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Comment by cafebeen | Hacker News Reader

One danger in acclimating to this style of communication style is that we may accidentally use it in your own communication with other people. If the other person hasn't grokked the dialect, it can make things quite confusing (to say the least). For example, there is common jargon used by people and there is chat-session-specific jargon created by LLM agents, and I've seen the latter popping up in various meetings, unbeknownst to the speaker. Some people call it out, but others may simply disconnect from the discussion.

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I mostly agree. Though sometimes the models come up with useful concepts that I'm happy to be introduced to, like the "shape" of a problem (probably like intelligence being "spiky", and Kiki & Boba). I still don't quite 'grok' what the 'seams' concept is yet though.

But I have noticed that while "loosely held" is a convenient shorthand for uncertainty, I don't like that one slipping in to my daily language. Except maybe to communicate with models, but even then, it feels weird to be speaking in neuralese.

It's all starting to feel like the movie Arrival.

I suspect you're right that those concepts are now more widespread because of LLMs, but they didn't originate with LLMs. The word "Grok" came from Heinlein in the 60s and using it as "to understand" goes back to at least the 80s. Talking about the "shape of a problem" goes back decades. Ditto for "loosely held", though it's not about uncertainty; it's about being open to ideas and/or evidence that may conflict with your strongest opinions and beliefs.

Now, I'll grant that those concepts weren't common outside of techy circles. Just clarifying that the LLMs are amplifying them, not synthesizing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok

https://wiki.c2.com/?ChadwickBoggs

Good point, and I probably shouldn't have put grok in quotes there, because I was using it in the Heinlein usage long before Musk hijacked it.

It's interesting then that LLMs are making these pre-existing ideas seem alien in the way they amplify them. I guess I must have known about "shape of a problem" and "loosely held" before Claude, but something about the way I'm using & absorbing those concepts from AI interaction feels weird & memetic. I'm saying that as someone who is pro-AI.

Definitely a good response. Thanks for replying!

For sure, I find many of the LLM-isms to be useful writing techniques and terms (although there's something uncanny-valley about the repetition and density of them).

But what I was more thinking about are truly unique jargon terms / phrases that get generated when deep in a problem. As an example of both of such a term and the phenomenon itself, Claude calls this "fluent compound coinage." They usually make sense in the original context, but get confusing when thrown around otherwise.

Allow me to offer a complementary point: I understand exactly what the poor "thing" means - and perhaps through some deformation or another I have done so since having had to read it - but something functional in the modus is still "off".-

... not to mention the fact that it stops making sense, beyond some point: If it takes us more cognitive load to understand the tools we use, meant to save us from intellectual work, what's the point?

I was in a meeting presenting a whitepaper. And I went - “And this is the load-bearing part of the paper.”

I think I need a break from Claude.

I may have to apologize, quite a bit, for what might only be a small part or perhaps an outsized influence if weighted highly (I can’t be sure, could have been mv dev/null’ed)… well, it’s this— my own style of not-kept-in-check by the need to be comprehensible (legible in Claude-speak) to others is, I’m afraid, to rather allow prose to sprawl and go everywhere and even sometimes nowhere at all until it just drifts off and sort of wakes itself up snoring in the weeds of an unintended topic.

Ruthless pruning is unneeded with an LLM and it can take me twice the time to say half as many words.

And, early in the ‘GPT era, I hadn’t unchecked the “allow your chats to be used in future training etc” box, and definitionally they are longer and denser than others’ prompts in such raw scrapings of training materials…

Sorry.

When reading text like, this, I quickly start glazing over and my thoughts become cloudy. Really unsettling feeling, like I _actually_ become dumber after reading it.

And for certain text that seems to make sense, I am unsure if the text is just junk, or I am unbearably daft. Either way,, nasty feeling.

> Ruthless pruning is unneeded with an LLM and it can take me twice the time to say half as many words.

Right, but LLMs use one word where they need ten; by your own admission you do the opposite. I don't think you owe anybody an apology.

You're absolutely right, it would be a load-bearing mistake to adopt LLM jargon as a human speaker.

You're right to pushback. This isn't just a grammatical problem -- its a conversational one, too.

This is the key seam that proves the investigation.

Two things to flag:

Honest take, you genuinely forgot to flag the flags ...

I'm going to be honest with you, I've hacked the pentagon and used their super computer to complete your todo list.

[And this folks is the true reason we are out of ammo in the middle east ...]

I’ve gone ahead and worked through the entire todo list and the police are currently en route to your residence.

Sitting with you in this.

honestly, it's really load bearing and boiling the ocean which we don't want. There is no edge!

To avoid speaking vibe'ish I start to speak in 3 words sentences. Like this typical dialogue

How are you? that's not/very good. I think too. ...

Even complexity works. everything is expressible! Just try it.

All is sayable? With three words? That seems unlikely. At least, annoying.

Just like the boy in wheelchair in "Malcolm in the middle" series used to talk :)

(Why down vote? People can't take sarcasm tags any more.. how the hell are they going to understand irony?)

want to space. go to there. me, preferably now. build big machine. several large problems. can't breathe there. very far away. must fly fast. no air there.

- fuel tanks heavy. far too heavy. we drop them. drop when empty. solves heavy problem.

- gas in air. we breathe "oxygen". take with us. good seals important. solves breath problem.

- very far away. need big machine. small weight added. machine much bigger. take less weight. else can't build.

- no air there. can't use propellor. can't use wings. must use rocket. engines get hot. cool with fuel. dangerous but effective. build complex pipes. solves cooling problem.

- must fly fast. air slows machine. it's called drag. speed increases drag. must reduce drag. make machine pointy. much less drag. solves speed problem.

now problems solved. you come with?

Thanks for offer. I stay garden. Tend to garden. Name the animals. Pranks on Eve. Disrespect all gods. Fight all gods. Kill all gods. Make little cupholders. But no cups. Just to spite. Some take issue. We discuss it. All becomes clear. All friends now. Sometimes look up. Wonder about you. Wish you well. If cold, come. We make tea.

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