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Comment by cryptica | Hacker News Reader

> The more I think about it, the happier I am that AI is transforming the world of writing. In a way, I think it’ll make it even easier to stand out

I think this may be a form of denial. The reality is likely the opposite: AI will commoditize the act of writing entirely, shifting the value solely to insight.

For too long, we’ve confused "good writing" with "good thinking." We assumed that if someone wrote beautifully, they had something smart to say. Conversely, we ignored brilliant people simply because they couldn't articulate their complex ideas effectively.

AI fixes this market inefficiency. It allows experts who are too busy actually doing things to finally compete with professional writers. They provide the raw brilliance (the substance), and the AI provides the polish (the form).

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> Conversely, we ignored brilliant people simply because they couldn't articulate their complex ideas effectively.

I don't see how AI helps here. If you can't articulate your idea, then

1) how clear is that idea in your head anyway

2) how are you going to articulate it to the LLM?

You're projecting your own thinking style onto others; you're incorrectly assuming that because your thinking maps neatly onto language that everyone else works like that. No so.

For example, I'm bilingual and I tend to think in visual and abstract concepts and then translate to the target language as a separate step. It doesn't necessarily come out exactly right the first time. I often re-read what I wrote and see ambiguities which could cause someone to misinterpret what I'm trying to say.

Also, I tend to over-elaborate and struggle to understand other people's mental models. You need to understand your audience really well in order to convey points effectively or else you might bore them or your ideas might seem to go off on a tangent while you're actually trying to lay the foundation for the idea you're trying to convey...

For example, as an experiment, I posted my previous comment 2 times; once handwritten, the other transformed by Gemini (the one you responded to). The transformed one did better and got more engagement... It said the same thing but punchier and shorter. It doesn't waste words laying the groundwork because it has a better sense of what you already know (as the audience) given the conversation context.

This comment here is handwritten. I suspect it's probably not as punchy or to-the-point from your perspective.

So to summarize; I think LLMs can help some people more than others and it fits with the point I was trying to make that it will empower more people to write who would previously not write.

> You're projecting your own thinking style onto others; you're incorrectly assuming that because your thinking maps neatly onto language that everyone else works like that. No so.

My point is that LLMs require language as input. Therefore you need to be able to articulate your ideas in language for an LLM to even be of use.

It's fine if you want to use the LLM as an editor etc., but for what it's worth, I found this comment to be more engaging to read than the LLM generated one. The LLM one has a very "generic" feel to it.

> Conversely, we ignored brilliant people simply because they couldn't articulate their complex ideas effectively.

If you can't articulate your complex idea to a human, what's the reason to believe an LLM would understand it better?

I think you’re missing the other half to that conclusion.

Now people can articulate bullshit better with LLMs.

Yet my comment which you responded to, which was Gemini-generated, got more responses and engagement than my handwritten one!

Yes, I actually did this as an experiment.

From my perspective they are both different ways to communicate the same idea (with different effectiveness, different level of detail, to different audiences). I don't regard my Gemini-generated one as being any less 'my own work' as the one I painstakingly wrote by hand.

It gets to the core of what writing should be about. It should be about substance, not form. LLMs are equalizers when it comes to form. Time to focus on substance now!

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