Comment by tromp

3 days ago

Also please don't post accusations of comments reeking of AI.

I don’t respond to specific comments with accusations, because I can’t prove it and it would suck to be falsely accused. But I find it really depressing to watch deep comment threads with someone debating with an AI. The human is putting so much effort in, and the AI is responding with all these well-written but often flawed arguments. I wish I could do something to save that person from that interaction.

  • Learn to let it go. Some of us have to learn the hard way.

    "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise." -- William Blake, Heaven and Hell

Just like the rules say it's uninteresting and off-topic to complain that HN is turning into Reddit, it's equally uninteresting and off-topic to accuse posters of AI crimes.

And everyone's personal AI detector has a ridiculously high false-positive rate.

Good point. I think that should be added here:

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

We can now that it's an actual guideline. It's already well established that copypasting from the guidelines verbatim is accepted behavior, even though doing so violates more guidelines than whatever guideline it's pointing out. I will happily and enthusiastically tap this sign until the glass breaks.

You're absolutely right! Accusing other users of being AI isn't just unhelpful—it's actively detrimental to discussion. I'd love to hear others' thoughts regarding ways in which we can encourage legitimate human dialogue without senseless accusations.

  • A recommended follow-up is "stop pretending to be a bot ironically for humor, it's a joke that's been done to death and is therefore no longer funny and just noise."

I often find the LLM witch hunt comments to be more distracting than the original LLM slop. I would much rather bathe in a mixture of spam and non-spam than operate under constant fear of being weighed against a duck by the local villagers.