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Notes -
Here is this post, but I asked chatGPT to simply make it longer.
In the future, it may be a good idea to filter all posts through an LLM so that they fulfill length requirements:
The recent passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein has indeed marked a significant moment in the political history of California, as it not only reflects upon the substantial tenure of a seasoned senator but also kickstarts the gears of electoral machinery to fill the now-vacant seat. This unfolding situation beckons a thorough examination amidst a myriad of discussions among political analysts, potential candidates, and the general electorate in California and beyond. Reflecting upon history provides a lens to understand the forthcoming political scenario. Unforeseen Senate vacancies have often led to midterm or special elections, the instances of Martha McSally's election in 2019 following John McCain's death, and Edward J. Markey's election in 2013 post John Kerry's resignation stand as testimonials to such historical precedence.
Delving into the legal framework, California law mandates the Governor to announce a special election within a fortnight of the vacancy, with the election to be held between 112 and 140 days post-announcement. This relatively brief yet crucial timeline sets the stage for an intense period of campaigning for potential successors and a whirlwind of information dissemination for the voters. The succinct period earmarked for campaigning necessitates potential candidates to hit the ground running, mobilizing support and articulating their policy stance to the electorate. This period also challenges the voters to sift through the information, analyze the policy propositions of the candidates, and make an informed decision on election day.
The political ambiance is already abuzz with speculation regarding potential candidates who might vie for the vacant seat. Names like California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, and Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti, have been floated around in political circles, albeit it's still early days. The political ideologies and past performances of these potential candidates could significantly shape the narrative of the election, and subsequently, the ideological leaning of the elected successor. The spectrum of political ideology that these candidates represent could potentially sway the policy trajectory that California embarks upon in the forthcoming years.
A predominant part of the discourse centers around whether Feinstein's successor will embody a more progressive or a traditionally liberal stance. Although sometimes used interchangeably, the terms 'progressive' and 'liberal' encapsulate different political ideologies. Progressives often advocate for more radical reforms, pushing the boundaries of traditional policy frameworks to address systemic issues, while liberals tend to favor a more moderate, incremental approach towards policy reform. The dichotomy between progressive and liberal ideologies is not just a semantic one, but reflects a deeper ideological chasm that could significantly impact policy formulation and implementation.
Several political analysts have delved into this discussion, reflecting upon the growing ideological divide within the Democratic party, both at a state and national level. This debate is not confined to California but mirrors a broader national dialogue concerning the trajectory of the Democratic party. The discourse encapsulates various facets of policy debates, from healthcare reform to climate change mitigation strategies, and reflects a broader ideological struggle within the party. Quoting a political analyst from The Washington Post, "The forthcoming election in California is a microcosm of the broader ideological struggle within the Democratic party, reflecting the tension between a growing progressive faction and a more established liberal base."
The impending election is not just about filling a vacant seat; it's potentially a narrative on a shift in California's political ideology. It's about the candidates, their campaigns, the voter turnout, and how these elements coalesce to pen the next chapter of California's political narrative. The narratives that emerge from campaigns, the debates that ensue, and the eventual electoral outcome will collectively narrate the next chapter of California's political saga. Set against the backdrop of a dynamically evolving American political landscape, this election is a testament to the continuous, unfolding story of democracy. The ripple effects of this election could potentially reverberate beyond the borders of California, impacting the national political narrative and the policy discourse within the Democratic party.
In conclusion, the election to fill Senator Dianne Feinstein's vacant seat is not just an electoral event, but a significant political occasion that could potentially mark a shift in California's political ideology and have broader implications on the national political landscape. The discourse surrounding this election, the candidates that emerge, and the eventual electoral outcome will be keenly observed, analyzed, and discussed in the days and months to come, embodying the dynamic nature of the American political system and the continuous evolution of political ideology and policy discourse.
It may also be a good idea to then use a similar LLM to summarize the post. Here is a good summary/higher information density version of the above:
The passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein prompts a special election in California, as per state law, to fill the vacant seat. Historically, such elections like Martha McSally's in 2019 and Edward J. Markey's in 2013 have followed Senate vacancies. Speculated candidates include California Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, and Los Angeles Mayor, Eric Garcetti. A key discussion surrounds whether a progressive or a traditionally liberal Democrat will succeed, reflecting a broader ideological divide within the Democratic party. The election outcome may signify a shift in California's political ideology, potentially impacting national political narratives and the Democratic party's policy trajectory.
And then a very good description. In my opinion this is the best example of what a high conceptual information density top post should look like, and while help facilitate the most useful discussion:
The passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein triggers a special election in California, with speculated candidates like Alex Padilla and Eric Garcetti. The election sparks discussions on whether a progressive or traditionally liberal Democrat will succeed, reflecting a broader ideological divide within the party, potentially impacting national political narratives.
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If anybody wants help decompressing their posts or repeating the same ideas a few times to fulfill length requirements, chatGPT is good, mistral was also just released and is supposedly really good too.
The thing that some users don’t understand is that the objective is neither to present the most banal, concise factual statements (these can be found everywhere) nor is it to “write” (or otherwise produce) paragraphs of needlessly flowery drivel. It’s to write in an interesting and entertaining way, like Scott, and to do so in a way that makes people want to read whatever else one has written.
This kind of trolling is embarrassing because you don’t seem to understand this. It’s not just about writing long posts, it’s about writing long posts that people want to read. Failing at the latter is as bad as failing at the former.
Thank you! Yes the spree of trolling on this issue in recent weeks has become quite ridiculous.
The argument just seems to be that if a comment or thought is more in depth or complex than a couple of paragraphs, it's pointless or low quality. I cannot even wrap my head around how you get to that position, especially with how complex the modern world is.
Lord, the ancients used to write entire treatises on one virtue, and people complain that we write five paragraphs about systems that effect billions of people and thousands of other complex systems. These objections truly boggle the mind.
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This Chinese baby to the bare links repository. There's a desire to promote the audience for feedback, and also to act as a link aggregator and current events forum. Having to compose a verbose missive in order to justify posting is thus expected and necessary.
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This is not trolling, or if it is, it's white hat trolling. It is revealing a critical flaw in the metrics the motte uses to gauge quality. Yes our stated preference is to generate interesting and entertaining conversations, but our revealed preferences say actually, it is just about writing long posts.
If firmamenti hadn't said anything about chatgpt or written this in reply to FNE, just posted it as a top level post, would it have been banned do you think? What if they'd just written it, no gpt involved? I am almost certain it would not. Because yes, what we want is interesting, entertaining and informative posts, but telling someone their post is boring and badly written is against the rules unless you put an absurd amount of effort into couching it in a way that has doesn't trigger negative emotions (and so it is usually immediately dismissed by the target).
If you don't like how someone writes, block them or minimise their post we are told, because you can't say "Hey you need to write less because you are bad at it." You say failing at writing long posts well is just as bad as writing a short post, but there is no mechanism for punishing the former, so that's what we get.
There is no flaw in the "metrics" and we do not have a revealed preference for length for the sake of length.
There are lots of long posts here on TheMotte that are bad. I simply downvote them and/or refuse to engage with them. I think the distribution of upvotes on the site is generally pretty fair, with better essayposts getting more upvotes and worse essayposts getting fewer. You don't get a cookie from me just because you wrote a long post.
I certainly would have thought that the post was bad (because it's boring and says nothing interesting) even if he hadn't mentioned ChatGPT. But for multiple reasons, it's neither feasible nor desirable to have an official rule against writing bad posts. We use length and effort as proxies for quality, but at the end of the day, you can't ban someone solely because you don't enjoy reading their posts.
I think that reposting ChatGPT output can and should be a banworthy offense, although I'm uncomfortable with simply banning someone for that without hard evidence or an admission of guilt. Even though I would have strongly suspected that firmamenti's post was ChatGPT regardless.
I certainly think that you should be able to say this on TheMotte. I think the mods would probably be ok with it as long as you backed up your criticism with an analysis of multiple concrete examples taken from the person's writing.
Along with what @Jiro said, just look at this thread. As you say, firmamenti's mistake was admitting he used chatgpt - if he hadn't he couldn't have been banned. That's setting up some rather perverse incentives. In another chain of this thread cjet explains:
Is that clear? Start the discussion, put some level of thinking and effort into your post. But if that thinking and effort amounts to "just past the line on acceptable" - which is to say if it amounts to acceptable, but is too short, or you have ever asked for the BLR back, then you are playing stupid games and should expect stupid prizes. So literally the only metric used is length.
False. He could have been. Would he? I would have suspected he was using ChatGPT. But we do tend to give (according to some people) too much benefit of the doubt, so if we think someone is using ChatGPT but we're not sure, they will probably get away with it, at least for a while.
"Getting away with breaking the rules is easier if you don't openly state you're breaking the rules" is true, but also pretty obvious.
False. We do not track and punish people who have ever asked for the BLR back.
False.
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What is the perverse incentive?
If firmamenti's post had simply appeared as a top level post with no further context, I would have stopped reading after the first paragraph and not replied to it. Because it's a boring post. I probably also would have reported it for being likely GPT-generated. If I was a mod myself, I'd be skittish about pulling the trigger on the banhammer without concrete proof (even though this case is pretty blatant), but for repeat offenders who weren't making valuable contributions, I'd be more likely to exercise the elastic clause in the rules and just ban.
So again, what's the incentive here? The incentive of being able to lower the quality of the forum and drive people away by making low-quality posts that aren't technically banworthy? You've always been able to do that on any website. That's not unique to TheMotte.
It's no different from saying that you're going to make a lot of obnoxious bad faith arguments, but with a polite tone, and see how long it takes to piss everyone off. Yeah, you could do that. But I would hope that no one wants to.
You can't literally moderate for quality. But we can filter out posts like FarNearEverywhere's OP. So as far as I'm concerned, the rules are working as intended.
I think you are being very optimistic. Especially when we are talking about nerds, and double especially when we are talking about contrarian nerds who talk about verboten topics, my expectation is that any available vulnerability will be exploited, the only question is when. We have indeed seen the "unfailingly polite but obviously bad faith" method used, and it won't be long before we see this method too - assuming we don't count firmamenti's post here, or various posts by others from the prior month that I can't prove but strongly suspect were gpted.
The thing is, my biggest issue with it is that while there will be trolls, I am more worried about our hammers finding a new class of nail - I don't think the mods will be nearly skittish enough. They are invariably going to make someone feel like absolute shit by calling their earnest early forays into writing 'like a motter' "obviously chatgpt". It's the worst of both worlds - gpters will just deny using it, and some innocent people are going to be confidently smeared as bots.
Also you absolutely can moderate for quality, of course you can, that's how media criticism started. We just haven't figured out how to do it while keeping in line with the other rules like niceness. Yet. I think we could if we tried.
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On, so far as I can tell, the grounds that it was too short. I didn't include links, I was not going "can you believe what they did?" and it was not "boo, outgroup". That leaves me with "Had I padded it out with a few paragraphs of fluff, I could have asked the same questions and gotten a pass". If I'm wrong, correct me.
You're not wrong. I still stand by the mods. Hell if you even added like, four sentences it probably would've been fine. Maybe 5-6 on the safe side. I see that as quite reasonable for a top level comment.
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A revealed preference is what shows up in your actions. If your actions are to treat long posts as a proxy for quality, then you do in fact have a revealed preference for length.
If length were the real preference, I could post this as a top level:
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Do you see that happening? No? Well then length is not the preference.
The revealed preference of the moderators is to give additional consideration to long posts. That doesn't mean that a particular long post can't be unacceptable anyway; it's a bias, not a guarantee.
Sure it's a bias, and yeah long posts can be bad. They are far less likely to be bad than short, low effort posts though.
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Length is a requirement, not the requirement. A good top-level post has both volume AND is interesting, I'm unsure why that's so strange.
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Thanks for the advice, I'll keep it in mind! Next time I want to know "so what is this vanilla versus chocolate ice cream debate, anyway?" I'll make sure to couch it in the history of ice cream, the founding of American ice cream shops, and the global diversity of flavours for ten paragraphs before putting the query 😀
Or you could just put it in the Friday Fun Thread and not be a jerk.
I think, and this is not being a jerk (thanks Ammie), that it would be helpful to have some definition of what should go where. No more bare links (but I didn't include a link). So - suitable question for the Sunday post? Okay, but it does seem to have triggered some culture warring (not my intention) so bounce it back to here?
Friday fun thread - only fun, jokey, non-serious stuff? Gotcha.
Wellness Wednesday - health and related matters? Gotcha.
Now we get to "what is long enough not to be modded as bad faith/low-effort, but not too long to be modded as ChatGPT bait/unserious trolling?" and believe you me, Ammie Lambie, I'd certainly appreciate a model answer on that one.
I was responding straight-faced to your hypothetical "vanilla vs. chocolate" thread, but the real answer to the real question you are actually asking is to say to you the same thing I tell everyone else who claims that all you have to do to make a low effort post acceptable is to add more words: bullshit, and everyone who snidely declares "I'll just run my posts through ChatGPT to sanitize it and add more words" is basically saying they don't intend to post in good faith and don't think people here deserve to be treated like actual human beings they are interacting with. And they will be treated accordingly.
fwiw, I probably wouldn't have banned you for your post about Feinstein, but it was sort of low effort and more of a Bare Link Repository post, and an example of why we haven't brought back the BLR - "Hey, breaking news, what do you all think????" is something you can find on every other forum on the Internet. You want to avoid getting dinged for low effort? Contribute your valuable and insightful thoughts, say something interesting about the breaking news, ask a question beyond the same dumb questions every talking head on every news channel will ask - don't just try to rush to be the first person posting about it.
However, "Ammie Lambie" is obnoxious and I'd mod you if you did that to someone else (and I have in the past), so knock it off.
You call me a jerk, I'll call you by an affectionate diminutive - why are pet names obnoxious?
"Don't be a jerk" (by doing the thing you threatened to do) is not the same as calling you a jerk.
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We've said not to use AI to write up posts. This is also very obnoxious. 5 day ban.
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This is a perfect example of how to fill a fucking A4 small type and say nothing.
LLMs are great at this, and so are some people, and I hate it because it's all spam. The information content is minimal, it is a pure time sink.
Yeah this is fucking torture, but firmamenti is correct, this would have been tolerated.
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