Comment by ainch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ainch | Hacker News Reader

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> Imagine LLMs didn’t exist for a moment. Is this the part of the article you’d find most intriguing?

I would think it's odd! That's why I mentioned it. I like to pay attention to vis, I feel like I've seen many charts from Tufte-y perfection, to slapdash undergrad presentations, and to experienced consultants banging things together in Excel at 1am. This tic feels very LLM-y to me, which imo makes it interesting to think about - how does it arise? I also think this failure mode has been resistant to model upgrades in a way that mathematical reasoning has not, which I also find interesting as someone in ML research. It feels like this kind of mentalisation or theory of mind is a capability which isn't obviously elicited from the frontier labs' crop of RLVR tasks.

> Have you ever worked with people beyond graduate level? Ever seen scientific posters at a conference?

I've worked with a fair number of people beyond graduate level. In previous jobs I've run teams and hired people - hence my comment about graduates. We used to have an interview stage where candidates presented some simple data analysis, and it often centred on what they had done rather than what was most worth knowing. I have also attended scientific conferences, in fact I was at one a week ago! Is there a particular inference you would like me to make from those experiences?

I want to really understand this, your issue is that the non-standard grid spacing is called out on the axis? The grid spacing being 8 is unusual but clearly sensible here - your issue is just that this is written also on the axis label?

> Is there a particular inference you would like me to make from those experiences?

The incredible amount of unnecessary detail people put into their posters specifically (hence the better poster movement), desperate to show everything.

> I want to really understand this, your issue is that the non-standard grid spacing is called out on the axis? The grid spacing being 8 is unusual but clearly sensible here - your issue is just that this is written also on the axis label?

Pretty much yep - it struck me as odd and reminded me of an LLM tic I've been thinking about recently, so I thought I'd write a short comment.

> The incredible amount of unnecessary detail people put into their posters specifically (hence the better poster movement), desperate to show everything.

I hadn't heard of the better poster idea before, thanks for clueing me in. I largely agree that posters have a lot of unnecessary detail, but I think it's a different flavour to the LLM stuff - more like they're so excited to tell you everything in their paper. Whereas LLMs focus on odd details, or fail to explain things.

Can I ask, if you use LLMs often in your work, have you never run into this experience?

> I largely agree that posters have a lot of unnecessary detail, but I think it's a different flavour to the LLM stuff - more like they're so excited to tell you everything in their paper.

Having been through so many, I get what you mean but broadly disagree. They have not actually considered or understood the audience.

> Can I ask, if you use LLMs often in your work, have you never run into this experience?

I have, but I also have with people and to a greater extent. And this isn't some gotcha I'm throwing out it's so incredibly common and a well thought out piece really working with the audience is so rare that this is the standard for talks/posters/etc. Far beyond blog posts about an e reader I'm talking about people giving the most important presentations of their lives. And far from not appreciating the mental state of the audience they'll not even consider whether what is put on the screen can even be viewed by them! "You can't see this but..." is something I've heard too many times.

This isn't however a case of that, it's adding in a duplicate bit of information about something that is genuinely important. It's not an odd detail, it's absolutely central to the plot. It's the point of the plot that one shows a repeating 8 (specifically 8 not 7) pixel pattern and the other does not.

> Pretty much yep - it struck me as odd

It's repeating a point about a visualisation that is not obvious at first glance. Frankly given most people would scan through this (one of the other comments complaining in parallel didn't seem to even get why it was 8) calling it out in the viz itself I'm not certain is a bad idea.

This is a fun blog post about hardware issues, an ereader and power. And the top comment is about one axis label on a plot, not even whether it's correct just why it adds what is seen as a correct and relevant but repeated bit of information.

Do you really have a hard time imaging that someone would call out an obvious AI slop label as weird and poor quality? Like it's quite clear people do not like LLM generated content and feel betrayed when they didn't consent into consuming LLM generated content.

> Do you really have a hard time imaging that someone would call out an obvious AI slop label as weird and poor quality? L

No, because every time any text appears here most comments seem to be discussing how and why this particular word choice is the worst of all words and ignoring anything to do with the actual article. It's tiring.

Did you find the article interesting? Any useful additions about eink screens to add? Anything you could add to the unanswered questions? A related anecdote perhaps?

> ike it's quite clear people do not like LLM generated content and feel betrayed when they didn't consent into consuming LLM generated content.

It's a correct and valid label on a plot pointing out spacing that's non-standard but extremely relevant. That's it.

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