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Comment by nchmy | Hacker News Reader

> if I could wrangle Claude into communicating exactly as I would have, the practical difference is of course not observable. But that's never happened, and I've had an enterprise license at work for years.

Sorry to say, but this is a skill issue (and not necessarily with using Ai). I've used Ai MANY times to help SIGNIFICANTLY improve things that I've written - from a few sentences to many paragraphs.

As I've said in other comments, it'll rapidly and effectively remove all my worst tendencies. And, likewise, sometimes I'll have it write a first draft when I give it appropriate context/guidance that I can't be bothered to fully curate/synthesize. Then, once it gets that draft, I'll take over and tidy it up. You might say that the "can't be bothered" part is the entire issue, and I'll again say that what matters is the final result - a master chef or chief architect is not doing all the grunt work...

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Your writing tendencies must be quite bad if Claude's tendencies are an improvement. Isn't writing a skill issue?

Thanks for sharing a perfect example of something that any AI could have helped you improve

Having AI do the work for you doesn't increase your writing skills, in fact, the opposite!

Instead of seeing the errors and thinking about what changes the draft needs ('improving' your writing skills'), you're letting someone else tell you what changes to make.

Because you aren't internalizing the corrections, guess what happens next time: your writing gets worse, AI comes to help...rinse and repeat.

> Sorry to say, but this is a skill issue (and not necessarily with using Ai). I've used Ai MANY times to help SIGNIFICANTLY improve things that I've written - from a few sentences to many paragraphs. As I've said in other comments, it'll rapidly and effectively remove all my worst tendencies. And, likewise, sometimes I'll have it write a first draft when I give it appropriate context/guidance that I can't be bothered to fully curate/synthesize. Then, once it gets that draft, I'll take over and tidy it up.

Isn't this contradictory? Why do you need to take over if it's doing such a good job?

Let's fire all editors, consultants, psychologists, sous chefs, grunts, etc!

I'm not claiming an LLM writes better than me.

No, you were claiming that no one has ever used Ai to help produce better writing. I was objecting to that, because it is an absurd statement. Ai could have told you that if you asked.

> No, you were claiming that no one has ever used Ai to help produce better writing. I was objecting to that, because it is an absurd statement. Ai could have told you that if you asked.

Maybe take your own advice and ask your LLM if I did claim that.

This is what I claimed:

> Yes; if I could wrangle Claude into communicating exactly as I would have, the practical difference is of course not observable. But that's never happened, and I've had an enterprise license at work for years.

This means that if I get Claude/LLM output, I would need to edit it/write myself to make it correct/better/distilled into relevant parts. I do not get LLM output I would want to post as is without numerous roundtrips, at which point vi is faster.

You then reply to claim that as a skill issue, while also later on stating that you iterate over it or take over a draft to edit it, which I then point out is a contradiction.

Because it can’t do a great job without frequent expert input, that’s the point.

Expert types prompt into Claude , Claude produces fundamentally flawed but close output. Don’t take that output and give it to anyone — first refine it until it’s not flawed, then pass it on.

Correct, I was treating their claim as true for the sake of argument, not accepting it.

We're on the same page

>Sorry to say, but this is a skill issue

That's the same slop response as "it's a skill issue" applied to C codebases being inherently insecure due to the language's footguns/design.

Not even slightly. The burden of proof is on you, given that I regularly have AI improve my writing

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