What I read is that you're self-conscious about your writing style and that you find the LLM processed version of your own stream of thoughts to be helpful to you yourself.
Which is fine for you, but doesn't change that many people can get more insight out of your original text than they can out of the generated adaptation, and can do so with more interest and less fatigue.
And indeed, you don't have to care about that. But one would think that in publishing or sharing your writing at all, you do in fact have some investment in whether people receive those insights that you have. Otherwise, you could just keep the AI writings to yourself in the first place.
I've never seen anyone post a copy-and-paste of some pages of the Google search results while also excluding the search term, and I would find that bizzare. I would assume that you, like most people posting a Google search, would post the link to that search, which in the case of Google includes a copy of what would be equivalent to the prompt. In my experience, most people posting Google links would also include a short explanation of why they think it relevant were it not immediately obvious.
I said I would find the action bizarre ("that", not "them"). Personally, I don't find it unfortunate to admit that some things still surprise me. If you choose to interpret that as judgement of your wife as a person, then that is up to you.
Again, you are free to interpret my comments however you wish. My primary intent was to express my belief that people having different preferences to you regarding reading AI output does not constitute some bizzare hivemind, which you appear to have accepted. Your preferences regarding communications between yourself and your wife are none of my business. I recognise preferences may exist, and I am not one to kink-shame.
You're the one who decided to imagine that a reasonable discussion comment was an attack on your wife. You're also the one who started out calling things bizarre. As somebody not involved in this discussion, to me it looks like drama-seeking behavior.
I'm not uncomfortable or upset. I'm just a long-time HN denizen pointing out some behavior I think is toxic to a healthy community. You're vigorously trying to make reasonable people look bad.
I knew you wouldn't like me pointing it out, but the comment wasn't really for you. It's for the other reasonable people who are having to read or endure your bad behavior.
Yes, I agree - no comment in these threads is for the recipient. It’s for the audience. And I appreciate you engaging with me earnestly and thoughtfully.
But I disagree with your “toxic”. I think HN has a fear of conflict: the “civility” argument from politics/Clinton circa 2016. And look where we are today.
Sadly, conflict is sometimes necessary to resolve problems.
For example, right now, the anti-AI thing is pure madness. I understand it is based in fear, and I have sympathy for that. But much of human ugliness is based in fear, and sometimes conflict is necessary to get a community past its fears. Humans are stubborn.
Again, bub, I'm not uncomfortable. I am saying you are a bad HN participant, making this place worse. I am not averse to conflict, but neither am I fond of dressing up an enjoyment of conflict and pointless drama as something that's somehow healthy.
No, I did read it, and I think I understood it. My summary in my own words is that you find that LLMs can massage your writing and reduce the stress of communication. Did I believe it? Well...
You have an account on HN dating back to 2013 with over 6000 comment karma, you clearly didn't have trouble communicating like a normal person for a decade on this website before the advent of LLMs. Your spelling and grammar in posts predating LLMs are also far better than what you've produced in this prompt, so I'm tempted to think that you're exaggerating your inability to communicate normally to make a point.
But even so, the original wall of text communicates the point much more strongly and sincerely than the LLM trash.
I haven't always struggled so much, but my ability to read has severely diminished over the past decade. I find it much easier to communicate in short form. It has always been disproportionately time-consuming for me to write though.
It is the articulation of ideas that I struggle with and so I usually edit my comments multiple times. And to get rid of some of the more stupid stuff I say.
To be fair, that word salad would read more like this comment if I gave it some time, but it would take many hours to produce a simple post with the same readability as the LLM.
Add some paragraphs and yes; your style is more "interesting than what an LLM generated. That's the only think truly hard to read compared to the output.
Your style reveals the way you write sentences, the language and vocabulary you choose to employ, and even your emotion.
Here's an obvious example:
> I dont care ion people dont read my stuff. There are people that do and they find it useful. My ideas solidified have already started to bring dividends for me - and not from others reading beut from me being able to ficus my thoughts.
which converts into
>I don't particularly mind if people skip my stuff. Some people do read it and find it useful. And honestly, the biggest dividends haven't come from readers at all — they've come from the act of solidifying my own thoughts. That alone has been worth it.
spelling aside, just look at the first sentence. You show a different kind of derision for your audience here compared to the LLM trying to sugar coat it and soften the blow. That's style, and a small part of why AI feels like it "slops" up any given style.
"Brings dividends" isn't grammatically correct but reveals how your mind sees the idea. you see it as a result to manifest from your ideas. The Ai interpretation of "The biggest dividends..." grinds out the edges back to a more passive action happening more as a side goal.
There's that much subtle changes in meaning from a 50 word passage being converted. Which AI should be "good" at. Now imagine how this breaks down slowly over the 600 word post you made if I broke down every little bit of it. That's what people are doing internally and quickly concluding "this all sounds the same". Which is about the worst thing you can be in an attention economy; boring and unoriginal.
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P.S. Yes. I don't want to come off as rude. But your prompt also does reveal how you approach writing as a whole. It's clear you a) value the presentation of the writing as much, if not more, than the contents of the writing and b) admire the writing "sounding smart and proper" but do not wish to impart effort to achieve those means yourself.
I do believe there can be interesting prompts to read that is a back and forth correcting and managing the AI to give a more tailored writing as an end result. A conversation that reveals how you go past the basics spelling and grammar and tell the AI how to inject your style and taste into the generated results. That would be true "AI-assisted writing".
This was clearly not that. This was a single prompt: "make me an essay that sounds good and is formatted well". One and done. Not a conversation, but a demand trusting the standard of the average as output.
I won't reject the idea of AI-driven writing one day making bespoke works. But I highly doubt it will be a one-and-done prompt that achieves this.
My aim was to turn my ramblings into something more coherent. No more. No less.
I have made longer notes using exactly the process you prescribe, but that wasn't necessary for me in this case as it wasn't the most complex of ideas - I just regenerated until it gave me a fair approximation of what I wanted.
And to be fair - even if I had given it follow-up guidance it would still have the LLM "smell". It would receive EXACTLY the same treatment from the anti-llm crowd. Thats pretty much one of the core points of the post (judging the medium ahead of the content).
Clearly you either didn't read it, misunderstood it, disbelieved it, or just DGAF :)