AI makes you boring
This post is an elaboration on a comment I made on Hacker News recently, on a blog post that showed an increase in volume and decline in quality among the “Show HN” submissons. I don't actually mind AI-aided development, a tool is a tool and should be used if you find it useful, but I think the vibe coded Show HN projects are overall pretty boring. They generally don't have a lot of work put into them, and as a result, the author (pilot?
That may be, but it's also exposing a lot of gatekeeping; the implication that what was interesting about a "Show HN" post was that someone had the technical competence to put something together, regardless of how intrinsically interesting that thing is; it wasn't the idea that was interesting, it was, well, the hazing ritual of having to bloody your forehead of getting it to work.
AI for actual prose writing, no question. Don't let a single word an LLM generates land in your document; even if you like it, kill it.
What the article is saying is:
"the author (pilot?) hasn't generally thought too much about the problem space, and so there isn't really much of a discussion to be had. The cool part about pre-AI show HN is you got to talk to someone who had thought about a problem for way longer than you had. It was a real opportunity to learn something new, to get an entirely different perspective."
Right, so it's about the person and how they've qualified themselves, and not about what they've built.
I feel like I've been around these parts for a while, and that is not my experience of what Show HN was originally about, though I'm sure there was always an undercurrent of status hierarchy and approval-seeking, like you suggest.
Based on your replies here, one thing it really doesn't seem like is a community of people trying to earnestly exchange ideas or points of view. It really seems like you're viewing this whole thing as some sort of debate contest or point sparring, and its both aggravating and disappointing to read.
What is your hoped for outcome here man? To come off like enough of a jerk or obtuse enough that people just abandon the thread and you can declare victory?
I think people are retconning a lot of things onto Show HN that aren't actually part of the ethos of Show HN. That's not new; in the past, people have tried the same thing to suggest Show HN is about, say, open source software only.
I don't dispute the quality decline on Show HN or the need for some kind of intervention, but this particular argument about how AI interacts with "Show HN" is in fact introducing a new and significant element of gatekeeping to it.
Show HN is not in fact a craftspersons forum! Craft can be one of the things it's about, but it's not the only thing.
> That may be, but it's also exposing a lot of gatekeeping
"Gatekeeping" became a trendy term for a while, but in the post-LLM world people are recognizing that "gatekeeping" is not the same as "having a set of standards or rules by which a community abides".
If you have a nice community where anyone can come in and do whatever they want, you no longer have a community, you have a garbage dump. A gate to keep out the people who arrive with bags of garbage is not a bad thing.
I would argue the term "gatekeeping" is being twisted around when it comes to AI. I see genuine gatekeeping when people with a certain skill or qualification try to discourage newcomers by making their field seem mysterious and only able to be done by super special people, and intimidating or making fun of newbies who come along and ask naive questions.
"Gatekeeping" is NOT when you require someone to be willing learn a skill in order to join a community of people with that skill.
And in fact, saying "you are too stupid to learn that on your own, use an AI instead" is kind of gatekeeping on its own, because it implicitly creates a shrinking elite who actually have the knowledge (that is fed to the AI so it can be regurgitated for everyone else), shutting out the majority who are stuck in the "LLM slum".
What if the AI produces writing that better accomplishes my goal than writing it myself? Why do you feel differently about these two acts?
For what it's worth, the unifying idea behind both is basically a "hazing ritual", or more neutrally phrased, skin in the game. It takes time and energy to look at things people produce. You should spend time and energy making sure I'm not looking at a pile of shit. Doesn't matter if it's a website or prose.
Obviously some people don't. And that's why the signal to noise ratio is becoming shit very quickly.
speckx