25 ms·
> I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash. Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI
by vsl 1mo ago
> I just do not understand why people - even when actively denying LLM usage - use the fucking em dash.
Because they are literate? Unlike the "em-dash means AI" illiterate crowd?
I'm not going to change my writing because some idiots who never read a novel or heard about typography think only AI does that.
- hypfer 1mo agoI just do not comprehend how that can be the hill people choose to die on. Like.. I get it. It's wrong. It feels wrong to give the AI nonsense just an inch and all. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just highly ineffective dogmatism that makes people unheard, miserable and just further increases struggle. Which people are free to do, in the same way that I am free to purposefully drop a massive hammer on my foot just to make some kind of statement. Hurts me a lot, rest of the world stays entirely indifferent.
- tripzilch 1mo agoAvoiding em-dashes is not going to save you from being blind-sided by slop.
- yoz-y 1mo agoIf you stop doing something right, because of fear, then the terrorists win.
- hypfer 1mo agoI can see why you're saying that but a) Using some other horizontal line is not in the class of "wrong" that would warrant this sort of reaction. You're debating the pixel count. Not the object. The aspect ratio of it. b) If you're acting out of fear that's dumb, yes. If you however simply pick your battles for efficiency, that's not "the terrorists win". That's "you win" instead of "you loose due to attrition". __ I've also consulted with the LLM regarding the "class of wrong" thing, because I thought it might be not quite clear. So what I meant by that is that it's not giving up actual words or dumbing down your sentences. Just swapping out a character that is practically indistiguishable for the untrained eye. Hell, whole classes of social engineering attacks rely on that very property. I know I know. "Wehret den Anfängen". Slippery slope. But those are insane as a default reaction to everything. ___ I get it. SV sucks. HN sucks. The world sucks. Can't let it also take this little thing. If it can take all the big things, then at least it won't take this tiny tidbit. Emotionally, I get it. But that's not how you make rational decisions. Nor is it how we would win.
- neuroticnews25 1mo agoRelated concept: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-the-way https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-...
- redsocksfan45 1mo ago[dead]
- criley2 1mo ago[dead]
- grey-area 1mo agoTypography is not related to literacy. If you’re going to insist on em-dashes at least choose the right word.
- neuroticnews25 1mo agoOnly times i've ever used the emdash was to signal sophistication. It's not like it makes the text any more understandable. Of course some people may have more practical reasons to use it, and there's nothing wrong with more or less conscious status signaling, it's probably unavoidable. But every status signal that's cheap to fake is going to get faked, and that's exactly what happened. Now you don't even have to know about its existence to use it, and in the effect it has shifted to signal low cultural capital. In a few years it will probably get RLHFed out of the default LLM tone. Next step is also already happening: people countersignaling by consciously still using it, showing that they can afford it, because they're unmistakably not pushing AI slop.