[nlawalker]

I've decided that I'm done being pissy about this kind of response, or thinking that it's something that can be coached away. I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference - something that you learn about, try to give some grace to, and work a little harder to bridge (unless you're defusing a bomb, performing surgery, flying an airplane etc.).

In this person's communication culture, they are saying "I don't know, but here's my attempt to help."

For me, it really comes down to is whether or not I believe the responder is acting in good faith. If you can't assume good faith, the shape of the response isn't the actual problem.

Of course, my opinion of them is also related to how often their interpreted answer or conversational contribution is "I don't know", and how often they choose to interject with that when it's not necessary. I suppose the latter is cultural too; perhaps I should be clearer in open forums whether I expect them to answer.

[idle_zealot]

> I choose to look at it like any other cultural communication difference

There's a way to tell if this is actually the case: can you find the members of this culture that like getting slopgrenaded? A communication culture needs both speakers and listeners. I see the speakers, I have yet to see the listeners. I could just be missing them though.

In the case that the listeners are greatly outnumbered by the speakers what you have isn't just a culture you exist outside of, you have a common faux pas. One of many, many rude and inconsiderate acts that are nonetheless common, like sticking gum under a table or catcalling. Something about the environment prompts antisocial behavior, and shame is one way to shift the environment and reduce the behavior. There are almost certainly more effective ways to change the environment and curb the behavior, but establishing a consensus on whether the behavior is acceptable or not for those in the know is an important step.

In case it was unclear I'm on the "it's not acceptable" side. Do share if you've observed someone appreciative of being grenaded in the wild, though.

[handoflixue]

Anecdotally, LLMs are apparently good enough at writing to routinely make the front page of Hacker News. Twitter has a plague of bot comments. From all these up-votes, we can infer there is an audience and this is good faith.

Partly, I admit, I just tend to be wary of shame as a tool. "Someone said something I dislike" has a long history of being abused. Conversely, even something like your gum example, one can point at concrete harms like littering and forcing others to clean up after you.

[grey-area]

Many people don’t read the articles before upvoting they tend to just read the headline. So I don’t think this proves much.

[21asdffdsa12]

And the "We should shame them!" crowd has a long standing inability to tell fiction and facts apart, even if previously informed. There was this example of a polish writer who killed one of his characters off- and the people held mournings and church services for her.

If you take the scripture for holy, then the holy scripture talking back to you making you a prophet, will condemn other fiction as blasphemy.

[imperfect_blue]

Using LLM as a writing assistant to properly format your ideas, while lazy, is not the same thing as a slop bomb. They're highly rated because the original ideas are good, even if the writing quality is sloppish, and it genuinely contains human input that you can't get simply by asking LLMs a question.

[adastra22]

If the AI has enough editing input that your article comes off stylistically as AI-written, it is lazy and your writing is not as good as you think it is.

[imperfect_blue]

Lazy is not bad, and bad writing doesn't mean it's not valuable or insightful.

[exe34]

Lazy writing is disrespectful. Although nowadays we should assume the entire article is slop unless we have reason to suspect otherwise.

[saurik]

> There's a way to tell if this is actually the case: can you find the members of this culture that like getting slopgrenaded? A communication culture needs both speakers and listeners. I see the speakers, I have yet to see the listeners. I could just be missing them though.

The people I know -- including myself -- who do this with each other actually don't mind it when people do this and even go so far as to read through the so-called slop... so, either I know a bunch of people who in fact are listeners, or the definition of the complaint needs to be refined?

FWIW, it isn't really that different from "here's a random Google result I found on the topic" or "here's a random comment I found on Hacker News"... if you don't paste it to the other person you can't have a shared discourse around it, as if we both ask the LLM we will get different answers.

And like, that is definitely something that is rude in many contexts: if I did not respond to your comment but just replied with a link to some other comment I clearly didn't read or bother to understand, that should make you angry. But, if I link you off to something I agree with, that's saving time.

[JimDabell]

> can you find the members of this culture that like getting slopgrenaded? A communication culture needs both speakers and listeners. I see the speakers, I have yet to see the listeners. I could just be missing them though.

Head over to Reddit and look for the obvious AI-generated engagement bait. There are usually a bunch of people earnestly responding without even realising they aren’t talking to a real person. Sure, some of those are also bots, but a huge number of them are real people too.

Average people aren’t good at noticing this stuff. They might not deliberately seek it out, but when they are exposed to it they like it enough to voluntarily spend their time on it.

> In the case that the listeners are greatly outnumbered by the speakers

I think it’s quite likely that the people who appreciate receiving slop outnumber the people who don’t.

[BeetleB]

> In this person's communication culture, they are saying "I don't know, but here's my attempt to help."

You know all those support sites for various products (Microsoft, etc) where people ask questions, and lots of folks eagerly give answers that really aren't helpful?

Throwing AI grenades generally falls into the same category.

I don't mind an AI generated answer as long as it's on point, concise, and answers my problem. If I have to read a wall of text in search of the answer, it's useless.

There's a reason I've blocked those types of "answer" sites from my Kagi search results. Kagi is awesome that way.

[vitally3643]

AI text dumps fall somewhere between "delete system32" and "run sfc /scannow".

[Kim_Bruning]

Which is funny, because if you hook up a current generation AI to a command line (with some amount of caution) , it will actually tend to fix your problem. See eg. Claude Code.

[csbrooks]

To me, acting in good faith means saying something like "I'm not sure, but Claude says this, which sounds right: [short informative clip from Claude's wall of text]". Don't pretend it's your response, make sure it has info you think is useful, and edit it down.

[ungreased0675]

Even that is bad. It’s similar to “I don’t know, but these are the top three links when I searched Google.” It’s a useless response, verbal chaff.

And friendlies don’t use countermeasures.

[low_tech_love]

Yeah, you’re spot on, and I hope people catch up on this soon (it’s already taking too long). I think one thing that most people haven’t realized yet is that reading AI slop bombs is really time consuming and stressful. We’re still operating on the assumption that reading is “free”, which came from the fact that writing took time and effort and written words were mostly meaningful before (at least you read something that you know took someone some time to write). But now that “writing” slop is so easy, reading can’t keep up. We can’t just keep reading all the meaningless crap people dump everywhere. It’s not scalable or even doable.

[imhoguy]

"Google it: <query>" was the right response back in the time, now it should be "Claude it: <prompt>".

[SoftTalker]

I'd prefer just "I don't know." I can ask Claude on my own.

[otherme123]

Some years ago, answering "just google it!" was considered rude in some forums. It was asumed that some people didn't have enough googlefu, so googling for them was considered a good help. Also, almost all StackOverflow could be boiled down to a "RTFM" and close the questions.

Today there might be people who can't extract enough juice from LLMs, so it is not entirely useless to say "I was able to extract this info from a LLM, because I am good at it and you seem to struggle", instead of throwing "just ask Claude!".

[nullc]

In my experience slopbombers are inevitably the worst llm users-- returning a pile of hallucinations because they use some polluted context, don't know how to ask the LLM to double check it (aren't running in an environment where the llm can tool call to check facts or run a test), haven't directed it to write a simple and to the point response, and/or are using some ulraglzing sycophantic chat interface.

[krupan]

This is not my experience at all. Getting a LMGTFY or an RTFM response really did mean that your question was easily answered by Google or the "fine" manual. It wasn't rude, it was an education, even a confidence boost saying, "you can figure this out, I believe in you!"

[otherme123]

I was once downvoted to oblivion in reddit for answering a question with "If you asked google instead of reddit, you will already have the answer". I remember the question being something like "Who is the CEO of Facebook?". The logic of the downvoting was that some people don't trust Google answers, or don't know how to ask so they can't tell in advance if some question is for Google or needs a human.

IMO they were right, I changed my approach to those kind of questions, and since that I try to answer like "A quick search in Google says that the CEO is Mark Zuckerberg (link to the search)". In StackOverflow I tried to go "As it says in the <a href='manual.html#section'>manual</a>, the params for that function are A, B and C, blah, blah...", so a mild RTFM. And now I do the same quoting the LLM paragraph that gave me the key info. It is like you say "this is how you can figure it out on your own the next time", and feels less aggressive than "go figure that on your own".

[krupan]

Ok, I guess we are talking about different eras here. I was a n00b being told to RTFM before reddit even existed

[SchemaLoad]

Except 99% of the time they are asking it's because they explicitly need a real opinion or the info couldn't be found via LLMs. But instead of giving an "I don't know", they paste back an wall of text with an incorrect answer that the sender hasn't even read or verified to be true.

At least with "I don't know" the asker can move on to someone who might know faster.

[efskap]

It reminds me of how LLM hallucination is attributed to "I don't know" being underrepresented in training data, and it being a better strategy to guess on evaluations rather than admit not knowing.

Different reward function, but the same behaviour emerges.

[nullc]

We'll see that improve as people move onto synthetic training data-- something now possible that we have sufficiently smart LLMs to create enough of it.

The idea is that you generate fake llm transcripts using your classical training data. E.g. look at some training data, generate q/a transcripts. Generate radom questions, RAG against your whole dataset and look for relevant stuff, if there is nothing there, train a "I don't know." reply.

A moderately sized LLM operating some tools to access more information behind the scenes, perform tests and correct its own errors can write transcripts simulating a much larger and smarter llm.

[p_j_w]

>I can ask Claude on my own.

I've already used up the tokens, why donate money to Anthropic?

[fortyseven]

That's how I'm finding I feel, too. It's not that I don't use LLMs myself, but I trust myself enough to know how to filter that data that comes back from them and compare it to actual facts. I don't necessarily know the processing of this information from the other person, to trust that they vet the information properly. So instead of it being helpful to me, it becomes incredibly irritating. Especially because I just know they're going to expect me to take that data at face value quite often. And then it's going to be on me to vet the data. How about you just let me get the data myself and cut out the middleman?

[ragequittah]

It's going to be exactly like Wikipedia on schools. People don't like me using AI for answers? Ok I'll use AI for the answer ask it to cite the source it used and then skim and paste the source. AI sti did all the work but the anti-ai crowd can't reflexively say it's probably wrong or a dream or whatever people are on about ITT.

[byzantinegene]

exactly, the people who copy-paste AI responses are typically the ones who don't do due diligence in verifying the responses.

[signatoremo]

No. "I don't know" may be interpreted as "I don't care". Adding additional info may be a way to say "I do care". Similar to sometimes we say "I don't know, but I googled it, and I got this".

Also, LLM's answers can be good if the prompts are good, so can still be helpful.

[wisty]

Turning up to a potluck with no food says "I don't care".

Turning up to a potluck with a bag of garbage you got for free in the dumpster on the way says "I don't care, and I'm so dumb I think you're too dumb to know this is trash".

[handoflixue]

This is more like bringing fast food burgers. Yeah, it's a bit lazy, but some people do actually appreciate the effort. And post of the people complaining aren't even part of the potluck.

[imhoguy]

"I don't know. Do you want me to figure it out?" would be my take, depending on circumstances.

[ozim]

There is whole range of requests or questions that I don’t care but I don’t want to reply „I don’t care” especially when someone asks for something easily googlable/llmable.

[boomlinde]

A much better way to say "I do care" is to be explicit about that. "It's an important question, but you should ask someone more knowledgeable."

[whattheheckheck]

Can you though? Can you be the final answer on everything?

[nlawalker]

> To me

> I'd prefer

This is exactly my point. To some people, direct communication, especially "no", is extremely rude. To some people, a head bob (easily confused for a "yes" in other cultures) merely means acknowledgement, or "maybe". To some people, extended silence indicates deep consideration or respect.

Globalization resulted in a need to tolerate these differences, and in my experience, trying to "fix" them is considered rude (I suppose that's also a cultural norm!). I just think it's interesting to observe that there is such immediate intolerance of this new behavior. Of course I understand it, and I don't even entirely disagree, I just think it's worth reflecting on, there are probably so many ways of considering it.

[linkregister]

In my culture, I prefer not to wear clothing in public. I also prefer not to be confined to toilets when transferring personal products.

Maybe there are some universal conventions we can accept.

[scared_together]

Nudists exist, and compared to the span of human history toilets are a recent phenomenon.

[vitally3643]

In several cultures right now, today, toilets still do not exist.

[jplusequalt]

Stop using "culture" as a crutch for being inconsiderate.

[8note]

i think you missed the point.

depending on the receiver, different and even opposing things are inconsiderate.

[jplusequalt]

I understood the point, and I think it's a flimsy one. Hiding behind "in my culture" is not a sufficient excuse to hide antisocial behavior.

There are cultures that believe the number of chromosomes you are born with determines your autonomy in society. I think most people on here would reject that framing, even if they're met with the same excuse.

[_DeadFred_]

When I started managing international teams (long ago) the first months were painful for us all because I didn't understand some culturally didn't feel they could tell me 'no'. I was used to American devs that would happily flat out tell me 'I'm not doing that' or calling me out when I was being too phb style oblivious. Made me change my initial one on ones with new team leads to focus on 'how should we communicate'. I didn't realize how much I was requiring co-workers under me in the org chart to meet me where I was. Huge eye opener.

I realized the same obliviousness on my part made some of my people feel like I was 'good old boys club' because I was more relatable to other white guys into sports (I used American sports analogies up to that point because that was how the management I rose up with talked). I felt awful for making people feeling bad/stressed/in an out group.

[SoftTalker]

If you were acting in good faith, no reason to feel awful. Some people are stressed out in a group or in the spotlight, no matter what. Some people thrive there and love it.

And while different regional cultures may tend one way or the other, one will find direct and indirect personality types everywhere.

[watwut]

Common, if you are in indirect culture, you will HINT that you dont know or that the answer is no and the other person will get it.

These stories are not about people who are from indirect cultures being frustrating to the direct person. They are about people who paste stuff into claude and unnecessary large wall of text - written in direct style.

[justsomehnguy]

IIRC it would be quite rude to poat the wall of clearly not yours/ clearly generated text in the indirct cultures.

[chowells]

What's culture got to do with it? If I wanted LLM responses, I'd have prompted for them myself. This is true in every single culture. The very fact that I asked a person means that I want the information they can provide, not LLM information. There is no culture in which that is false. So there is no culture in which providing LLM content is a useful response.

How you politely communicate that you don't have anything to add? That varies by culture. That LLM content is not a useful response? That does not vary by culture.

[_DeadFred_]

If in my culture I can't tell the boss 'I don't know' 'I can't do it' and I am handed a machine and told it's an answer machine, I can understand this conflict coming up. OP specifically said " I don't even entirely disagree, I just think it's worth reflecting on". OP is saying there might be dynamics that can be resolved with understanding why you are getting AI.

[mikeweiss]

Or just "I don't know, but researching quickly right now maybe 'xyz'"? Agreed that you need to at least read the response and summarize... Not just copy and paste

[low_tech_love]

I think you’re wrong in one thing: Reading through meaningless walls of text takes time and effort that I’m not willing to waste. So it’s not just accepting a different culture; it’s not “free”. Reading AI grenades is really stressful (at least for me).

[ethbr1]

This. The central issue is the bait and switch.

The bait: here is a ton of text

The historical implication: because there is a lot of it, I put a lot of thought and effort into writing it

The new normal: there is ZERO signal about the magnitude of human thought and effort that went into something on the basis of its length

... and what really pisses people off about that: when AIstas intentionally abuse that social contract to their benefit.

E.g. people who pass AI content off as their own, people who don't read their own genai before pasting to you, everyone on LinkedIn

[throwawee]

>The historical implication: because there is a lot of it, I put a lot of thought and effort into writing it

Really? That must be some ancient history, because I've seen rambling walls of text on the internet derided for decades. I always appreciated the Feynmanian respect for economy of time over traditional formats, where if authors said their piece but still had space they'd damn well fill it.

(Of course, slide all the way down that slippery slope and you'll just hit Twitter.)

[low_tech_love]

I understand what you mean and it’s not wrong, but still there is a contract that is being fulfilled: human in both ends. Whether it’s rambling or not, someone wrote it, and it represents a person’s idea of whatever is being discussed. That contract is now broken, but in an asymmetrical way, only one side gets to save time. My brain refuses to spend time reading crap that I don’t even know if someone even took time to prompt. Maybe they just wrote “give me something to post, whatever makes me look smart”. It’s just completely broke for me and makes me actually sick in the stomach when I read almost anything (textual uncanny valley?)

[butlike]

Depends on if it's a non-formatted rant or not. Generally, traditionally, long form non-rant responses have been more thoughtful than not. This can no longer be assumed

[ethbr1]

If you received an email at work that was three paragraphs, you wouldn't assume the author put in more work than a one-sentence reply?

[codebje]

I don't think it's a new normal. In my experience a large volume of text rarely has a lot of information to convey. Instead, it's intended to convey the sense that a lot of work has been done.

The consultant mindset set this trend before AI made it all worse.

[ahtihn]

Copy/pasting a question to LLM and pasting back the output isn't an attempt ar being helpful. It's the equivalent of a lmgtfy link.

[zephen]

Not at all.

A lmgtfy link can be useful, even if rude.

It's teaching someone to fish.

Sharing an LLM output is simultaneously pretentious and unhelpful. To the OP's point, some might not consider it rude, but I'd rather someone be rude and helpful, rather than pretentious and unhelpful.

tl;dr -- No, it's much, much worse than an lmgtfy link

[olsondv]

Maybe 15 years ago it was helpful. Google is so ubiquitous that lmgtfy has gotten even more passive aggressive as time’s gone on.

[zephen]

It's always been passive-aggressive.

But, if done properly (e.g. vetting that the top link is actually useful, after basically using the same words in the query that you were being asked), it's a genuine reminder that google exists, can be useful, and should often be consulted before you bother someone else.

It's a teaching moment.

Prompting AI and regurgitating the slop is more akin to googling and cutting and pasting the answer. Instead of making the statement "you can do better next time" it's pretending you are an oracle with supreme super-secret knowledge.

I suppose if it fools the querent, it's all good. But, for example, if I ask you a question because I want your opinion, and I receive AI slop in return, I have just been informed that you don't even value your own opinion.

If I really asked a stupid enough question to merit lmgtfy snark, I'd appreciate the snark. If you're not even confident enough in your own opinion to snark at me, you've just taught me something, but it's probably not a lesson that will do you any long-term good.

[sweetheart]

But the point OP is making is that it's entirely possible that the person doing this _does_ see it as them being as helpful as possible. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck, or that it isn't annoying, though. I dunno, just seems like a coin toss to me: was this backed by good intentions or not? Without other "evidence", assuming that it was well-meaning but misguided feels better for _both_ of us (at least in my experience).

[ahtihn]

Having good intentions doesn't give a free pass to be obnoxious.

[snowwrestler]

Sure but that goes both ways in a conversation.

[jplusequalt]

>Having good intentions doesn't give a free pass to be obnoxious.

>Sure but that goes both ways in a conversation.

In the situation being discussed, is it even a conversation if one party is not even actively engaging with the other person?

Also, respect is earned not given. If you don't respect me enough to put time into communicating in your own words, you can punch sand because I'm not reading your AI slop.

[4nonverbal-alit]

I had a colleague I really enjoyed talking to. Until all the AI hype and them getting into that bandwagon. Now whenever I ask something I get a huge markdown response with unaligned ascii table or being told to ask <llm name here> instead (with much enthusiasm). I am sure they are not doing it with bad intentions or ignoring me. That said I still can’t help but find it cold though. I would rather prefer if they just ghosted my messages

[layer8]

Good intentions don’t excuse bad behavior, and shouldn’t oblige one to silently accept it.

[mapontosevenths]

No, but they obligate you to be kind in your response despite your annoyance. The other person was trying to help, but failed. Keep that in mind if you feel the need to correct them.

[filoeleven]

Hence:

> If you encounter a slop grenade, share this page

Culture is cultured, it isn't the wilds, and requires pruning.

[mapontosevenths]

This is the sort of thing that only someone on the spectrum would consider doing in a professional setting, and they will end up getting coached by HR.

[filoeleven]

Oh, the irony.

[andrewflnr]

> In this person's communication culture, they are saying "I don't know, but here's my attempt to help."

It's still a bad attempt at help. Objectively net-zero utility at best.

If it's really just "culture" but they genuinely want to help, then they can in fact be coached. If they're only interested in appearances, well, I agree training isn't going to help.

[toasty228]

Saying "I don't know" is 100x less shameful than asking a clanker for an answer and pretending it's yours. If they don't realise this they won't last long

[efskap]

Specifically a clanker that itself would rather hallucinate something than say "I don't know".

[noisem4ker]

> they won't last long

I wish that was the case for people with insincere communication practices. On the contrary, they seem to embody the sociopath stereotype that ultimately climbs ladders.

[whattheheckheck]

Using clanker kinda shows how racist you are. If you get defensive its true

[bigfishrunning]

It's not, because clankers don't have a race

[whattheheckheck]

I agree robots do not have a race in the most literal, autistic interpetation of the sentence.

It's the shape of the behavior. It translates from a primordial belief systems that enables someone to say its okay to position themselves above something.

The word robot originates from the Czech term robotnik, meaning "forced worker," which is derived from robota, denoting forced labor or drudgery performed by feudal serfs. This Czech word traces its roots to the Old Church Slavonic rabota (servitude) and the Slavic root rabu, which literally means slave

Remember history? Its not okay to subjugate human beings?

People that pounce of clanker type behavior are definitely problematic behind closed doors

[bigfishrunning]

> Remember history? Its not okay to subjugate human beings?

AI systems are not human beings. They also have no feelings. Despite the marketing, they have no agency.

I position myself above inanimate objects. I position you, and everyone else, above them as well.

[ruszki]

With lmgtfy, the point was to show that you can do that with Google, how you can do it, and you shouldn’t ask (not in the nicest way for sure). With replying with an LLM answer, you pretend that I cannot do the same. The equivalent would be a link to an LLM chat. There is a clear intent difference. The LLM answer version doesn’t want to teach the how.

[robocat]

> lmgtfy

https://google.com/search?q=LMGTFY

[SpicyLemonZest]

I try not to be pissy about it, but the problem is this from the source article:

> Worse: it's a conversation killer. There's nothing to respond to. Your wall of text suppresses dialogue. They can't reply, can't push back, can't clarify. It's a weapon disguised as helpfulness.

Conversational norms simply do not allow me to give grace or bridge the gap. It would be so, so rude for me to infer that they meant to say "I don't know" if it turns out that it really was a detailed answer they expected me to read in full. I respect that the people who do this probably mean well, but there's some conversations I just can't have with people who respond this way, in the same way that there's some conversations I can't have with people who aren't comfortable exploring contested hypotheticals.

[raincole]

> In this person's communication culture

And it's a bad culture. Yes, there are good and bad cultures. Cultural relativism has its limitations.

[throwawaythekey]

In my workplace AI has more credibility than humans, so dropping a block of claude with attribution can be:

- A way to convince others of your position.

- A way to demonstrate that you did research (because experience is worthless)

- A way to soften harsh feedback.

At first I found this very dysfunctional but now I don't mind too much. It beats being ignored and/or offending someone.

[andrewljohnson]

This sounds like a broken culture to me. Teams shouldn't tolerate it... it is both harmful and contagious.

[ineedasername]

>In this person's communication culture, they are saying

Wittgenstein termed precisely this sort of practice a “language game”.

With the rest of his work (Philosophical Investigations in particular) it is a hugely useful lens through which to view and significantly better understand the use and function of language in all its forms.

Given that language is becoming a ubiquitous UI and UX and glue for just about everything, I highly recommend it, and as a work of philosophy it is much more accessible to laypeople not of the field than some other important works in the area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)

[boomlinde]

A language game assumes mutually understood "rules" in the form of shared context that makes language that would otherwise be unclear meaningful. If the intended meaning is not conveyed, we're failing at playing a language game.

In this case, the notion that the slop grenade is intended to communicate "I don't know, but here's my attempt to help" is as far as we know entirely a fiction, possibly a favorable interpretation GP uses not to let themselves be annoyed. In reality, the intent could be any number of things or nothing in particular.

It seems more likely to me that these slop grenades are attempts at appearing to a third party to have weighed in on important decisions. It's a deliberate technique to become more visible in order to win favor with someone who can't tell reasoned responses from useless bullshit.

This self-aggrandizing trash was a normal part of professional culture before the current LLM sewage torrent, but tactlessly used LLMs are so awful at writing that it's never been so transparent before.

[conartist6]

I'm the opposite. Trust can only be given so long as it isn't used to facilitate rampant abuse. Open abuse is rampant now. I'll slam the door in your face if you try to slop on me because that's the only way anyone is ever going to learn at the scale a lesson needs to be learned.

And of course I notice the people posting the massive slop screed don't seem to have thought critically about it at all. After all, if they had time to read it thinking critically, they probably would have had time to write it.

[mlinhares]

I usually go the other way, sometimes ignoring the wall of text completely or just exiting the conversation. I find it incredibly distasteful when people do this (i also have access to all the same tools), specially because its a lazy response where they copy the conversation, paste it at the tool and just vomit the response back.

Its also usually the dickhead nobody likes that does it as well.

[boomlinde]

If I am explicitly asking for someone's opinion and they respond with a slop grenade that has nothing to do with their opinion, I'm indifferent to the moral question whether they're acting in good faith. The practical effects are the same: my time is wasted, I'm annoyed, I lose respect for them, I am less likely to consider their opinion in the future.

[Foivos]

why should you be the one who has to work a little harder though?

[andrei_says_]

“ I don't know, but here's my attempt to help.”

“I don’t know” would be so much more productive and respectful than “here, this may be useful or completely useless, figure it out on your own time. Took me 30 seconds to produce…”

A bit asymmetrical by time, signal to noise, and frankly, bs metrics.