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Comment by saulpw | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty reductive. Many people want to pump some new thoughts they had into an AI to generate something tolerable to post on their blog. The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway). So the AI is an assistant which takes their thoughts and makes them look acceptable for publication.

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It’s ridiculous to expect people to read something you couldn’t even be bothered to write.

If you just want to get the information out then just post the bullet points, what do you care?

If you want to be recognized as a writer, then write.

I find it interesting that the 6 replies to my comment assumed that I was talking about myself, when in fact my comment specifically was talking about other people. I can and do write just fine, thank you. But I have sympathy for people who have something to say and struggle to say it, whether because they lack the skill or the time or the executive function. They don't need to be recognized as a writer, they just want to have an impact.

Using LLMs to write is like wearing fast fashion. If you want certain kinds of people to notice you and think of you favorably, you need to wear clothes that represent how you want to be seen. It would be better if people made their own clothes, or paid money to "real" designers for bespoke and/or high-quality items. But most people can't afford the time and money for that. So we have places like Hot Topic and Forever 21 and you probably recognize when other people shop there and you turn up your nose at them. But they are still effective at getting what they want from their sartorial choices.

Your second paragraph makes no sense, other than to make the expectation of effort sound like classism. Wearing clothes other people made is not a summary of your ideas, it's an expression of your aesthetic.

Writing is free. About as free as anything can be. It's not classism to ask people to put some actual thought into their ideas. It's just reality that people won't want to read slop.

>I find it interesting that the 6 replies to my comment assumed that I was talking about myself

No, it's just colloquial English on a forum to write you as an address to the reader, not literally to the person you reply to. As in, "if you (someone) feels they can't write without AI, then writing may not be for you (that person)."

if you can’t write your thoughts as something cohesive to begin with i don’t using LLMs is going to solve your problem. writing is absolutely the point if you’re trying to communicate with text. lack of clarity is usually sign of lack of understanding imo, i see it in my own writing

> The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are

This is so, so wrong. The writing is the thoughts. A person's un-articulated bullet points are not worth that much. And AI is not going to pull novel ideas out of your brain via your bullet points. It's either going to summarize them incorrectly or homogenize them into something generic. It would be like dropping acid with a friend and asking ChatGPT to summarize our movie ideas.

The idea that writing is an irrelevant way to gatekeep people with otherwise brilliant ideas is not reality. You don't have to be James Baldwin, but I will not get a sense for what your ideas even are via an AI summary.

Blogging is a pretty niche activity in general these days.

I think if writing more than 200 words is painful for you, blogging probably isn't for you?

> The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are. But they can't just post 200 words of bullet points (or don't feel like they can, anyway).

Who or what is clamoring for that AI-generated padding which turns 200 words of bullet points into 2000 words of prose, though? It's not like there's suddenly going to be 10x more insight, it's just 10x more slop to slog through that dilutes whatever points the writer had.

If you have 200 words' worth of thoughts you want to share... you can just write 200 words.

The writing is the point. A well-structured, well-argued, and well-written article indicates the writer has devoted considerable time to understanding and thinking through the topic — if they haven't, it quickly becomes obvious. A series of bullet points indicates the opposite, and using an AI to hide the fact that the "writer" has invested minimal cognitive effort is dishonest.

> The writing isn't the point; the thoughts are.

Writing _is_ thinking.

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