IMO, whether or not an LLM was used in the writing process doesn't really matter and I think it's a bit annoying that articles are being dismissed out of hand because of that.

The line is "Is this an interesting and accurate article that concisely makes it's case".

LLMs love to burn paragraphs writing about nothing which is why it's generally poor writing. Humans can do the same thing if they are trying to make very little information feel more substantial.

I say, stop trying to determine if an LLM was used and start judging based on your subjective measure that you'd have used before LLMs became widespread.

▲

Farmadupe 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

(If it helps, I ask my own question of myself too -- I mostly don't write code by hand any more as I find that an LLM writes it faster and with less bugs -- Is that therefore proof that my time was never worth my paycheck? I hope not but at the same time I would actually be proud if I had got away with being an accidental charlatan/fraudster at my employer's expense during my entire career)

-----

Similarly, if what I said really is true, I would be implying that LLMs are charlatan/fraudster detectors (to some statistical level). And I refuse on principle to believe that that is actually the case.

▲

dofm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My main problem — which I am sure being middle-aged compounds — is that I struggle to retain information that an LLM has written or produced. I cannot explain why but it is a consistent problem.

In a week’s time I might remember the substance of your comment and some of its shape as a matter of course. Nothing LLM-written that I see today will stick, no matter how curated it was.

▲

cogman10 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Perhaps it's just a bias? You are already negatively biased against LLM writing so you disregard stuff you read when you suspect it's an LLM. This could also be a selection bias. It may be that you generally struggled to retain information but you are more aware of it when LLMs are involved.

	▲	dofm an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think so, no, because it extends to LLM-generated text I want to recall. I use LLMs to generate starter/tutorial material. I may hate the way Claude writes but I absolutely don't hate the way Gemma 4 writes. But I have to continuously consult it in a way that I do not with human-written text, which gets its message across in a more persistent way I find less troubling. (This non-memorability extends to AI images and video.) You are right that there are some confounding factors in my life but while I was worried about middle age affecting recall, I find actually I am still remembering stuff humans wrote pretty much fine. ETA: there is one thing that I have noticed that does affect recall that is specific to LLMs: watching text roll out word-by-word in LLM chat, I think, damages recall. It's engaging the wrong kind of memory and focus. So I now let it generate and I'm trying to find decent ways to format it e.g. as PDF, to give it the best chance. This could be generational; there were many studies twenty years ago that suggest that people a decade or so younger than me who grew up with full colour books and magazines and multimedia can read less-linear text layouts more comfortably, for example, so it's not out of the question that there's something generational going on here too.

▲

lowbloodsugar an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure, but if you're going to publish it, at least run it through an edit prompt and tell it to remove clickbait "Its not X, its Y" rubbish. Like literally calling examples clickbait in the prompt has given me better results. Interestingly, I have a lot less trouble with the first draft with Qwen than with Opus.

▲

JSR_FDED 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Except that wasting the reader’s time became a lot easier with LLMs.

	▲	cogman10 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, LLMs make it a lot easier to produce a lot more garbage. That's not an exception to my point. If something is well written then it doesn't waste the reader's time.