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This looks a lot like a ChatGPT-generated post with a bit of editing.
Please explain your thesis further. Because I'm inclined to propose a new mod rule that posting ChatGPT-written posts without clearly identifying them as such is grounds for a permaban.
Maybe that's the future of online discourse and resisting our robot overlords is impossible, but it's not what we want here.
ETA: Just realized, this is just you again.
Did you use ChatGPT or did you write it yourself?
You don't need to "make things sound polite to the demographics of the Motte." You are not a special interlocutor operating on a different level from the rest of us.
You need to use your own words and speak plainly
Banned for a week. Don't do this again.
So you banned them for a week because their post explaining how they wrote the op used language that sounded arrogant and impolite?
"You need to use your own words and speak plainly, and for doing so just now I'm banning you for a week."
I banned them for a week for trolling with the same bait three times in a row, this time using ChatGPT to do it. This is not good faith engagement.
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If you confess to a murder, you may end up in jail. This is not because we think that confessions are worthy of jail.
If they were banned for using gpt that's even worse - the don't use gpt rule didn't exist before this thread, and they copped a week for it? Are we back on reddit?
I'd object to any length, given you can't follow rules that don't exist, but it looks to me like they got more than a day because amadan felt insulted by monicen's evidently accurate reading of their position and what would be required of them to participate in the forum.
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Well ChatGPT needs to be trained better then, because the post it wrote is not being well received.
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From a stylistic view alone, it'd be a lot better to just use your own words. The robot-talk is like the visual equivalent of eating raisin bran.
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