Low effort LLM-written content gets upvoted here anyway, despite the writer having little respect for peoples’ time.
Low effort LLM-written content gets upvoted here anyway, despite the writer having little respect for peoples’ time.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
> I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern [1946] English:
> Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
A 2026 version of this phenomenon would instead be:
> Here's the thing: success isn't just about talent — it's about timing. The fastest runner doesn't always win. The strongest army doesn't always prevail. Ultimately, life is a complex interplay of skill and chance, and recognizing that can be both humbling and empowering.
That's actually Claude and you can see precisely why the resulting vague language is bad; the LLM has changed the actual meaning of the passage from a sober reflection on the futility of expecting natural justice from the universe to one that emphasises skill and timing, exactly what the author is telling us is futile.
Admittedly the slop text LLMs produce in the 21st century isn't the same as the 20th century slop humans produced, but there's definitely a family resemblance in my view! Orwell was concerned with the idea language can be used to curtail thought, and he disliked what we'd now call slop because it merely gestures at a thought without actually instantiating it directly.
The whole essay is worth a read in my view, it remains highly relevant.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...