Comment by lapcat

1 month ago

> notice how those 3 previous articles you linked don't contain "The Blahbity Blah" style headers throughout, while this article has nine occurrences of them.

The post https://hey.paris/posts/cba/ has five bold "And..." headers, which is even worse than "The..." headers.

Would AI do that? The more plausible explanation is that the writer just has a somewhat annoying blogging style, or lack of style.

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lapcat

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evanelias  1 month ago

To me those "And..." headers read as intentional repetition to drive home a point. That isn't bad writing in my opinion. Notice each header varies the syntax/phrasing there. They aren't like "And [adjective] [noun]".

We're clearly not going to agree here, but I just ask that as you read various articles over the next few weeks, please pay attention to headers especially of the form "The ___ Trap", "The ___ Problem", "The ___ Solution".

  • lapcat  1 month ago

    > I just ask that as you read various articles over the next few weeks, please pay attention to headers especially of the form "The ___ Trap", "The ___ Problem", "The ___ Solution".

    No, I'm going to try very hard to forget that I ever engaged in this discussion. I think your evidence is minimal at best, your argument self-contradictory at worst. The issue is not even whether you and I agree but whether it's justifiable to make a public accusation of AI authorship. Unless there's an open-and-shut case—which is definitely not the case here—it's best to err on the side of not making such accusations, and I think this approach is recommended by the HN guidelines.

    I would also note that your empirical claim is inaccurate. A number of the headers are just "The [noun]". In fact, there's a correspondence between the headers and subheaders, where the subheaders follow the pattern of the main header:

    > The Situation • The Trigger • The Consequence • The Damage

    > The "New Account" Trap • The Legal Catch • The Technical Trap • The Developer Risk

    This correspondence could be considered evidence of intention, a human mind behind the words, perhaps even a clever mind.

    By the way, the liberal use of headers and subheaders may feel superfluous to you, but it's reminiscent of textbook writing, which is the author's specialty.