[abustamam]

Well sure. I have a blog that no one reads. That's textbook definition of talking to oneself in public.

> you've just wasted all your time if you were talking to a bot.

Not really. If the person I was responding to was a bot, it doesn't mean that humans can't read the thread and engage similarly. Most of the time when i respond to someone on HN, someone else responds to me with something compelling. I mean this thread is a prime example of that! Your comment I was responding to was a reply to someone else's comment. Let's say that person was a bot and neither you nor I are bots. We're still two humans connecting that wouldn't have otherwise connected if the bot hadn't posted that comment.

[palmotea]

>> you've just wasted all your time if you were talking to a bot.

> Not really. If the person I was responding to was a bot, it doesn't mean that humans can't read the thread and engage similarly.

Ok, so you've wasted some of your time, in proportion to how many bots you're interacting with. And the more prolific and capable they come, the more and more time you waste.

You seem to be walking a back your "engage with (or dismiss) the material, not the pen," statement. If you really stood by it, those humans wouldn't have to have to have read the thread.

[abustamam]

That wasn't my statement. I still agree with it though. Humans do need context to respond. We don't respond to comments in a vacuum. We respond with whatever context we have available to us. Whether or not someone is a bot is not a fact available to us. But the comment or post being replied to is. That is material.

In the comment "engage with (or dismiss) the material, not the pen," I understood the material to be whatever content I'm consuming, and not the mechanism by which the content was produced (the pen).

Edit to add: I don't think prolificness of bots has a true bearing on time wasted. I respond to lots of HN comments, written by humans or bots, that don't get responses or votes (ups or downs). But that has always happened since the dawn of social media. That's just how public forums works.

As long as humans are able to consume the content and similarly engage, I don't really think it matters. Again, we're several comments deep on a piece whose origin is very likely a bot. And we're having fun engaging. Or at least I am. You seem smart and I like chatting with smart people.