or any number of other ineffable signs subtler than an em dash.
I just started using em dashes (at the recommendation of my older brother) in my writing circa 2022 before I even knew about LLMs. I like using them—I’m not giving them up!
that didn’t trigger any allergic reaction for me … but following would:
I just started using em dashes—at the recommendation of my older brother—in my writing circa 2022 before I even knew about LLMs. I like using them and I’m not giving them up!
It’s not your fault or ours, just an unfortunate fact: we will by default assume your stuff was written by an LLM and pay it less attention, for the reasons given above.
Unless you include a statement in each piece that you’re using them.
I also used a lot of em-dashes and loved them. There are better hills to die on.
Wait—really? I have a long track record of using em dashes and, I think, a pretty distinctive writing style. I’ve had a dash binding in my .emacs since 2015. Can people really not tell? If you’re going to reject something as presumptive slop because of a em dash, isn’t that confessing that your discernment is so low that there’s no reason for you to avoid the slop?
It’s a weak signal. I’ve certainly never suspected your writing of being LLM, because the rest of it screams human and high quality. What Even Is this Timeline? just nails it, and no LLM to would produce that without enough prompting to make it worth reading. I guess I’m biased because I think the type of work you’re doing, taking stock of the big picture with an understanding of different perspectives, is word for word the most valuable thing right now. I’m just mentioning, not trying to distract you from the issue at hand.
For writers I don’t know, I’m afraid yeah em-dashes are a signal to pay it less attention. I’m not the LLM-discernment pro that the mods here are. I can tell when it’s obvious but not when it’s not. I don’t spend a lot of time learning that discernment. And I’d assumed that everyone with a clue made the same compromise I did and ditched them when LLMs made them their signature move.
But I didn’t say I stop reading, like Justis did. I’m not as hardline. I skim LLM-written posts for good ideas, because I think insights on alignment (and other things) can and do come out of left field, and writing ability is weakly or even anticorrelated with creativity (while correlated strongly with analytical ability).
I think it’s an unfortunately situation because LLM writing is merely correlated with lack of quality; I think the case is overstated, perhaps because we mostly hate and fear AI for good reasons, and our feelings cause some motivated reasoning. But it is what it is. For now. I hope it will be different when LLMs have better metacognitive skills and instead of skipping LLM writing we can just say “make sure you tell your LLM to think this back and forth carefully and write succinctly”
I think that might happen soon because commercial use of LLMs will reward accuracy more than sycophancy. I hope to be alive to enjoy that glorious few months when LLMs can think for us better than we can, and still want to.
But for now, yeah, there’s already too much to read, so em-dashes are a sign to start skimming.
If you’re going to reject something as presumptive slop because of a em dash, isn’t that confessing that your discernment is so low that there’s no reason for you to avoid the slop?
Unfortunately no, I don’t think so, because people who want to avoid wasting their time on LLM writing are likely to be quite sensitive to signals of LLM writing and potentially very quick to nope out. Generally it is (or at least feels) less costly to miss out on a random blog post than it is to ingest meaningless writing. So if there’s an early sign in your writing, someone who cares probably won’t stick around and read through to the end to evaluate based on the entirety of the post. (Unless they see other signals that it’s a high-quality post, like if other people are recommending it—in which case they will probably read it even if they think LLMs were involved in the writing.)
I just started using em dashes (at the recommendation of my older brother) in my writing circa 2022 before I even knew about LLMs. I like using them—I’m not giving them up!
that didn’t trigger any allergic reaction for me … but following would:
It’s not your fault or ours, just an unfortunate fact: we will by default assume your stuff was written by an LLM and pay it less attention, for the reasons given above.
Unless you include a statement in each piece that you’re using them.
I also used a lot of em-dashes and loved them. There are better hills to die on.
Wait—really? I have a long track record of using em dashes and, I think, a pretty distinctive writing style. I’ve had a dash binding in my
.emacssince 2015. Can people really not tell? If you’re going to reject something as presumptive slop because of a em dash, isn’t that confessing that your discernment is so low that there’s no reason for you to avoid the slop?It’s a weak signal. I’ve certainly never suspected your writing of being LLM, because the rest of it screams human and high quality. What Even Is this Timeline? just nails it, and no LLM to would produce that without enough prompting to make it worth reading. I guess I’m biased because I think the type of work you’re doing, taking stock of the big picture with an understanding of different perspectives, is word for word the most valuable thing right now. I’m just mentioning, not trying to distract you from the issue at hand.
For writers I don’t know, I’m afraid yeah em-dashes are a signal to pay it less attention. I’m not the LLM-discernment pro that the mods here are. I can tell when it’s obvious but not when it’s not. I don’t spend a lot of time learning that discernment. And I’d assumed that everyone with a clue made the same compromise I did and ditched them when LLMs made them their signature move.
But I didn’t say I stop reading, like Justis did. I’m not as hardline. I skim LLM-written posts for good ideas, because I think insights on alignment (and other things) can and do come out of left field, and writing ability is weakly or even anticorrelated with creativity (while correlated strongly with analytical ability).
I think it’s an unfortunately situation because LLM writing is merely correlated with lack of quality; I think the case is overstated, perhaps because we mostly hate and fear AI for good reasons, and our feelings cause some motivated reasoning. But it is what it is. For now. I hope it will be different when LLMs have better metacognitive skills and instead of skipping LLM writing we can just say “make sure you tell your LLM to think this back and forth carefully and write succinctly”
I think that might happen soon because commercial use of LLMs will reward accuracy more than sycophancy. I hope to be alive to enjoy that glorious few months when LLMs can think for us better than we can, and still want to.
But for now, yeah, there’s already too much to read, so em-dashes are a sign to start skimming.
Unfortunately no, I don’t think so, because people who want to avoid wasting their time on LLM writing are likely to be quite sensitive to signals of LLM writing and potentially very quick to nope out. Generally it is (or at least feels) less costly to miss out on a random blog post than it is to ingest meaningless writing. So if there’s an early sign in your writing, someone who cares probably won’t stick around and read through to the end to evaluate based on the entirety of the post. (Unless they see other signals that it’s a high-quality post, like if other people are recommending it—in which case they will probably read it even if they think LLMs were involved in the writing.)