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Comment by BobDaHacker | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I used Claude as a writing assistant for the initial draft. I'm autistic and long-form writing isn't my strong suit, getting a 4000 word blog post to flow well is genuinely hard for me. But I do edit it pretty heavily after, the voice and the jokes and the structure are mine, the AI just helps me get a baseline down so I'm not staring at a blank page. The research, the screenshots, the disclosure, that's all me. I've been doing this stuff for years.

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My opinion is that this is a great story.

But the haters are going to hate.

If you had not used AI to fix your post, I bet the top post will be complaining about your grammar.

Some people will always find something negative. Simple as that.

I think the criticism is constructive. It's really not about hating. I'd wager many of the people who convey this criticism do use AI to aid their writing as well.

It's just that this one in particular lacks one more edit pass removing some of the AI noise on branding-speak and needless repetition (AI tends to list things and beat the point).

While I appreciate the positivity, but I've honestly grown to appreciate grammar mistakes. Just like it's not X, it's Y indicated AI, those indicated that the effort behind was human.

Honestly, no need to write 4000 words if the story can be told in 400. The story is what matters, not word count or "flow".

> If you had not used AI to fix your post, I bet the top post will be complaining about your grammar.

I'm positive that a post complaining about the grammar would've been (rightfully) downvoted to oblivion on this site.

I understand that it feels helpful but the post ends up repeating the same insight over and over. Reads very sloppy, while you wanted the opposite.

Don't take my criticism of AI writing as criticism of your work. This is stellar stuff! What I'm trying to say is I'd really like to hear it in your words.

I'm glad to hear the voice is yours, and I apologize for assume it was the AI's.

Great post. It was an amusing read, and quite the discovery! Good work, and great job documenting it.

Understandable, but open disclosure would help. You of all people must know how hard it is to hide things from being discovered, and this is something that will be discovered without any doubt. Just explain it and most reasonable people will understand. Some won't but at least they will be honestly warned.

> I'm autistic and long-form writing isn't my strong suit, getting a 4000 word blog post to flow well is genuinely hard for me.

I find the way I interact with the world is exceptionally different from the descriptions of everybody else. Some of the symptoms of such manifest as difficulty communicating... with most people.

There are a subset of people who I have not only no problem, but seemingly a drastically increased information exchange rate.

Do with that observation what you will, but I don't write for the lowest common denominator, the preferred style of AI, because I don't write for the people who cant be bothered to understand me. I'm writing for people like me.

n.b. Maybe you are writing for the lowest common denominator. In which case, say that: "Yeah I know it sounds like AI but it's supposed to be advertising, not a technical white paper or PoC"

> the AI just helps me get a baseline down so I'm not staring at a blank page.

If this was true, the top comment wouldn't be a complaint about how the voice of the article sounds "inauthenticlly human" or like an LLM. It's having a stronger influence on your writing than you're giving it credit for. It's on you to decide if or how much you care, but ideally you wouldn't be lying to either yourself or your readers.

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