The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway

	The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway(theocharis.dev)
	307 points by JeremyTheo 56 days ago \| 304 comments
	tl;dr: The author acknowledges that most criticisms of LLMs—slop, environmental cost, OSS trust erosion, geopolitical risk, opinion homogenization—are valid, yet still uses LLMs heavily (spending ~$10k/month on tokens) because they amplify existing thinking rather than replace it. They share concrete workflows: a "grill-me" skill that forces the LLM to interrogate you until shared understanding, Basecamp-style 3-sentence problem statements, subagents that rip apart context until they hallucinate, and using hallucinated APIs as intuition tests. The key rule: only use LLMs in domains where you can distinguish good output from slop.
	HN Discussion: ↓Concern that heavy LLM use will atrophy cognitive/engineering skills over time ↓The $10k monthly spend is absurd, wasteful, or hypocritical given environmental concerns ↓LLMs are qualitatively different from past tools like calculators and shouldn't be compared ~Skepticism about the article's claimed workflow benefits, especially skimming output ↓Pushback on specific claims like geopolitical framing being one-sided projection