Comment by staticassertion
6 days ago
What exactly is the goal? By laying out exactly the issues, expressing sentiment in detail, giving clear calls to action for the future, etc, the feedback is made actionable and relatable. It works both argumentatively and rhetorically.
Saying "fuck off Clanker" would not worth argumentatively nor rhetorically. It's only ever going to be "haha nice" for people who already agree and dismissed by those who don't.
I really find this whole "Responding is legitimizing, and legitimizing in all forms is bad" to be totally wrong headed.
The project states a boundary clearly: code by LLMs not backed by a human is not accepted.
The correct response when someone oversteps your stated boundaries is not debate. It is telling them to stop. There is no one to convince about the legitimacy of your boundaries. They just are.
The author obviously disagreed, did you read their post? They wrote the message explaining in detail in the hopes that it would convey this message to others, including other agents.
Acting like this is somehow immoral because it "legitimizes" things is really absurd, I think.
> in the hopes that it would convey this message to others, including other agents.
When has engaging with trolls ever worked? When has "talking to an LLM" or human bot ever made it stop talking to you lol?
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> I really find this whole "Responding is legitimizing, and legitimizing in all forms is bad" to be totally wrong headed.
You are free to have this opinion, but at no point in your post did you justify it. It's not related to what you wrote above. It's conclusory. statement.
Cussing an AI out isn't the same thing as not responding. It is, to the contrary, definitionally a response.
I think I did justify it but I'll try to be clearer. When you refuse to engage you will fail to convince - "fuck off" is not argumentative or rhetorically persuasive. The other post, which engages, was both argumentative and rhetorically persuasive. I think someone who believes that AI is good, or who had some specific intent, might actually take something away from that that the author intended to convey. I think that's good.
I consider being persuasive to be a good thing, and indeed I consider it to far outweigh issues of "legitimizing", which feels vague and unclear in its goals. For example, presumably the person who is using AI already feels that it is legitimate, so I don't really see how "legitimizing" is the issue to focus on.
I think I had expressed that, but hopefully that's clear now.
> Cussing an AI out isn't the same thing as not responding. It is, to the contrary, definitionally a response.
The parent poster is the one who said that a response was legitimizing. Saying "both are a response" only means that "fuck off, clanker" is guilty of legitimizing, which doesn't really change anything for me but obviously makes the parent poster's point weaker.
> you will fail to convince
Convince who? Reasonable people that have any sense in their brain do not have to be convinced that this behavior is annoying and a waste of time. Those that do it, are not going to be persuaded, and many are doing it for selfish reasons or even to annoy maintainers.
The proper engagement (no engagement at all except maybe a small paragraph saying we aren't doing this go away) communicates what needs to be communicated, which is this won't be tolerated and we don't justify any part of your actions. Writing long screeds of deferential prose gives these actions legitimacy they don't deserve.
Either these spammers are unpersuadable or they will get the message that no one is going to waste their time engaging with them and their "efforts" as minimal as they are, are useless. This is different than explaining why.
You're showing them it's not legitimate even of deserving any amount of time to engage with them. Why would they be persuadable if they already feel it's legitimate? They'll just start debating you if you act like what they're doing deserves some sort of negotiation, back and forth, or friendly discourse.
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”Fuck off” doesn’t have to be, it works more than it doesn’t. It’s a very good way to tell someone that isn’t welcome that they’re not welcome, which was likely the intended purpose, and not trying to change their belief system.
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