[mapontosevenths]

Another human being took time from their life to try and help you

It wasn't as much time as you felt entitled to from them, so you responded by minimizing their contribution and being condescending. That upset them.

The problem here was not the other person.

[kaashif]

Someone is drowning and calls for help.

I throw a bucket of chum into the water and walk away, putting my headphones on.

Well I did take the time to help, better than nothing, right?

[Applejinx]

No… they took time from YOUR life to try and take credit for what an LLM produced when asked. And took over from you when you'd apparently chosen not to ask an LLM, as if to say 'thank me for knowing better because you were supposed to be asking the LLM about this'.

[zahlman]

> Another human being took time from their life to try and help you

By copying and pasting my question into ChatGPT, and then copying and pasting the answer back?

It would have been more helpful, and still trivial, to remind me that ChatGPT exists.

> It wasn't as much time as you felt entitled to from them

No entitlement is implied by posting a question. The other human being could have just as well ignored the query entirely.

[pebble]

Sometimes a well-meaning fool is worse than no help at all.

[mapontosevenths]

That doesnt excuse you from the obligation to be civil. Especially given that the other party was trying to help.

[pebble]

There was nothing uncivil in the response the above commenter gave.

[mapontosevenths]

I suppose that "civil" is relative. Personaly, I wouldn't speak to someone who just tried to help me that way.

Instead I would restate the question to avoid bad answers. If you start by saying what you've already tried, and how it worked, it cuts off most of those "lazy answers."

In my experience most lazy answers are provided as response to lazy questions.

[what]

Sending that “lazy answer” because you assumed the other person hasn’t tried solving the question themselves seems like the “uncivil” action. You should probably assume your colleague has tried before asking for help, and probably tried the same lazy route you used to respond.

[mapontosevenths]

> You should probably assume your colleague has tried before asking for help,

Spoken like someone who has never worked in a customer support role.

You can never assume competency, from anyone. Even the best amd brightest have bad days.

[NopIdoN]

this is why all my emails start with "PLEASE DO"

[shimman]

It's more uncivil to waste another human's time with slop, it's extremely insulting. There is a massive public backlash against the tech for many reasons now.

[ipsento606]

replying with LLM generated text without clearly labelling it as LLM generated text is inherently dishonest

I'm a pretty civil person, but I won't go out of my way to be extra polite to someone who is being actively being dishonest towards me

[Forgeties79]

When it comes to the specific case of people just mindlessly copy/pasting LLM’s:

No, I asked them to help and they offloaded it without applying any of the expertise I specifically asked for. If they don’t want to give their opinion or their expertise they should say “no.” It’s a valid response! If I’m asking for you to give your time and you don’t have time to give, that’s fine! But don’t just throw my question into an LLM and then paste the results to me. I too have access to LLM’s. I didn’t ask for a middleman.

It’s the same reason I never like it when people on hobby/interest forums tell people “Google it.” No dude, we all gathered here to discuss this topic. If people are going to ask basic questions, that’s part of the gig. They are asking the community. Perhaps they got bad results via search. People need to get over themselves lmao I don’t know what else to say.

We’ve just got this wild culture where everyone puts such a premium on their own time but now doesn’t value anyone else’s, as evidenced by all the slop dumping. By all means use LLM’s. They’re a tool, they’re there to be used. But use your own brain too. Give the results your attention. Don’t just dump them on me.

[jasonkester]

> We’ve just got this wild culture where everyone puts such a premium on their own time but now doesn’t value anyone else’s

My favorite example of this is dropping a random acronym into a message board reply and repeating it five times without ever defining it, expecting every single person who reads your post to google it themselves to understand what you’re talking about, thus saving you having to type three words yourself.

“I tried BDI for a while, and I found the important thing is to focus on biased BDI and not just the vanilla BDI that you see so much of in the BDI community”

… tossed into a 30 comment thread where no other comments mention anything similar.

[mapontosevenths]

Its the same root cause. The asker has no "theory of mind".

Often they are neurodiverent. Sometimes they're just overwhelmed with whatever it is they're asking about and dont have time to consider other peoples perspectives.

Its why after decades of having Google in everyone's pocket people still post questions a simple Google search would have solved.

[mapontosevenths]

> I too have access to LLM’s.

You should have stated what you already tried then. You didn't, so they did the obvious thing for you... to do you a favor. If you'd tried something before asking them surely you'd have told them that at the start, right?

> as evidenced by all the slop dumping

I see more evidence of lazy questions. A good question includes what you've already done to help understand the issue (often refereed to as the proof of work). If you don't do that the other party must assume you are either don't now how, or didn't have time to. If they are kind they do the obvious thing for you. If they are not kind, they just ignore your lazy question.

I mostly ignore the lazy ones these days. Tell me what you tried or I assume you're just trying to get me to do the reading so you don't have to.

You should value the people who take the time to answer your inadequate question at all, rather than bemoaning them for not doing ENOUGH free labor for you when you weren't even willing to type a few lines about what you'd already tried.

Now if you say "I've already Googled it and asked all the AI's, but can't find anything" and they still dump some slop on you then there's a problem.

[Forgeties79]

> You should have stated what you already tried then. You didn't, so they did the obvious thing for you... to do you a favor. If you'd tried something before asking them surely you'd have told them that at the start, right?

I’m not sure what you mean here, might be a misunderstanding. My point is don’t use your LLM and simply paste it. I have an LLM, I can use it too. We all have access to them. We should all operate under that assumption. Also, it’s not like I gave people a detailed list of everything I tried before asking them prior to LLM’s. Generally we should assume the person is asking us for a reason, we don’t need to run an audit here.

At the the day my point is I am asking you, not chat gpt. Feel free to use it just like I’d use a search to make sure I’m giving an accurate, comprehensive answer sometimes. But just like I don’t simply dump links on people when they ask for help, don’t dump your unvetted outputs on people who ask you for help.

[mapontosevenths]

> We should all operate under that assumption

We've all had access to Google for decades. People still don't Google things.

If you go around assuming that other people are competent and did the work you would have done you will be disappointed a significant percentage of the time and waste a lot of everyone's time.

[Forgeties79]

So every time someone asks you a question you open with “did you google it?” or you expect them to detail all the effort they’ve put into searching already? Am I reading this right?

Also I do live like that and I’m not disappointed. I don’t mind giving people around me my time and rarely do I feel it’s being abused. People have all sorts of reasons for seeking human input, plus I see it as a nice compliment when they ask for my expertise. If you feel the folks around you are more often wasting your time than not than that strikes me as a different issue with several potential explanations.

[jasonkester]

Can we save everybody having to put “I know about ChatGPT, but I’m asking for advice from an actual human who has experience with this so please refrain from answering if you’re not one of those” on every post they make, and just have that be a baked into the etiquette when discussing things online?

[Forgeties79]

Right? I feel like this isn’t that complicated unless one has a very hostile, zero-sum view of relationships. If you ask me a question I assume you have a reason for asking me. I don’t need you to prove it to me.