Wow, I've wondered this for a while and hadn't gotten around to even attempting to figure it out. Thanks for writing

I understand that you're leaving and think that's wise and healthy, but am leaving an explanation since I didn't earlier (expecting a longer conversation).

What I am interested in is the process of a human writing a particular passage somehow. I can imagine a few scenarios and view them as similarly "testimonial", given that they result in the same text:

1. A human writes a sonnet "solo".
2. A human thumbs through the thesaurus for synonyms for "autumn".
3. A human uses a computer to look up "nouns that begin with G".
4. A human uses a computer to generate crappy sonnets and splices a few dozen together.
5. A human uses a computer to generate sonnets and selects one.

I view these as similarly at our current stage of computer sophistication because the intelligence that created the particular sonnet lives inside the human's head. If they were just prompting Original ChatGPT with "write me a good sonnet", the result would be bad, but in this article the claim was made that a sonnet we all liked would have its connection to human art and emotion severed if a computer generated it and was edited, and I think that argument proves too much since it seems to have me look down on thesaurus use.

(I will not reply further but really did not want to exit the thread without making my case for my position. I wanted to check whether this was the appropriate case to make or if something else would be more appropriate, but something is better than nothing)

e.g. the LLM could tell a story that's plausibly true, and happens to be actually true of some people, and some of those people generate that story with their LLM and post it. But I want to know who would generate that themselves without LLMs.

This snippet is my crux here (and perhaps yours?). I do not find it useful to make the distinction between writing a particular sonnet and generating thousands and selecting the same sonnet and only publishing that.

This is still one of my all-time favorite LessWrong posts. I have thought sometimes about trying to play the "Follow the Improbability" game with friends at a meetup to see if I can get it to catch on, but I haven't really formulated it to stick yet.

But, a bit similarly to how high-level actions don’t screen off intent, text does not screen off thought. How you want to interpret and react to text, and how you want to interact with the person who published that text, depend on the process that produced the text.

While I am also irritated by AI-written text being sent to me unlabeled, I think this is just outright incorrect (or "proves too much").

I think the "GAZP vs. GLUT" argument is exactly my complaint: it is not by random chance that those two texts were the same. Some process refined the two texts the same, and that process is what I care about.

Hello, name doppleganger. I also liked the story, though I'll admit to skimming the back half once it was unsurprising for a while (metaphors for something I already know about can be that way sometimes). I am imagining a short book of parables like this as an add-on to If Anyone Builds It to which a much shorter version of this (defending only on ONE front instead of MANY) would be a welcome addition.

I don't think this is true. This sounds like an issue that stems from the manner in which one approaches conversations, not the sorts of things one talks about.

I do not expect a longer comment on discussion to be useful to this thread (or, more importantly, to the post it's under), but I would like to put some chips down on the idea that talking to people in respectful and non-smug ways can be a good way to talk about "things that actually matter".

Honestly, not to sound like a fop, but if you trust yourself to moderate opinions you hear, go for something "old fashioned" like https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/ and learn some of the old-timey rules and then work forwards from there. Like many squishy disciplines, modern fashion is hopelessly complicated with 15 levels of counter-counter-counter-counter-counter-signaling, and going back to the basics can help.

Try to learn things like:

• How do I know if a shirt fits?
• What's the basic mold than men's outfits were built around (hint, it's the suit) and how does the shadow of this hang over modern fashion?
• Why do we care about "clashing" outfits, and how do I know if two pieces of clothing "clash"? What colors go together, what patterns go together, etc?
• What materials exist, and how do I, personally, feel about including them in an outfit?

I often get very frustrated responses when people come to me for design feedback and I respond with things like "well, I think this website is communicating that you are a kind of 90s CS professor? Is that what you want?"

I know you (literally and explicitly, in similar words) say it, but this is also true of fashion and fashion advice; you are choosing what message to convey, not whether to convey one.

In the post it says:

Of course, there are lots of other options besides literally just a leather jacket. As a general rule, any outfit which makes people ask “are you in a band?” signals coolness. Personally, I usually wear all black, including suit pants and jacket from a tailor in Shanghai, Converse sneakers, a black hat, and sunglasses.

I have nothing against John and am not commenting on John. However, there were multiple kids at my highschool who thought they would dress like they were in a band and then they'd be cool. We thought these kids were losers, because they acted like aliens with self-esteem issues looking for hacks that would make them cool.

A different way to think about fashion is to ask "What do I want people to think of me?" and "Who do I think of that way, and how do they dress?". If you want to look cool, you should be thinking of people who are cool and how they pick their clothes, not wearing sunglasses at night^[1].

Just like how websites can choose to look like Facebook or like Youtube or a '90s computer science professor, in fashion there are a thousand ways to look cool and you need to select the appropriate style. Don't dress up in a snazzy suit to volunteer washing oil off of ducks, don't wear your leather jacket to a wedding, and maybe throw some faux-minimalism on your website if you're trying to make it look trendy.

You have to find your niche though! The explicit moral of this comment is have an intended message.

Personally, I would always recommend dressing in high quality clothing^[2] that is conspicuously not trendy (not bad looking, just not stuff that signals having just been bought) and that fits you well. This would be really bad advice for some subcultures!

It doesn't really seem that similar to me at all?

"All illegal drugs should be legal, if you buy them at a special government-managed shop, under the condition that you sign up for several months of addiction treatment."

"Supervised Injection Sites" are missing the bit where you get legal immunity in exchange for locking yourself into rehab, which is the core of the idea. The idea isn't just "there should be a place where you can do drugs without being arrested", or even the (really cool) idea "there should be a place where you can do drugs with medical attendants". The idea is "drug users have messed up discounting rates, can we legally lock them into rehab using their drug cravings?"