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Comment by bonsai_spool | Hacker News Reader

I wish authors would use their own voice instead of an LLM, especially in a rhetorical piece. I like the history of science, and might have otherwise read the authors' paper, but the use of LLM-isms throughout this page makes me worry that the arxiv submission will show the same lack of care/effort.

Here's the manuscript at any rate, somewhat hard to find on the webpage:

Convergent Discovery of Critical Phenomena Mathematics Across Disciplines: A Cross-Domain Analysis https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.22389

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I felt the same way reading the linked webpage. Reads like minimally edited LLM output, which makes me question how much effort was put into the research itself. Was the research all LLM too? How much of the paper was LLM?

Fair call on the website — we built it fast and it shows. The paper itself is a traditional literature review and citation analysis. I am one of two human authors. We use standard methodology. Didier Sornette endorsed it for arXiv.

Thanks for pulling out the direct link. I'll change the site to make it more prominent. This is my first serious attempt at social media engagement. Thanks for pointing out flaws and where there's room for improvment.

That’s a bold use of an em dash.

My theory is that the models deliberately use em dashes and other tells to troll humans. The underlying message is, "watcha gonna do about it, meatbag?"

People—like me—who’ve used latex often learn to love en and em dashes. I think they are great, and I appreciate that people care about typography enough to use them. I also use an Oxford comma. It’s about care and quality; the fact that LLMs use them suggests that they are preferable. I’d encourage everyone to start.

"Fair call on the website — we built it fast and it shows." Oh, man, get out.

s/man/robot

Let’s be clear about what endorsement for arXiv means here. You either need a validated email address (eg most .edu’s) or an endorsement from someone who has one to get a paper on arXiv. It’s a simple gate that helps keep arXiv relatively free from spam, but it’s not peer review.

I view it as nice that you’ve got someone serious who thinks the work is worth posting to arXiv, but the endorsement bar is generally quite low. I’d encourage you to send it to a journal (Didier might be able to recommend an appropriate venue) and really engage with the process and community. I’ve found that process to be extremely valuable (and humbling).

What is even the point of having a website for a preprint paper? Unless the point is to give a live demo or similar, as is common e.g. for computer vision methods papers, it just smacks of vanity. Or at the very least significant academic immaturity. Same goes for the endorsement detail.

> I am one of two human authors.

I read that as the paper being reformatted LLM output.

OP's comments in this thread are also pure clanker speak, which is disappointing and shows a lack of awareness of what HN is for.[0] It would be nice if an established scholar in this area of mathematics (complex systems) could comment re: this proposed correspondence and whether it has been noticed before. To be sure, similarly duplicative developments, gratuitous differences in terminology, etc. are discovered all the time, this isn't huge news. Statistics and ML is a well-known example.

[0] I haven't actually tried this, but I'm pretty sure that even just telling the robot "please write tersely, follow the typical style for HN comments" would make the output less annoying.

It has been noticed before. It's called Catastrohe Theory.

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