Do you read that as giving him a pass? I read it as more of a condemnation. If you have an LLM write "your" blog posts then of course their content doesn't represent your thoughts. Discussing the contents of the post then is pointless, and we can disregard it entirely. Separately we can talk about what the person's actual views might be, using the fact that he has a machine generate his blog posts as a clue. I'm not sure I buy that the post was meaningfully LLM-generated though.

The same approach actually applies to Trump and other liars. You can't take anything they say as truth or serious intent on its own; they're not engaging in good faith. You can remove yourself one step and attempt to analyze why they say what they do, and from there get at what to take seriously and what to disregard.

In Steve's case, my interpretation is that he's extremely bullish on AI and sees his setup or something similar as the inevitable future, but he sprinkles in silly warnings to lampshade criticism. That's how the two messages of "this isn't serious" and "this is the future or software development" co-exist. The first is largely just a cover and an admission this his particular project is a mess. Note that this interpretation assumes that the contents of the blog post in question were largely written by him, even if LLM assistance was used.

Hmm, maybe I read the original comment wrong then? I did read it as "You can't blame him, that might not even be what he thinks" and my stance is "He posted it on his blog, directly or indirectly, what else am I supposed to think?".

I agree with you on Steve's case, and I have no ill will towards him. Mostly it was just me trying to "stomp" on giving him a pass, but, as you point out, that may not have been what the original commenter meant.