this might just be my first LessWrong contribution - unless it is again (incorrectly) rejected for appearing LLM generated......

I just had a chilling moment just now. For the first time in my life I was mistaken for an AI! My first ever comment on Lesswrong was REJECTED for the reason of  "No LLM generated, heavily assisted/co-written, or otherwise reliant work". This felt a little unpleasant and Icky, but mostly just surprising. I don't consider myself a bad writer and would have thought that my writing was different enough from LLM content that this wouldn't happen. For the record I only use LLMs for research and have never used them for writing forum posts or comments, not even to edit them.

I post and comment a bunch (probably too much) on the EA forum, and on passing by here couldn't resist a wee comment on an interesting healthcare related melatonin post. After reflecting on my comment, I suppose it could have been written by an AI, but I don't think it looks that AI-Sloppy. I wonder what others think?

Here's my comment below. I've reflected on each paragraph in bracketed bold, as to how "LLM-y" the paragraph seemed on reflection

MY COMMENT

This seems to be a nice observational study which analyses already available data, with an interesting and potentially important finding. (My first sentence does feel like it was written by an LLM. I hate this but it does. Its bland and boring. I'm a bit horrified that my writing could look so generic and LLM like....)

They didn't do "controlling" in the technical sense of the word, they matched cases and controls on 40 baseline variables in the cohort with "demographics, 15 comorbidities, concomitant cardiometabolic drugs, laboratories, vitals, and health-care utilization" (This feels too emphatic and specific to likely be an LLM)

The big caveat here is that these impressive observational findings often disappear, or become much smaller when a randomised controlled trial is done. Observational studies can never prove causation. Usually that is because there is some silent feature about the kind of people that use melatonin to sleep, that couldn't be matched for or was missed in the matching. A speculative example here could be that some silent, unknown illnesses could have caused people to have poor sleep - which lead to melatonin use. Also what if poor sleep itself led to poor cardiovascular health not the melatonin itself? (I feel like the line "Observational studies can never prove causation" is too emphatic to be an LLM . My word structure in the 3rd and 4th sentence isn't great as well, an LLM would be cleaner. I also wouldn't expect a LLM to end with a weak-ish question like I did, I think they prefer more standard paragraph structure)

This might be enough initial data to trigger a randomised placebo control trial using melatonin. It might be hard to sign enough people up to detect an effect on mortality - although a smaller study could still at least pick up if melatonin caused cardiovascular disease. (I wouldn't expect an LLM to try and make this bold and specific a conclusion, I would expect them to play it more safe?)

I agree with their conclusion which I think is a great takeaway (Possibly too clumsy to be LLM)

"These findings challenge the perception of melatonin as a benign chronic therapy and underscore the need for randomized trials to clarify its cardiovascular safety profile." (LLMs can finish their with a punchy quote so I suppose this could have been an LLM)

Overall I think my first paragraph looked more LLM like than I expected, but I'm still surprised the comment was rejected. I wonder whether it was put through an LLM checker, or if the forum moderator just interpreted it to be like LLM generated themselves? I bear them no ill-will, I'm just intrigued!