Comment by diacritical | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diacritical | Hacker News Reader

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> And there’s really not much point in publishing good content anymore, since AI is just going slurp it up and regurgitate it without driving you any traffic.

You just published good content knowing AI will slurp it up and not give you any traffic in return. I'm now replying to you with more content with the same expectations about AI and traffic. Why care about AI or traffic or recognition? Isn't the content the thing that matters?

It's like answering technical questions in an anonymous/pseudonymous chat or forum, which I'm sure you've done, too. We do it to help others. If an AI can take my answer and spread it around without paying me or mentioning one of my random usernames I change every month or so, I would be happy. And if the AI gives me credit like "coffeecup543 originally posted that on IRC channel X 5 years ago", I couldn't care less. It would be noise to the reader. Even if the AI uses my real name, so what?

The people who cared about traffic and money from their posts rarely made good content, anyway. Listicles and affiliate marketing BS and SEO optimizations and making a video that could be 1 minute into 10 minutes, or text that could've been 5 articles into a long book - all existed from before AI. With AI I actually get less of this crap - either skip it or condense it.

It's two different problems. People who run review sites and blogs and such care about traffic, and not getting attribution will kill their desire to participate. People who post here and on Reddit etc. care about talking with other human beings, and feeling ignored in a sea of botspam will kill *their* desire to participate.

> feeling ignored in a sea of botspam will kill their desire to participate.

The bots are not really that bad, they're (still) pretty easy to spot and not engage with. I'm more perplexed about the negativity filled comments sections, and I'm pretty sure most posters are real grass-fed certified humans.

I don't get why negative posts get so upvoted, get so popular on the front page, and people still debate with outdated arguments in them. People come in and fight other deamons, make straw-man arguments and in general promote negative stuff like there's no tomorrow. I think you can get so much more signal from posititve examples, from "hey I did a thing" type posts, and so on. Even overhyped stuff like the claw-mania can still be useful. Yet the "I did a thing" get so overwhelmed by negativity, nitpicking and "haha not perfect means doa" type of messages. That makes me want to participate less...

Oh that's just human nature: there's a reason why trashy tabloids continue to exist despite how public sentiment seems to universally agree that they're awful spreaders of rumour and insecurity. More people are Skankhunt42 than we'd like to admit.

Shouldn't we try to do something about it and not just give up by saying "oh, that's just human nature, nothing you can do here"?

Sure, just be aware of what you're up against: if religion teaches us anything it's that even concerted, systematic efforts over millennia to conquer human nature (eg: libido) still fail. But if you want to give it a go, by all means: one can only imagine Sisyphus happy.

What do you suggest?

Yes and no.

In the most simple sense - Yes, it is the content that matters.

In the more practical sense - cognitive and emotional resources are limited and our brains are not content agnostic.

We have different behaviors, expectations and capacities for talking to machines and talking to humans.

For example, if I am engaging with a human I can expect to potentially change their minds.

For a machine? Why bother even responding. It’s of no utility to me to respond.

Furthermore, all human communication comes with a human emotional context. There are vast amounts of information implied through tone, through what we choose not to say. Sometimes people say things in one emotional state that is not what they would say on another occasion.

To move the conversation forward, addressing the emotional payload behind the words used, matters more than the words used themselves.

There are a myriad reasons why humans are practically poorer for these tools.

That's a little bit apples to oranges, because I'm not monetizing this content, or paying to host it, or trying to make a personal brand, etc.

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