7 ms·

What drives people to cheat at competitive games? I imagine it’s the same genes.

by cheschire 1mo ago

rockinghigh 1mo ago
Using tools to fix your writing style or grammar is not exactly cheating.
- jackjeff 1mo ago
  There’s a world of difference between using AI as an editor vs letting it write a whole essay for you. AI;DR is about the latter.
  - thatjoeoverthr 1mo ago
    I'll push back and say it's the former. Good business writing is all about the editing, and autoregressive LLMs are terrible editors. They roll dice on every word and put the same tics on every text. They meander. Suppose you check something with ChatGPT, get nine hundred words, edit that down to three or even one and send that. You won't get AI;DR for "I checked, we're good."
    - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
      >Suppose you check something with ChatGPT, get nine hundred words, edit that down to three or even one and send that. You won't get AI;DR for "I checked, we're good." Maybe. The issue here is we know most people are simply posting 900 words wholesale, maybe editing down 20-30 words to try and sweep some dust under the rug (meanwhile the trash is still fully featured on top of the carpet). For your style: I'm not a writer but I question if it's even more efficient to edit 900 AI words down to 100. I can see some people finding it easier to change other's words than generate your own ideas, but I don't think it's a majority. I certainly know it's more annoying to edit 900 lines of AI code into a succinct 100 line function/class.
  - teo_zero 1mo ago
    > using AI as an editor vs letting it write a whole essay for you. AI;DR is about the latter I'm sure that's the intention, but the alarming trend, at least here on HN, is crying wolf at the first em-dash.
    - account42 1mo ago
      Why is that alarming? Your immune system will also do some small amount of collateral damage to your own cells when its in a heightened state.
      - teo_zero 1mo ago
        While you went this road of the medical metaphor, taking antibiotics at the first suspect of sickness without checking what's really going on, is a sure way to help develop antibiotic-resistant viruses. Please note the key item is without checking. I'm not denying that many AI-generated documents are likely to be garbage. But refusing to read them just because of it will result in a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- brandon272 1mo ago
  This implies that writing styles are simply "correct" or "incorrect". I'd prefer to read someone's natural writing style, even if they do not consider themselves a good writer, because it comes from them genuinely. Much better than enduring text that has been fed into an LLM and homogenized.
xdennis 1mo ago
As a previous massive cheater in RPG games (when a was young and it was easy to write your own tools) the reason to cheat is because many games (especially RPGs) have bullshit mechanics. You have to perform a lot of repetitive stuff to get ahead. Cheating is seen as honorable because it's about getting back at a system which forces you into unfair circumstances (this is akin to corruption/graft in real life). In my opinion, this is not the same as people who use AI comment bots. Of course, other cheaters had other reasons, but the few I was friends with had similar motivations. (Actually, a few just created tools because they enjoyed creating tools, not so much actually using them.)
- account42 1mo ago
  Do you mean MMORPGs or single-player RPGs. Because modifying a game or game state to your likes with the goal of improving your personal enjoyment of the game is very different compared to cheating to get ahead of other people.
mister_mort 1mo ago
Some people have an inner drive like a rat that likes pushing the reward button in the cell to dose them with opium. They want to see the YOU WIN screen and absolutely do not care what it takes to get them there. Hence the booming market for custom memory modding cheat devices and subscription cheat services. They don't want to improve their skills, they just want to be number one on the board.

What drives people to cheat at competitive games? I imagine it’s the same genes.

rockinghigh 1mo ago

Using tools to fix your writing style or grammar is not exactly cheating.

jackjeff 1mo ago
There’s a world of difference between using AI as an editor vs letting it write a whole essay for you. AI;DR is about the latter.
- thatjoeoverthr 1mo ago
  I'll push back and say it's the former. Good business writing is all about the editing, and autoregressive LLMs are terrible editors. They roll dice on every word and put the same tics on every text. They meander. Suppose you check something with ChatGPT, get nine hundred words, edit that down to three or even one and send that. You won't get AI;DR for "I checked, we're good."
  - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
    >Suppose you check something with ChatGPT, get nine hundred words, edit that down to three or even one and send that. You won't get AI;DR for "I checked, we're good." Maybe. The issue here is we know most people are simply posting 900 words wholesale, maybe editing down 20-30 words to try and sweep some dust under the rug (meanwhile the trash is still fully featured on top of the carpet). For your style: I'm not a writer but I question if it's even more efficient to edit 900 AI words down to 100. I can see some people finding it easier to change other's words than generate your own ideas, but I don't think it's a majority. I certainly know it's more annoying to edit 900 lines of AI code into a succinct 100 line function/class.
- teo_zero 1mo ago
  > using AI as an editor vs letting it write a whole essay for you. AI;DR is about the latter I'm sure that's the intention, but the alarming trend, at least here on HN, is crying wolf at the first em-dash.
  - account42 1mo ago
    Why is that alarming? Your immune system will also do some small amount of collateral damage to your own cells when its in a heightened state.
    - teo_zero 1mo ago
      While you went this road of the medical metaphor, taking antibiotics at the first suspect of sickness without checking what's really going on, is a sure way to help develop antibiotic-resistant viruses. Please note the key item is without checking. I'm not denying that many AI-generated documents are likely to be garbage. But refusing to read them just because of it will result in a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
brandon272 1mo ago
This implies that writing styles are simply "correct" or "incorrect". I'd prefer to read someone's natural writing style, even if they do not consider themselves a good writer, because it comes from them genuinely. Much better than enduring text that has been fed into an LLM and homogenized.

xdennis 1mo ago

As a previous massive cheater in RPG games (when a was young and it was easy to write your own tools) the reason to cheat is because many games (especially RPGs) have bullshit mechanics. You have to perform a lot of repetitive stuff to get ahead. Cheating is seen as honorable because it's about getting back at a system which forces you into unfair circumstances (this is akin to corruption/graft in real life). In my opinion, this is not the same as people who use AI comment bots. Of course, other cheaters had other reasons, but the few I was friends with had similar motivations. (Actually, a few just created tools because they enjoyed creating tools, not so much actually using them.)

account42 1mo ago
Do you mean MMORPGs or single-player RPGs. Because modifying a game or game state to your likes with the goal of improving your personal enjoyment of the game is very different compared to cheating to get ahead of other people.

mister_mort 1mo ago

Some people have an inner drive like a rat that likes pushing the reward button in the cell to dose them with opium. They want to see the YOU WIN screen and absolutely do not care what it takes to get them there. Hence the booming market for custom memory modding cheat devices and subscription cheat services. They don't want to improve their skills, they just want to be number one on the board.