnily enough I didn’t think it was LLM made, just someone who wanted to practice their storytelling skills a bit eagerly. A bit of a /r/LinkedInLunatics feel to it.

Bottom bit was confusing. Did he actually get hit or was it just a story? I assume the later but you never know these days…

It wouldn't be an HN comment thread without a 100% confident, no-room-for-doubt assertion of AI-generated writing.

I was vaguely annoyed at the prose throughout but I attributed it to human clumsiness. I'm getting less good at noticing it. Does not bode well.