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You replying to Simon Wright, creator and owner of whirlpool.net.au [0], which is a Australian version HN / Reddit. It was the major Australian discussion forum in its heyday. The odds of him doing paid spruiking for Grok, or anybody really, are pretty low.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlpool_(website)

I don't think he is paid but you can look through his comment history and find that his opinions of Grok and its affiliated entities are definitely slanted.
Or maybe your opinion of Grok and its affiliated entities is slanted, and mine is straight. Without an objective reference point from which to measure deviation, all you're measuring is the relative angle between our opinions.

It's also worth noting that, living in an unfavourable time zone relative to most HN activity, I'm rarely here to offer the opening opinions in a discussion. More often I'm arriving 12 hours into a conversation, where everything I'd want to say has already been said. I end up contributing only where I think a different perspective is missing. Naturally, that means my comment history will disproportionately reflect the rare instances where my opinions buck the prevailing HN orthodoxy.

If you disagree with a particular claim I've made, by all means challenge it on its merits. That could be the basis of a much more interesting conversation than this fatuous one.

I don't actually care that much for Grok the model because I think they are more or less homogenous with like, a small house spin on how "smart" they are and some other features like their behavior in a harness etc. Personally I have no problem believing that it might be good at doing what you ask directly instead of wandering or trying to be independent or whatever. I wouldn't call it out as paid marketing and I also just don't really think about this topic very much.

However, the comment I did reply to seemed to think that just because you ran a forum that you would be unlikely to be biased. This is like obviously false, if anything you have major internet brain where you spend enough time on the internet where you come up with a whole complex about how you are contributing the uncommon opinion the site needs to hear or whatever, when it's just the same dreck from the rest of the internet sprinkled in here when it hasn't been posted enough by someone else. That is not directly "I used Grok and thought it was good at x" but, like, it's clear that it's something that is at the periphery of a whole network of positions you hold that are aligned this way.

I don't necessarily think this is bad and in fact I think most people on the internet at least basically post in this way but I do think it's important to be aware of it at least. I'm not sure you are. I can tell you more or less where my slop opinions come from and I don't think it would be accurate in any capacity to describe them as bucking "the prevailing HN orthodoxy". I, uh, think you should probably describe your comments differently.

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> Or maybe your opinion of Grok and its affiliated entities is slanted, and mine is straight.

I mean, we all know what we are talking about here, so please go ahead and do make your case

Never change HN, never change