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My son is currently learning Romanian and I was trying to help him with verbs. I don’t know Romanian but recalled when learning a foreign language for the first

by davidgh 27d ago

My son is currently learning Romanian and I was trying to help him with verbs. I don’t know Romanian but recalled when learning a foreign language for the first time it really helped me to break down how a verb form or tense worked in English, then learn the equivalent in the new language. So I wanted to make some charts and pages that he could use as learning resources. I used Claude to help. I don’t know how to quite describe it, but because the text was polished and well constructed my brain was giving me the the signal “if you aren’t getting this it’s because you’re not focusing” so I’d read it again and then again and it still was not landing. It sorta felt like when you read something technical or heavy when very tired - you are reading but not processing. Only after wrestling with this for a few days did I realize that it wasn’t me. As I started going through, sentence by sentence, forcing it to re-write things to be more clear the concepts became easy to understand. I wish there was a name for this situation. It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. The more complex the topic, the more I sense this.

bobson381 27d ago
Feels like the way a video game will render the outside of a wall or solid surface, but you can run into it and warp partly through and there's nothing internal to it at all.
- 2gay 26d ago
  Like backface culling--as soon as you walk to see it from a different angle, the depth vanishes.
mattbruv 27d ago
> I wish there was a name for this situation. It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. Bullshit?
- davidgh 27d ago
  I understand the sentiment, but not quite what I’m thinking. It’s not that the AI is necessarily wrong, it’s more like, it replaces clarity with rich but unhelpful text. Maybe like candy. Full of flavor, texture and color but lacking the nutrients.
  - cryzinger 27d ago
    The way I like to describe it is that it feels slippery, like it's been polished down to oblivion and my eyes slide right off of it. There's no place to find a mental foothold, and if you zoom in there aren't any details. But I also like your candy analogy because I think it's spot-on for how LLM text superficially looks informational/nutritious, even though it's actually just junk.
  - tsss 26d ago
    In German we call this "Hegelei". Using a lot of fancy words and complex sentences to obscure how little content they have.
- datsci_est_2015 27d ago
  No no no. Harry Frankfurt wrote at length the difference between liars (who care about the truth, and twist it) and bullshitters (who don’t care about the truth, but just the way they’re received). This is some third category of untruth. Almost more sinister than the other two altogether.
  - pitched 27d ago
    I think, they don’t care about truth at all, just whether the reviewer rates it highly. Otherwise, it would be deleted after that round of training. It values test-taking ability over critical thinking. My two favourite words for this are “conditioned” and “catechized” where the latter is a bit more on the nose but way more obscure.
  - kaffekaka 27d ago
    "A third category of untruth" is a great expression, thank you.
  - skolskoly 27d ago
    A lot of it is hedging and using lots words to avoid saying something that isn't true. That way, it looks a lot like text that contains meaningful information, even though it doesn't. The speaker can pass the scrutiny of an informed audience, because they are able to substitute their knowledge into the words, as if by pareidolia. It's the sort of 'diplomatic' language you see from politicians, lawyers, students writing essays, and any other moderately intelligent person who is put in a position where they will face consequences for not answering. Behind all the fluff, there is a very loud voice yelling "I DON'T KNOW."
pitched 27d ago
> I wish there was a name for this situation. It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. The best I’ve heard of this is peeling the onion. The first pass is always very high-level and you have to make it go deeper. That can be done manually with follow-on prompts but I like using subagents, each with a different angle on the problem.
el_benhameen 27d ago
This is a really good description of the problem. I’ve been trying to use Claude to get familiar with the mechanics of a new codebase, and there have been so many moments where I’ve stopped after reading the same paragraph five times in a row and thought “Am I tired? Or stupid? Or is this codebase just wildly more complex than anything I’ve seen before?” before realizing that it’s just taken English and smushed it around like a ball of clay into some abstract sculpture that kind of evokes something from real life. I think part of it might be an innate feature of LLMs, but Claude seems extra prone to it lately. I ran the same query about the same codebase with Codex, and it gave me an answer that was about 1/4 the length and made me realize that it really wasn’t all that complex. If nothing else, it’s good training for my own writing. I’ve been working on making myself be more straightforward and concise, and Claude’s writing is a good example of how cleaner prose is a functional choice, not just a stylistic one.
- mannanj 27d ago
  Ironically, I've been already active on codex after trying it for the past 1.5 months, from Claude, and I find it to be similarly complex and confusing. I think they all have the similar styles and tells. If I were to go to Claude, and use it now it would probably be clear for a little before reverting. And I don't know why it feels to me like the language "drop off" happens after some time with the system. It makes me wonder if my account are getting silently degraded or sent to lower intelligence/lower priority queues after being a member for a while.
- Nathanba 26d ago
  It's a Claude problem, chatgpt is about x10 better and it's quite rare that I'm getting such foggy vague texts that I have to reread to understand. Chatgpt used to have the same problem in the early days but even then it was less pronounced than how it is in Claude today. Fable is a bit better but not as good as Chatgpt.
  - theshrike79 25d ago
    It swapped at the Opus/Fable 5 and Sol developments. Opus 5 uses such convoluted language that it takes me multiple seconds to parse it. I specifically have to instruct it to use some kind of sane language (Caveman the AE STD English hack or something) to make it understandable. Before that it used to be GPT that used 500 words when 5 would do. The ChatGPT version still does, but Codex is a lot better now.
andrewflnr 27d ago
> It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. Slop. The word is slop. Has been for years now. I mean, is this not exactly what we've all been talking about the whole time?
- davidgh 27d ago
  I mean, yes - but somehow this feels like a different category. At least to me. I view slop as the classic garbage like: [Thing] isn’t just [X]—it’s [more dramatic Y]. And [short validating statement]. I can see and smell this type of slop from a mile away. What I’m referring to is in the same family as slop but somehow different - it fools my brain by putting on the presentation of credibility and thus it is even worse. I can skip right over classic slop without much effort. This kind of text tricks me into laboring over it before I realize it’s hollow. So in that way, it’s worse than slop.
  - fyredge 26d ago
    Technically, it's still slop. The first example is just slop that you recognise as slop. For reference, see gell-mann amnesia.
  - andrewflnr 26d ago
    At least in my mind, lack of substance was always the defining feature of slop. Stuff like "it's not just x, it's y" would be reasonable (if grating) tics from a human writer. Whereas humans are also capable of clever-sounding but substance-free writing, and it still sucks. AI just produced enough slop that we were forced to give it a name.
  - Valakas_ 23d ago
    I know what you mean. The sentence appears to makes sense, it is correct grammatically, but lacks substance. It's the equivalent of AI image generated stuff where at first glance the image looks fine, but it hurts your brain. Then the more you look the more you see nothing makes sense in it, and it just gives the appearance that it does. It's definitely worse that slop, because it really hurts your brain. You read it over and over, and feel like you're supposed to understand the sentence, it's coherent, eloquent even, but by the end of it, you don't know what the f it was about.
djeastm 27d ago
> but is missing critical components. The human spirit. When you read a real person's thoughts you can often intuit the thought processes that led them to write it which aids understanding. Or at least have a general idea of "where they're coming from". But an AI is missing that. It just knows everything, without a "thought process". Instead of a flawed 3d person, we get a nice 2d picture instead.
illwrks 26d ago
Uncanny valley.
tsss 26d ago
Seems to me that Anthropic has done too much training on Hegel and Adorno books.
watwut 26d ago
> I wish there was a name for this situation Bad writing. The name is simply: bad writing.

by davidgh 27d ago

bobson381 27d ago

Feels like the way a video game will render the outside of a wall or solid surface, but you can run into it and warp partly through and there's nothing internal to it at all.

2gay 26d ago
Like backface culling--as soon as you walk to see it from a different angle, the depth vanishes.

mattbruv 27d ago

> I wish there was a name for this situation. It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. Bullshit?

davidgh 27d ago
I understand the sentiment, but not quite what I’m thinking. It’s not that the AI is necessarily wrong, it’s more like, it replaces clarity with rich but unhelpful text. Maybe like candy. Full of flavor, texture and color but lacking the nutrients.
- cryzinger 27d ago
  The way I like to describe it is that it feels slippery, like it's been polished down to oblivion and my eyes slide right off of it. There's no place to find a mental foothold, and if you zoom in there aren't any details. But I also like your candy analogy because I think it's spot-on for how LLM text superficially looks informational/nutritious, even though it's actually just junk.
- tsss 26d ago
  In German we call this "Hegelei". Using a lot of fancy words and complex sentences to obscure how little content they have.
datsci_est_2015 27d ago
No no no. Harry Frankfurt wrote at length the difference between liars (who care about the truth, and twist it) and bullshitters (who don’t care about the truth, but just the way they’re received). This is some third category of untruth. Almost more sinister than the other two altogether.
- pitched 27d ago
  I think, they don’t care about truth at all, just whether the reviewer rates it highly. Otherwise, it would be deleted after that round of training. It values test-taking ability over critical thinking. My two favourite words for this are “conditioned” and “catechized” where the latter is a bit more on the nose but way more obscure.
- kaffekaka 27d ago
  "A third category of untruth" is a great expression, thank you.
- skolskoly 27d ago
  A lot of it is hedging and using lots words to avoid saying something that isn't true. That way, it looks a lot like text that contains meaningful information, even though it doesn't. The speaker can pass the scrutiny of an informed audience, because they are able to substitute their knowledge into the words, as if by pareidolia. It's the sort of 'diplomatic' language you see from politicians, lawyers, students writing essays, and any other moderately intelligent person who is put in a position where they will face consequences for not answering. Behind all the fluff, there is a very loud voice yelling "I DON'T KNOW."

pitched 27d ago

> I wish there was a name for this situation. It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. The best I’ve heard of this is peeling the onion. The first pass is always very high-level and you have to make it go deeper. That can be done manually with follow-on prompts but I like using subagents, each with a different angle on the problem.

el_benhameen 27d ago

This is a really good description of the problem. I’ve been trying to use Claude to get familiar with the mechanics of a new codebase, and there have been so many moments where I’ve stopped after reading the same paragraph five times in a row and thought “Am I tired? Or stupid? Or is this codebase just wildly more complex than anything I’ve seen before?” before realizing that it’s just taken English and smushed it around like a ball of clay into some abstract sculpture that kind of evokes something from real life. I think part of it might be an innate feature of LLMs, but Claude seems extra prone to it lately. I ran the same query about the same codebase with Codex, and it gave me an answer that was about 1/4 the length and made me realize that it really wasn’t all that complex. If nothing else, it’s good training for my own writing. I’ve been working on making myself be more straightforward and concise, and Claude’s writing is a good example of how cleaner prose is a functional choice, not just a stylistic one.

mannanj 27d ago
Ironically, I've been already active on codex after trying it for the past 1.5 months, from Claude, and I find it to be similarly complex and confusing. I think they all have the similar styles and tells. If I were to go to Claude, and use it now it would probably be clear for a little before reverting. And I don't know why it feels to me like the language "drop off" happens after some time with the system. It makes me wonder if my account are getting silently degraded or sent to lower intelligence/lower priority queues after being a member for a while.
Nathanba 26d ago
It's a Claude problem, chatgpt is about x10 better and it's quite rare that I'm getting such foggy vague texts that I have to reread to understand. Chatgpt used to have the same problem in the early days but even then it was less pronounced than how it is in Claude today. Fable is a bit better but not as good as Chatgpt.
- theshrike79 25d ago
  It swapped at the Opus/Fable 5 and Sol developments. Opus 5 uses such convoluted language that it takes me multiple seconds to parse it. I specifically have to instruct it to use some kind of sane language (Caveman the AE STD English hack or something) to make it understandable. Before that it used to be GPT that used 500 words when 5 would do. The ChatGPT version still does, but Codex is a lot better now.

andrewflnr 27d ago

> It’s almost like a pseudo-language where it has the correct form and presentation but is missing critical components. Slop. The word is slop. Has been for years now. I mean, is this not exactly what we've all been talking about the whole time?

davidgh 27d ago
I mean, yes - but somehow this feels like a different category. At least to me. I view slop as the classic garbage like: [Thing] isn’t just [X]—it’s [more dramatic Y]. And [short validating statement]. I can see and smell this type of slop from a mile away. What I’m referring to is in the same family as slop but somehow different - it fools my brain by putting on the presentation of credibility and thus it is even worse. I can skip right over classic slop without much effort. This kind of text tricks me into laboring over it before I realize it’s hollow. So in that way, it’s worse than slop.
- fyredge 26d ago
  Technically, it's still slop. The first example is just slop that you recognise as slop. For reference, see gell-mann amnesia.
- andrewflnr 26d ago
  At least in my mind, lack of substance was always the defining feature of slop. Stuff like "it's not just x, it's y" would be reasonable (if grating) tics from a human writer. Whereas humans are also capable of clever-sounding but substance-free writing, and it still sucks. AI just produced enough slop that we were forced to give it a name.
- Valakas_ 23d ago
  I know what you mean. The sentence appears to makes sense, it is correct grammatically, but lacks substance. It's the equivalent of AI image generated stuff where at first glance the image looks fine, but it hurts your brain. Then the more you look the more you see nothing makes sense in it, and it just gives the appearance that it does. It's definitely worse that slop, because it really hurts your brain. You read it over and over, and feel like you're supposed to understand the sentence, it's coherent, eloquent even, but by the end of it, you don't know what the f it was about.

djeastm 27d ago

> but is missing critical components. The human spirit. When you read a real person's thoughts you can often intuit the thought processes that led them to write it which aids understanding. Or at least have a general idea of "where they're coming from". But an AI is missing that. It just knows everything, without a "thought process". Instead of a flawed 3d person, we get a nice 2d picture instead.

illwrks 26d ago

Uncanny valley.

tsss 26d ago

Seems to me that Anthropic has done too much training on Hegel and Adorno books.

watwut 26d ago

> I wish there was a name for this situation Bad writing. The name is simply: bad writing.