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simoncion • yesterday at 2:18 PM • 2 replies • view on HN

> Then you aren't going to get to why people are using these tools...

I couldn't disagree more!

If you haven't already, you should watch this topical presentation from Greg K-H that was posted to HN like a week ago. [0] It's about an hour long, but you can probably watch most of it at 120->150% speed.

Notice how his praise for the tools differs from so much of the expressed positive sentiment for said tools here on HN. The "low-horsepower" people I've known tend to praise things in a way that smells very much like astroturfing. The "high-horsepower" people I've known both express very nuanced opinions and tend to know better than to burn a ton of time squabbling with Internet Randos in a place like this... they have much better things to do with their lives.

[0] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnV_cWeoo5Q>


Replies

orangedog • yesterday at 2:22 PM

I don't observe the same things on HN that you do. I see a variety of sentiment - positive, negative, low-effort and high-effort.

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palmotea • yesterday at 3:27 PM

> The "low-horsepower" people I've known tend to praise things in a way that smells very much like astroturfing. The "high-horsepower" people I've known both express very nuanced opinions

I think that's a good observation, but I wouldn't say those people are actually astroturfing (noting you only said they smell like that).

But that "low-horsepower" vs "high-horsepower" distinction probably has a big bearing on people's attitudes towards LLMs. "Low-horsepower" people are simultaneously much more easily impressed and often lack the skill to properly evaluate the output they're getting. It's often been remarked that LLMs feel awesome for topics you know nothing about. It's kinda like Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect for people who were never knowledgeable about any topic.

[1] "The phenomenon of a person trusting newspapers for topics which that person is not knowledgeable about, despite recognizing the newspaper as being extremely inaccurate on certain topics which that person is knowledgeable about." (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect#Engl...)

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