I get questions about academic papers I've written from non-academics sometimes. It's fun, I like that people are reading. However, some of them are clearly written by AI. I typically answer anyway, but on my most recent, I appended at the end:
> P.S. I intuit, and Pangram agrees, that this last email was AI-generated (and apparently so was the first one, now that I checked). As general career advice, I wish to observe that learning to write emails unaided is an extremely valuable skill in the dual senses that 1) writing is thinking [0] and 2) many people who receive an email they believe to be AI-generated will not be interested in corresponding, even if you're asking good questions, which you are. It would be a shame for that to get in the way of your research goals.
A polite, generic response like this is reasonably low-effort -- you must draft it once -- and might really help someone. Who knows though.
Natural selection is demonstrably not working. It only takes one look at a newspaper to see that thoughtlessness and stupidity are doing better than ever.
I think the internet is pretty great, but it's a major factor in that rise in at least 3 ways:
* Previously, an important check on fools was social consequences. Now they have an endless supply of people to bother. Spammers were the first to exploit that, but now it's endemic.
* Algorithmic weighting toward the reaction-generating (versus, say thoughtful, measured, responsible, accurate, helpful, kind) has rewarded idiocy and awfulness with attention and money. We're all now living in a reality TV show.
* As those behaviors become a major percentage of what people, especially young people, see, they become normalized. Otherwise people think being a thoughtless jackass is just how to get by in the world.
We are strongly in need of firm politeness, of militant decency. Without it, things will get "naturally" worse.
What I wrote was neither passive nor aggressive. My telling you now that I think your response was ill-considered is also not passive aggressive, though it's arguably aggressive.
I do not hate you :) I think you will probably have more positive interactions on the internet if you choose a different register to communicate in but I promise I do not actually care
Whats the worst that could happen if you read GP’s words in a positive bias? Best case you learn something, made a friend, amd trained yourself to look for useful feedback in the future. Worst case you improved your mood and moved on.
You’re in the prison of your own devise, the negative bias.
Directly telling someone that you have a problem with something they did and why you think it's a problem is not "passive aggressive" by any stretch of the definition.
> P.S. I intuit, and Pangram agrees, that this last email was AI-generated (and apparently so was the first one, now that I checked). As general career advice, I wish to observe that learning to write emails unaided is an extremely valuable skill in the dual senses that 1) writing is thinking [0] and 2) many people who receive an email they believe to be AI-generated will not be interested in corresponding, even if you're asking good questions, which you are. It would be a shame for that to get in the way of your research goals.
A polite, generic response like this is reasonably low-effort -- you must draft it once -- and might really help someone. Who knows though.
[0] hyperlinked to https://www.nature.com/articles/s44222-025-00323-4