Never ask of another something you are unwilling to do yourself.
If you couldn’t be bothered to read, understand, and check something, then it is entirely unreasonable for you to expect someone else to bother to read, understand, and check it for you.
In the past, you used to have to actually write what you were communicating. But we have entered a brave new world where you no longer have to. I would argue that many of you think that this has made communicating much easier. I would posit that not only are you wrong but that it has made communication much harder in ways you probably haven’t considered.
It’s now possible to communicate something that you have never given any real thought to. We now have a button that prints plausible text about anything. It can make a plausible statement about a customer’s problem. It can make a plausible statement around a core nugget, that you did consider, by adding a bunch of words and ideas that you didn’t. It can say things that are true. It can say things that are untrue. This button’s job is to generate text that is plausible. Something truth-shaped. Not necessarily something actually, really, honestly, true.
If communication is our oxygen, then it is up to each of us to avoid polluting it.
So here’s the thing: the button is not the one communicating to others. You are. And it’s your moral responsibility to communicate well. If what you put out is wrong, wastes people’s time, or makes you look foolish, that’s not the buttons fault. You should make sure that what you communicate is correct to the best of your ability. You should make sure that what you communicate is to the point and respectful of other people’s time. As respectful of their time as you would like them to be of yours.
“Looks good to me” is not good enough.
The button produces plausible sounding text – that’s its job. Everything looks plausible but plausible is not good enough. We should not be communicating plausibilities to each other as truths. That takes the onus of being correct off of the communicator and applies it to the ones being communicated to.
If reading, understanding, double-checking, and correcting takes you some amount of time, then you pay that cost one time. If reading, understanding, double-checking, and correcting takes everyone else that same or more amount of time, then that same cost (or more) is paid dozens or hundreds of times by everyone who comes along and reads what you communicated.
Remember: everybody else is not surrounded by the context that you have when they read what you’ve communicated. That’s the entire point of what you’re communicating. That’s also why it takes a reader much, much longer to determine the correctness of the content of your communication than it would take you to do it yourself.
The boy who cried wolf.
If the button you press cries wolf, not as a joke but as a plausible but incorrect conclusion, and you are the one who runs and tells the towns folk, then who really cried wolf? Eventually the townsfolk will stop giving weight to the things you tell them. It will not matter to the townsfolk that the button was the one who told you to cry wolf – you were the one who communicated the message.
You should remember that you tie your credibility to your communications. Do you want to take the risk of tying your reputation to something that you have not read, understood, proofed, or corrected? If you do – then I can’t stop you. This is a blog post, not the law of the land. But if not – then doing this work is part of your job now. When you use a button to generate text then this is how you protect your reputation from any failings contained therein.
Forgiveness is paid for with respect.
Whether we are using a button to generate text, or hand crafting homegrown, farm to table, organic, artisanal words with love… We all make mistakes from time to time. Everybody gets things wrong, or doesn’t notice some important detail, or doesn’t have all of the information, or just didn’t quite look far enough into something before drawing a conclusion. When that happens, what we need from each other is some patience, some help, and some forgiveness.
The well of somebody’s patience is not infinitely deep. It’s pretty easy to run out of patience with someone if that well is being drawn from but never filled. What separates drawing from the well and filling the well can be something as simple as respect. If you can show your readers that you are making an honest effort, are trying hard, considering them as people, and are respecting their time then you are filling the well. If you do the opposite then you are drawing from that well.
If you keep drawing from, and never refilling it, then the well will inevitably run dry.
“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
Now that you have a button that will generate an unfathomable volume of text at a tremendous rate it costs you nothing to generate more… and more… and more… and more… It seems magical. Without thinking too hard about it, it seems like the right thing to do. “More detail will help those that I am communicating to” seems right.
However, your readers have no such reduction in the cost of reading comparable to that which you have when generating it.
Once again, we have a hidden time savings that saves you once at the cost of everybody else. More is not always better. Sometimes more is just more. And if it runs afoul of some of the previous problems then more can actually be much, much worse.
Your button is a force multiplier. It can multiply 2 to 10, or -2 to -10. It works both ways and the responsibility is yours to make sure it’s working the correct way.
If I want to chat with an AI about this, I can do that myself.
The truth of the matter is that if I wanted to know what Claude, Codex, or some other AI computes as plausible about something I can just do that.
You have your own unique and distinct points of view, voice, context, tendencies, idiosyncrasies, and ways of speaking. Are you bringing those things only to the button? Or are you bringing them to the people you’re communicating with?
We all have access to these same tools. When we read your communication we want, need, to be hearing from you. We want your work, your effort, your understanding. That’s why you’re here! Why we need you, specifically! If all you do is communicate what the button tells you, then you’re removing the very thing that you bring to the party.
If you expect us to engage with what you’re communicating seriously, considerately, and respectfully, then not showing us those same considerations in kind is entirely immoral.
The button should be a tool you use to be better, not faster, not louder.
This button can be of great value. It can allow you to access ancillary and tangential domains to your areas of expertise in a much fuller and deeper way. Not only that, but much faster than you would have been able to do on your own. You should be able to reach farther and deeper than you could have before. It cannot, and should not, be replacing the “you” in all of that. It certainly should not be replacing the “you” for “us” when we read what you have to write.
At the end of the day, you provide the incentives… and people always follow the incentives.
Just like the townsfolk of the boy who cried wolf: if you train us to stop believing in the things you communicate, we will. You should ask yourself: “Is that, really, what I want?” Because if you use these tools to make communicating with you too difficult, or frustrating, or tedious, or unrewarding, we will stop listening. It’s not even a choice as much as it is a simple matter of human nature.