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The Delusion Machine – What happened when I fed my soul into an LLM

(hedgehogreview.com)
32 points rntn | 2 comments | 30 Aug 25 17:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.435s | source
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mpalmer ◴[30 Aug 25 18:35 UTC] No.45076965[source]▶
The author's point could be made far more succinctly and clearly than this. I found the writing indulgent, overcomplicated and unfocused.

Overwrought prose (so many lists of three or more things! Why?) that takes fully half of its word count to get to the point, which is that LLMs are appeasing and solicitous by default. Not sure what else I'm supposed to take away.

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nine_k ◴[30 Aug 25 18:40 UTC] No.45076986[source]▶
Look, this is an art piece, not an article about productivity. Frankly, the LLM here is but a plot device; the point is temptation, weakness, delusion, sin. It's the flourishes of the prose what I enjoyed most here, frankly.
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1. mpalmer ◴[30 Aug 25 18:49 UTC] No.45077046[source]▶
Every part of my critique applies regardless; I'm not sure what you think you're contradicting here.

At any rate, the writer is struggling with temptations and weaknesses, of the sort better handled by an editor than a priest.

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2. nine_k ◴[30 Aug 25 20:39 UTC] No.45077817[source]▶
For a therapeutic experience, I recommended you Baudolino by Umberto Eco, a book of hilarious historical fiction. The first couple of chapters use the device of imperfections of the narrator's language in an even more in-your-face manner.