I tried writing a short novel using Claude Opus 4.6, I gave it outline and raw draft, and the style is very similar to this writing.<p>I tried to steer it away from this kind of writing because it feels weird. But it always try to output something similar to this. Or maybe I am just not used to reading novel.<p>So I was curious, what kind of training data was Claude trained on, that its very hard to steer it out from this style.<p>So I opened my kindle and looking through the recommended popular novels. Just reading through its free samples.<p>And the similarities are striking. Now, I dont know whether the recommended novel is the training data, or its actually written by LLM. Or maybe its just how novelist writes.<p>I even tried writing full chapter from scratch. And asked Claude to ghost write the second chapter for me using my writing style. It still wont follow my style and keeps writing in this kind of style from the article.<p>Not accusing the article of using an LLM to ghost write. Even so its fine to use LLM to ghost write. Its just one anecdote from my side, on how LLM fails to follow my writing style and keeps coming back to its training data.
> And the similarities are striking. Now, I dont know whether the recommended novel is the training data, or its actually written by LLM. Or maybe its just how novelist writes.<p>For traditionally published works, it's trivial to exclude LLM-written content, just look for anything published before Nov 30, 2022.
Which is also a good filter for web searches to exclude a lot of garbage results (if the specific search makes sense for non-recent results)
Why stop with traditionally published works? Before dead-internet-day, very-nearly all forms of writing were guaranteed to be hand crafted, organic, and made with 100% Natural Intelligence.<p>The artificial stuff often has an odd taste, but boy it sure is quick and convenient.
You joke, but I bet every person in this forum, when presented the choice between a bot-filled forum and a guaranteed human-only* forum, they'd go with the latter.<p>* this is a hypothetical scenario. I don't know any guaranteed human-only digital forums.
I converse enough with LLMs for research at this point where I feel I have a good enough structure to hop on/off them to primary sources and stuff, so I don't get annoyed with them too easily.<p>Whereas I haven't seriously reflected on my social media consumption habits for over 15 years, and over the years I'm getting more and more annoyed at social media.<p>Not to be a bit misanthropic, but there's something seriously wrong with my social media usage, especially when I know there's a real human on the other side, combined with the trend I've been seeing over the years.
I agree with you, but as to your addendum:<p>Niche hobbyist forums are still safe, for now. There's just not enough commercial interest in petroleum lantern restoration to make it worth anyone's time to poison this particular well.<p>Even some larger niche hobbies like the saltwater aquarium community seemspretty safe for now (though it also helps that many forums have members who visit each other to trade corals and admire each others tanks).
Is the ChatGPT launch the "low background steel" date for writing?<p>What's are the dates for images and video? Nano Banana Pro and Seedance 2.0?<p>And code? Opus 4.6?
4-5 words sentences ted talk style, yes. I hated it even when humans were doing it. It's like motivational speakers trying their hand at writing novels
I actually loved this, and felt moved. While reading, my mind fired rapidly through dozens of personal memes (i.e. my regularly trod thought-paths) that I keep in my knowledge-base. This is the 30mb text corpus where I log all my work and peer conversations and thoughts, and (amongst other things) where I think through what I would consider my spiritual practices... my sensemaking around complex systems, including Daoist teachings. This text basically entangled itself with the work I am doing at the outer edges of my own knowing, where I am working on my rawest and most fragile but precious thoughts.<p>I don't think this is trite, I think there is something in this that is in contact with "living structure" (in the Christopher Alexander sense[1]), and much exists outside the edges of the text.<p>To those who dislike this, I am genuinely curious: Would you say you dislike metaphor? Do you tend to feel disconnected and lacking resonance with poetic writing?<p>[1]: <a href="https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-process" rel="nofollow">https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-moment-in-a-proce...</a><p>EDIT: I experience this writing as giving me many quiet A's, or perhaps a smell of A's in a given direction of thought. I interpret others here as getting either B's or U's, in the sense of this A/B/U system: <a href="https://openresearchinstitute.org/onboarding/A_B_U.html" rel="nofollow">https://openresearchinstitute.org/onboarding/A_B_U.html</a>
Why is it hacking the back button in my mobile safari browser? And why the title is different from the page?
Most amazing art isn't really a product of inspiration, but from severe editing (or severe practice, if it's live).<p>Good writing needs a <i>lot</i> of "post-production" to get the ideas hammered out. Most of it is removing content that isn't central to what the writer wants.<p>This LLM trend is part of a larger historical pattern that shifts editing away from us having to think things in our brain:<p><pre><code> A. At one time, the editing was mental load, since writing was tedious.
B. The typewriter made writing easy, but modifying it required lots of handwritten scrawling, but the mental load was still within reviewing and rewriting the content.
C. By the end of the 20th century, editing and rewriting was a total breeze, but the mental load was still within handwritten note-taking.
D. Once we made a bazillion forms of productivity and note-taking software, the mental load was only in thinking the thought and getting it into a computer. Everything after that was massaging the idea.
E. Now, the regurgitation machine can get you 3/4 of the way to the finish line of your draft without even trying.
</code></pre>
But, I'm convinced we lost something on each of these transitions. There is more power in one well-placed sentence assembled over tremendous meditation than 85 paragraphs of slop.<p>Paul Graham's essay on good writing (<a href="https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html" rel="nofollow">https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html</a>) defines "right" written ideas as "developing them well — drawing the conclusions that matter most, and exploring each one to the right level of detail".<p>My opinion is that the absurd complexities of the Over-Information Age make the "right" level of detail the following:<p><pre><code> 1. Executive summary that children and dumb people can understand.
2. Tightly-defined specifications for everyone who cares or needs to know.
3. Footnotes and background information that you can throw everything and the kitchen sink onto. This includes attempts to persuade, artful descriptions, feelings you had, associations to other things, and that general elegant "waxing on" that everyone gets the fancy for doing sometimes.
</code></pre>
And, in this attitude, LLMs are only good for #3.
LLM or not, this is just terrible kitsch.