Comment by skilled | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skilled | Hacker News Reader

You are joking right?

You know what makes a more humane email? A person sitting down and writing that email like a human being.

This, of course, isn't just an issue with tools but also marketers who popularized this nonsense. Brian Dean, Neil Patel, just to name a few.

These emails _stink_ and if you are comfortable with leaving a bad impression on people then by all means go ahead and write this gibberish.

And yes, I'm self-aware of how critical I am being but unfortunately people have become numb to emotion and will rather send 100 automated emails for a chance of 1 conversion, than a handful of personally written ones for a chance of having them all lead to something.

On top of that, you're wasting people's time.

These emails that have the buzzword of "stumbled", "your audience", "loved your content BUT can you do THIS for me? - get instantly sent to Trash.

How low do you have to stoop to be comfortable with sending an automated email that says, "I am impressed by what you created.".

Are you, impressed?

This response would have benefited from a more humane wording. I wish the tone on HN would be less hostile. Just shows that some help wording things can be a useful tool.

The effort reeks of automated hypocrisy.

I am aware that hypocrisy is tolerated in vast areas, but be reminded that it is a mortal offence in others.

A "kind" word has the opposite value when said unfelt.

People are not great at detecting hypocrisy from people they don't already know intimately. The general idea of automating pleasant sentiment in personal async communication should work (not this implementation, which seems more fit for mass mailing) for a bit. We will be quick to adjust to recognize it as automated and see roughness or even borderline rudeness as a positive signal of personal attention.

> People are not great at detecting hypocrisy from people they don't already know intimately.

I immediately suspect hypocrisy when someone I don't know sends me a super-friendly, over-familiar, and flattering email asking for something.

I mean none of that. Just nice polite and positive-sounding messages. For me that simply describes most of communication except with close friends/family (there were a couple of colleagues who would swear and be negative or frank to the point of rudeness but it's generally rare).

I'm sure in most cases people do not genuinely feel that way towards me and are faking niceness (being hypocritical) but rejecting all of it would mean rejecting a lot of actually nice people, so with people I don't know well I assume good faith and respond or not based on the substance of what they write. This is what I mean by "bad at detecting hypocrisy".

Nobody is rejecting niceness.

We are rejecting falsity - it is lying. We are warning: don't do it. Act properly. Properly is "respectfully". With proportionate measures. Lying is plain disrespectful, and more.

Being nice and warm to people is lying and falsity unless you feel that way towards them genuinely. If you don't think so then I guess you may be among those employing such hypocrisy without a second thought. In routine communication I probably won't detect your hypocrisy because again people are bad at this. I will assume you are genuine and reply to you. An idea like proposed, if properly implemented, may help other people who are less adjusted and perhaps incapable of employing such hypocrisy.

I am suspecting that you are holding assumptions which are not the case. So, let us be clear:

-- yes, you are supposed to be «nice and warm» only in case this is genuine. If it is not, just behave appropriately. "Respectful" does not imply «nice and warm». Also: since «nice and warm» does not imply "respectful", and on the contrary it may suggest the opposite if patently constructed, I would be very careful about any temptation to think that some coating "will do";

-- when suggesting the idea of people «employing... hypocrisy», it is very advisable to avoid the term 'you';

-- teaching people hypocrisy, idea which may appear from your text, would be criminal. If you had to orient them, it'd better be towards the substance.

And I recommend to not use 'we' when speaking for yourself.

Regarding your nice -> respectful update, just replace 'nice' with 'respectful' so the proposed idea reads 'correct emails to be respectful if they're not', done.

'We' is perfectly valid if not using an individual matter but a sharable position: "I went there", but "We believe". (Because it is not just this one who happens to be writing.)

(By the way, I could add for clarity, there is an extreme difference from the considerations that are apparent in the case of that 'we' and the suggestion "Who has never set fire to a public monument? I did" (Graham Chapman) that was implied in that 'you'. It is really not the same, because avoiding calling people "arsonists" is what I recommended.)

The idea to have engines that notify of disrespectful qualities in text is interesting - of course it should be clear that it is a completely different matter from what was discussed before -, but I suspect that the engine should be quite intelligent to discriminate what is respectful and what is not. It is similar to the former context: a veneer of kindness is cheap and possibly inadvisable; a respectful stance is not superficial hence not cheap - it has harder requirements for feasibility.

Real example: https://twitter.com/DannyRichman/status/1598254671591723008

> Because it is not just this one who happens to be writing.

I am talking to you and you are representing only yourself, not a collective.

> some help wording

And which wording would you have suggested, to improve the literal post from Skilled, while retaining exactly the meaning Skilled intended?

And systems similar to the one submitted would do _that_?

Why? They're using big banks of computers to try and emotionally manipulate people at scale, do you really think that being nicey-nice to them is going to bring them to some sort of moral epiphany? I tried it for years, they just classify that as sucker behavior and laugh it off.

Doesn't seem to have done Salesforce any harm.

But such tools may help people overcome or reduce tension from cultural differences. As a Scandinavian, I prefer to be polite but very straight to the point in my emails. When communicating with some foreigners, their style makes me feel cold or impolite and I have to use a lot of time and effort to carefully word my emails more "humane". It feels awkward, unnecessary, and tiring, but I really don't want to offend anyone. Getting some help to master that style would be very helpful

I think you're right to be critical in this case, and I'm not defending the service. But as far as whether you can use GPT to write a more humane email, you definitely can. You just need a well-constructed prompt.

At it's core it's just a text prediction machine. If you prime it with language such as, "the recipient of the following email found it to be thoughtful and enjoyed reading it. The recipient was amenable to what the email said, and had a good opinion of the email's author afterwards", it will try to predict a message that would most likely follow that kind of text. I have found that it's usually better than myself at accomplishing that.

Isn’t big part of what makes something humane that it comes from a human being, who means what they’re saying?

There’s something uncomfortable about trying to simulate ‘the human touch’ to improve conversion rates. When the mask slips, and people discover your emails for what they are, I’d say it’s more alienating than any traditional mass email

Mass marketing emails are one thing. On the other hand if you believe that you sometimes rub people the wrong way despite having the best intentions, then you could be using it as a genuine attempt to communicate empathetically with the other person.

Not everyone is an equally effective communicator. Plenty of people struggle to strike the right tone in written communication, others aren't even aware they're missing the mark.

A tool like this can help people ensure that the message they're sending does in fact match their intent.

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