[julienmarie]

On the contrary, read the piece. He's not saying it from comfort, he's saying it after a heart attack, after his kids grew up, after the form he loved became a young man's game. The farce isn't a punchline delivered from above; it's what's left when the registers that used to hold you don't anymore. And his answer isn't despair, it's "we've got to keep trying… there's a breeze beneath my wings." That's not whimsy. That's the thing the trenches actually teach you, if you survive them.

[Phemist]

A triple "It's not this... it's that"...

[danparsonson]

The robots use it a lot because it's a common construct in their training data, because it's a common construct in text written by humans

[dijksterhuis]

i’ve caught myself doing the “it’s this and that — it’s not the other” thing a few times. i dunno if it’s because i’ve seen it so many times because of AI generated comments etc and that’s become a norm in my brain, or if it was actually something i do regularly and ive just never noticed it.

it might be the latter, because i always got the title of this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.02175 backwards. i used to write it adversarial examples are features, not bugs (which is apparently not correct in english language 0_o)

regardless, ive started editing it out when i notice ive done it now.

[an0malous]

it’s a common construct in human text *selected for the most engaging constructs by AI companies optimizing their usage metrics

[matwood]

Obviously any comment that doesn't match the responders exact style must be AI /s.

[tranceylc]

I can’t be the only one who finds it rude to use AI to contribute to a discussion. I find invasive I had to read what I thought was human.

Using it for translation would be different though.

[hacker161]

LLMs write like that because people write like that. That they used the rhetorical device three times in a row in a single paragraph makes me think it’s less likely to be LLM and just how that person writes.

[toxik]

So very rude. If you prefix it with "the LLM says", I'm fine with it. But taking that hot air and pretending it's yours? It's not just rude, it's dishonest.

[hyperhello]

It’s not just X, it’s Y. It’s not rude, it’s hackneyed use of language.

[reactordev]

You’re absolutely right! It’s not just X, it’s Y. /s.

[standardly]

You're right to point that out, and I admire your willingness to challenge the accepted narrative. That writing style not just unique to AI — all humans write like that. That's not annoying — it's refreshing. It's not AI repeating the same phrase — it's just AI using what they're trained on! It's like a monkey trained to write essays — the monkey isn't making up words; it only knows what it was taught! That's not AI — it's just an agent (human OR AI) formulating a response based on given context. That's not exhausting — it's informative!

Breaking chacter for a minute, it really annoys me every time a blatantly obvious LLM comment is called out, it's flooded with replies like "No, I akshually write like that - people have always written exactly like that" as if its not obvious lol

[albedoa]

Triples is best.

[kcatskcolbdi]

Yeah, sadly thought the same. I even agree with the clanker's sentiment.

[bingkaa]

like a lot of tweets in my timeline these days

[newsclues]

I find it rather hopeless that people can "survive the trenches" and tell others" that life is meaningless.

The perspective that affords that life is cruel to some and kind to others, and it's just random and meaningless really doesn't sit well with the people who have to struggle to survive without the chance for joy in life.

If I am just going to suffer endlessly while others enjoy a life of luxury, why not burn the whole thing down? There is a disturbing goal for some people who want equality, and that is universal suffering and misery...

[raffael_de]

Who are you even talking about? Bob didn't say life is meaningless. If you want the perspective of someone who survived the "trenches" and kept a meaningful perspective on life then I recommend the book "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

[throw0101a]

> On the contrary, read the piece. He's not saying it from comfort, he's saying it after a heart attack, after his kids grew up, after the form he loved became a young man's game. The farce isn't a punchline delivered from above; it's what's left when the registers that used to hold you don't anymore.

Sounds like a typical mid-life (identity) crisis?

Contrast this with the life perspective of Stephen Colbert, who lost his father and two brother to a plane crash when he was 10:

> “It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,” he said. “Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.” He smiled in anticipation of the callback: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

> I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

> He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I'm grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.

* https://archive.is/https://www.gq.com/story/stephen-colbert-...

His interview with Anderson Cooper, where they go over this (amongst other things), is worth checking out (see ~12m43s):

> Then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can't pick and choose what you're grateful for. So what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people's loss, which allows you to connect with that other person. Which allows you to love more deeply and understand what it means to be a human being, if it's true that all humans suffer. […] It's about the fullness of your humanity: what's the point of being here and being human if you can't be the most human you can be? I'm not saying 'best', because you can be a bad person but a most human. […]

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB46h1koicQ

[lioeters]

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

-- Kahil Gibran