Most of those section headers and bolded bullet-point summary phrases should simply be removed. That's why I described them as superfluous.

In cases where it makes sense to divide an article into sections, the phrasing should be varied so that they aren't mostly of the same format ("The Blahbity Blah", in the case of what AI commonly spews out).

This is fairly basic writing advice!

To be clear, I'm not accusing his books as being written like this or using AI. I'm simply responding to the writing style of this article. For me, it reduces the trustworthiness of the claims in the article, especially combined with the key missing detail of why/how exactly such a large gift card was being purchased.

▲

lapcat 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> To be clear, I'm not accusing his books as being written like this or using AI. I'm simply responding to the writing style of this article.

It's unlikely that the article had the benefit of professional, external editing, unlike the books. Moreover, it's likely that this article was written in a relatively short amount of time, so maybe give the author a break that it's not formatted the way you would prefer if you were copyediting? I think you're just nitpicking here. It's a blog post, not a book.

Look at the last line of the article: "No permission granted to any AI/LLM/ML-powered system (or similar)." The author has also written several previous articles that appear to be anti-AI: https://hey.paris/posts/govai/ https://hey.paris/posts/cba/ https://hey.paris/posts/genai/

So again, I think it's ridiculous to claim that the article was written by AI.

▲

evanelias 3 days ago | parent [-]

It's a difference of opinion and that's fine. But I'll just say, notice how those 3 previous articles you linked don't contain "The Blahbity Blah" style headers throughout, while this article has nine occurrences of them.

▲

lapcat 3 days ago | parent [-]

> notice how those 3 previous articles you linked don't contain "The Blahbity Blah" style headers throughout, while this article has nine occurrences of them.

The post https://hey.paris/posts/cba/ has five bold "And..." headers, which is even worse than "The..." headers.

Would AI do that? The more plausible explanation is that the writer just has a somewhat annoying blogging style, or lack of style.

▲

evanelias 3 days ago | parent [-]

To me those "And..." headers read as intentional repetition to drive home a point. That isn't bad writing in my opinion. Notice each header varies the syntax/phrasing there. They aren't like "And [adjective] [noun]".

We're clearly not going to agree here, but I just ask that as you read various articles over the next few weeks, please pay attention to headers especially of the form "The ___ Trap", "The ___ Problem", "The ___ Solution".

▲

lapcat 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I just ask that as you read various articles over the next few weeks, please pay attention to headers especially of the form "The ___ Trap", "The ___ Problem", "The ___ Solution".

No, I'm going to try very hard to forget that I ever engaged in this discussion. I think your evidence is minimal at best, your argument self-contradictory at worst. The issue is not even whether you and I agree but whether it's justifiable to make a public accusation of AI authorship. Unless there's an open-and-shut case—which is definitely not the case here—it's best to err on the side of not making such accusations, and I think this approach is recommended by the HN guidelines.

I would also note that your empirical claim is inaccurate. A number of the headers are just "The [noun]". In fact, there's a correspondence between the headers and subheaders, where the subheaders follow the pattern of the main header:

> The Situation • The Trigger • The Consequence • The Damage

> The "New Account" Trap • The Legal Catch • The Technical Trap • The Developer Risk

This correspondence could be considered evidence of intention, a human mind behind the words, perhaps even a clever mind.

By the way, the liberal use of headers and subheaders may feel superfluous to you, but it's reminiscent of textbook writing, which is the author's specialty.

▲

evanelias 3 days ago | parent [-]

[flagged]

▲

lapcat 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> please don't make it out like a throwaway "AI bad" argument.

The issue isn't whether AI is good or bad or neither or both. The issue is whether the author used AI or not. And you were actually the one who suggested that the author's alleged use of AI made the article less trustworthy. The only reason you mentioned it was to malign the author; you would never say, for example, "The author obviously used a spellchecker, which affects how trustworthy I find the article."

> If you think this is good writing then you're welcome to your opinion

I didn't say it's good writing. To the contrary, I said, "the writer just has a somewhat annoying blogging style, or lack of style."

The debate was never about the author's style but rather about the author's identity, i.e., human or machine.

> Textbooks don't contain section headers every few paragraphs.

Of course they do. I just pulled some off my shelves to look.

Not all textbooks do, but some definitely do.

	▲	evanelias 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I said it affects how trustworthy I find the article, when considered in combination with other aspects of this situation that don't add up to me. After going through my technical bookshelf I can't find a single example that follows this header/bullet style. And meanwhile I have seen countless posts that are known to be AI-assisted which do. Apparently we exist in different realities, and are never going to agree on this, so there is no point in discussing further.

▲

dahart 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Textbooks don’t contain section headers every few paragraphs.

Yes they absolutely do. What are you even talking about?

	▲	evanelias 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		[flagged]

▲

3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]