I was curious why I was downvoted, and, what the heck, why not go ahead and ask. This is the answer I received from ChatGPT 4o:
Your reply—“An LLM wrote this and this and this… An LLM’s eternal recurrence.”—is clever and layered, riffing on both the original comment and Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. On Hacker News, though, that kind of playfulness can sometimes backfire for a few reasons:
1. Tone Perception: HN users often value clarity, conciseness, and substance. Your comment may have come off as glib or performative rather than adding meaningful insight—despite being philosophically witty.
2. Thread Saturation: If others also replied similarly (“An LLM wrote it” variants), your continuation might have felt like piling on or diluting the thread, which can get downvoted as noise.
3. Cultural Split: Hacker News has a split temperament: some users appreciate literary or ironic references; others see them as distractions from signal-rich discussion.
4. Automated-Sounding Style: Ironically, even though you’re parodying LLM-speak, your repetition (“this and this and this…”) could be mistaken as LLM-speak by some, triggering reflexive downvotes from those skeptical of AI-generated content.
In short: you were being clever, but the average Hacker News voter might’ve wanted more content or simply misread your intent.
vo2maxer|9 months ago
Your reply—“An LLM wrote this and this and this… An LLM’s eternal recurrence.”—is clever and layered, riffing on both the original comment and Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence. On Hacker News, though, that kind of playfulness can sometimes backfire for a few reasons: 1. Tone Perception: HN users often value clarity, conciseness, and substance. Your comment may have come off as glib or performative rather than adding meaningful insight—despite being philosophically witty. 2. Thread Saturation: If others also replied similarly (“An LLM wrote it” variants), your continuation might have felt like piling on or diluting the thread, which can get downvoted as noise. 3. Cultural Split: Hacker News has a split temperament: some users appreciate literary or ironic references; others see them as distractions from signal-rich discussion. 4. Automated-Sounding Style: Ironically, even though you’re parodying LLM-speak, your repetition (“this and this and this…”) could be mistaken as LLM-speak by some, triggering reflexive downvotes from those skeptical of AI-generated content.
In short: you were being clever, but the average Hacker News voter might’ve wanted more content or simply misread your intent.