The whole thing feels AI-padded.
So much writing on the internet seems derivative nowadays (because it is, thanks to AI). I’d rather not read it though, it’s boring and feels like a samey waste of time. I do question how much of this is a feedback loop from people reading LLM text all the time, and subconsciously copying the structure and formatting in their own writing, but that’s probably way too optimistic.
Also, lots of people who use Macs, because it's very easy to type on a Mac (shift-option-hyphen).
The reason LLMs use em-dashes is because they're well-represented in the training corpus.
The article has on average, about one em dash per paragraph. And “paragraph” is generous given they’re 2-3 sentences in this article.
I read a lot, and I don’t recall any authors I’ve personally read using an em dash so frequently. There would be like 3 per page in the average book if human writers used them like GPT does.
And a certain vacuousness. TFA is over 16000 words and I'm not really sure there's a single core point.
The rest of the blog has even more obvious AI output, such as the “recursive protocol” posts and writing about reality and consciousness. This is the classic output you get (especially use of ‘recursive’) when you try to get ChatGPT to write something that feels profound.
Most of the examples used to justify creation vs consumption can also be explained by low scale vs high scale (cost sensitive at high scale) or portability.