Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

I wanted to share my project, but for some reason, the site won't let me... I guess my karma is too low—ha ha ha! We're all like kids trying to get a good grade.

This post uses far too much punctuation. Makes it jarring to read.

So many people seem completely blind to LLM writing, they are fine sharing it on social media or at work. I think it’s people who are “not details people” and are used to judging something without reading it based on superficial cues which is what LLMs are optimized for.

And of course anyone who actually reads stuff is disgusted by it, so we quickly end up with a situation where content is piling up and nobody is consuming it which is basically dead internet theory.

On LinkedIn specifically I went from reading it regularly to almost never touching it, previously the nonsense (“the interviewer was the dog”) was still tolerable enough to flip through for updates and I found the platform useful for business leads. Now it’s just a feed of pure slop, when I do open it I just close again after reading a post is two when I remember how bad it is.

I love the analogy. Thanks for sharing!

writing well still works. it also still can be quite hard depending on the circumstance.

Yes, yes, all is true here. But you forget: Half of America is illiterate. "According to data analyzed via the National Literacy Institute, roughly 54% of American adults read below a sixth-grade reading level."

So, those folks aren't checking anything, and certainly wouldn't know the difference, or care.

LLMs are not defacto bad at writing and are not defacto distinguishable from human writers. Lots of people are just lazy, never customize anything, and tell chatgpt to make them a post about x to be a "thought leader". Most are even lazier and blatantly rip off some else for their own means.

However, it is perfectly possible to have an LLM imitate an existing corpus of writing (yours or someone else) and with a good prompt, idea, and editing, to produce high quality writing (in every sense of the word) with an LLM.

It's been odd as I've seen colleagues I generally thought of as intelligent and self aware post glaringly AI generated cliche LinkedIn corporate slop, even accounts from generally respectable and innovative tech companies. I don't know whether they think no one can tell or that they don't care if it is obviously AI? It's truly bizarre and now seems to be the vast majority of posts there.

Interesting quick read/take. Especially the LinkedIn analogy. Even though I am WAY high on the AI fanboy and low on the LinkedIn side of the bell curve, I can see what the author mean.

The people posting this content are intellectual eunuchs, so it doesn’t really matter if their fly is open.

Wait, you're complaining about AI-generated content on LinkedIn? The place that was 99.9% organic human content slop even before there were LLMs? It was always all form, no substance.

People, such as the author, who are smart and competent--be it writing, math ,coding etc.--I think systematically underestimate the difficulty of said task for a general population. Things they take for granted, such as writing well, are surprisingly difficult for large proportion of the general population

Just like LLM-generated blurbs are now a cliched trope, so are short blog posts about people experience in a world with a lot of LLM usage. And this is one of those.

No clue why people use linkedin posts serious?

I mean, i check it to see if a recruiter has something interesting but otherwise?

LinkedIn is also suppressive. The algo for maximizing non-confrontational screen time is strongly tuned against: critical posts and comments. Real bringing of information from outside the bubble. Links are severely suppressed.

To me, LLMs struggle with the most important aspect of technical writing - conciseness. As Einstein put it: “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”

Amusingly, there’s a plane rental company called OpenFly.

I wouldn't ever use an LLM for my own writing. But I'd use, after edits, for letters to bureaucrats, landlords and other types I'm forced to deal with.

The thing is, the author may care about Linkedin but the relationship that many people have with linkedin is as a place they have to be. "Hmm, I need a blog to enhance my career but writing, urg. I know just the thing...". Which is to say, it's not strange Linkedin is going to be filled with crap. None of my actual friends on Facebook post crap 'cause there's no incentive.

The HN title ("Intellectual Fly Is Open") made me think it's about some startup starting to sell subscriptions. That title should be de-editorialized. Was it LLM-generated?

Is LinkedIn a normal social network? It seems like an absolute dumpster fire to me (it even has shorts now!)

sometimes I feel like just writing in all lowercase without fully proper punctuation to signal that it's a real human mind

This feels like satire / parody. Praising LinkedIn. The text itself containing multiple LLM tells, especially in the parts complaining most about LLM writing.

Maybe not. Could just be kind of accidentally ironic with the author picking up LLM quirks from using them a lot.

Funny in either case.

the 1900s called, they want their political references back

I guarantee you people dislike my writing way, way more than they would if it was AI generated. People need to look in the mirror before telling others not to utilize LLM's for writing.

ai slop is sh8t. but using ai to write thoughts in readable way, with flow, no issues on my side.

my english writing is quite bad. if i write article i myself cannot read it. ai helps with the flow, review editing.

nowadays i record audio, stt and then let ai flow it properly.

i hate blog.md like this, given a topic and it does everything.

it's all about money, they write some attractive stuff, they get some views, likes follows, maybe someone will say "this dude is smart". but most times you get idiots liking the stuff, and likely detrimental because a smart person would see is slop, and they also know you don't know people know is slop.

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I was fired from my job at spotify for taking fmla when i my dad was dying from cancer. I've been marking the my directors posts on linkedin as 'looks like ai slop'.

You are right in every sense, but it seems you used llm to write this post, lol!

That's a suspicious number of em-dashes for something that's allegedly against LLMs.

LLMs write better than most journalists. It also writes better than majority people in the world when it comes to English as majority are really bad in writing.

And of course, LLMs write as you prompt.

Personally, I'm happy to read broken English from non English people or good English from English people. But I'd rather read LLM writing than read typical long form perfect English journalist crap.

Please read past the LLM-ness of any given post.

The message of the post is what _should_ hopefully matter to a reader.

And, not the fact that it was written by an LLM.

I am a technical guy at heart; also an introverted extrovert. I hate writing docs that are to be written to satisfy someone else's metrics. For it to be a tickbox'ed item.

I delegate that to an LLM. I want to spend my time solving interesting challenges instead.

So, Mr. Cantrill, you got a problem with that? So be it.