Hacker News: ekelsen

New comment by ekelsen in "Human Routers of Machine Words"

ekelsen — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:00:07 +0000

As a reader, I appreciate reading writing that lacks large amounts of spelling mistakes. Everyone agreeing on spelling seems like a useful monoculture, like driving on the same side of the road.

But I don't feel the same way about AI writing. It feels totally different in a way that good spelling does not.

Even if I liked the style, I would object strongly to that style quickly becoming a monoculture.

We're on a path to a style optimized for shallow attention maximization becoming the majority of text we read.

New comment by ekelsen in "Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself"

ekelsen — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 20:23:07 +0000

I would argue that not having any overlap between generations is a bigger problem. It guarantees no accumulation of knowledge.

New comment by ekelsen in "Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself"

ekelsen — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:36:50 +0000

having arms is probably an advantage in developing tool-use, but who knows!

New comment by ekelsen in "Where Did Earth Get Its Oceans? Maybe It Made Them Itself"

ekelsen — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 16:49:29 +0000

Interesting to think what could be if cephalopods raised their young instead of leaving them to completely fend for themselves. It would start intergenerational knowledge transfer, i.e. culture. Maybe selection pressure then trends towards group cooperation instead of going it solo.

I still think there would be huge barriers to "civilization" as I think you mean? (Do any of the apes have "civilization"?).

New comment by ekelsen in "Shall we play a game? My AI nuclear simulation"

ekelsen — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:13:56 +0000

I wouldn't be surprised if humans behaved the same way when playing the same game?

Like even if you brought me into a room and told me I was controlling "real nuclear weapons" I wouldn't believe you.

New comment by ekelsen in "Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M"

ekelsen — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:36:59 +0000

Yeah I'm aware -- just pointing out that this threshold could be reached by other means and the options for enforcing it if it happens via birthrate are all pretty grim.

New comment by ekelsen in "If HN policy disallows AI comments, why is linking to AI generated content ok?"

ekelsen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:17:40 +0000

I understand your point, but I will say that many of the other policies also are not capable of being truly objectively enforced either ("I know it when I see it"). An effort could be made to define an approximate boundary.

Perhaps the moderator comment about "obvious smell" being killed is defining that line and the line allows lots of fairly obviously AI edited prose through. We've chosen a boundary and it's different from what I'd like (and think is best in the long run for humanity), but I will accept it and move on.

New comment by ekelsen in "Switzerland wil have a referendum to cap population at 10M"

ekelsen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:12:39 +0000

What would they do if the natural birthrate were to tip it over the threshold? (Perhaps unlikely at current birthrates, but given that laws last long times, perhaps worth considering?)

New comment by ekelsen in "If HN policy disallows AI comments, why is linking to AI generated content ok?"

ekelsen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:01:34 +0000

For the record, I'm not against the use of AI during the writing process. It can be used to make the final product better without eliminating the human authors style. I am against everything I read turning into one monoculture of AI produced prose, even if humans put some thought into what the prose is communicating.

Even if I thought that the style of AI produced prose was good, I still wouldn't want it to be the only style of writing I ever read unless I open a book written before 2022.

New comment by ekelsen in "If HN policy disallows AI comments, why is linking to AI generated content ok?"

ekelsen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:49:47 +0000

HN is big enough that its standards could propagate beyond these walls.

New comment by ekelsen in "If HN policy disallows AI comments, why is linking to AI generated content ok?"

ekelsen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:11:22 +0000

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47477284 was definitely somewhere between generated by and edited by AI.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411799 originally linked to the pdf version which is clearly AI generated.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47602500 Also clearly AI edited.

Separately I've gotten down voted for pointing out something is AI generated, but if it's explicitly policy that it isn't allowed, it seems like that should be written down.

New comment by ekelsen in "If HN policy disallows AI comments, why is linking to AI generated content ok?"

ekelsen — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:53:38 +0000

"Don't post generated comments or AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans."

If HN policy disallows AI comments, why is linking to AI generated content ok?

ekelsen — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 23:52:41 +0000

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48454138

Points: 13

# Comments: 10

New comment by ekelsen in "The Quiet Numbers Station: Decoding Nineteen Years of GPS Cryptography"

ekelsen — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:51:14 +0000

So much AI. I stopped immediately. He might have something interesting to say, but apparently not important enough for him to write about it himself, so not important enough for me to read it either.

New comment by ekelsen in "F-35 is built for the wrong war"

ekelsen — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 02:38:10 +0000

https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1439133476/1439133476___5.htm

Arthur c Clarke's short story, "Superiority," describes this dynamic perfectly.

New comment by ekelsen in "We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How"

ekelsen — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:31:59 +0000

Read the entries in the blog that predate AI, the style is very clearly different.

I would be shocked if someone consciously or unconsciously adopted AI style so perfectly so quickly. Changing your style is not easy and if you're capable of it, probably this is not the style you'd pick.

New comment by ekelsen in "We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How"

ekelsen — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:21:14 +0000

I'm willing to bet hard money.

I went to some of the oldest writing on the blog, the style is completely different.

New comment by ekelsen in "We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How"

ekelsen — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:20:33 +0000

It's absolutely a discussion of the article. It's literally about how it was written.

New comment by ekelsen in "We Built It with Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How"

ekelsen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:01:21 +0000

Ahhhh the AI writing! The goggles, they do nothing!

Maybe the author should be more worried about AI allowing us to be lazy and forgetting how to write.

New comment by ekelsen in "Building an FPGA 3dfx Voodoo with Modern RTL Tools"

ekelsen — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 18:16:14 +0000

I'm fairly sure not because I have proof, but because of all the "not this, but that!" clauses.

If you spend time generating text with LLMs, there is a style that you learn to recognize pretty quickly.

Also, to be clear -- I'm not saying that we shouldn't use LLMs to help us produce the best text/prose we can -- but letting them just generate a lot of the text doesn't led to the best outcome imo.