alt.hn

6/26/2026 at 3:35:23 PM

The Exhaustion of Talking to a Tool

 https://ohadravid.github.io/posts/2026-06-tool-talking/

by BrunoBernardino

6/26/2026 at 4:07:12 PM

I feel the opposite. Interacting with humans, I definitely pay a social tax - I have to negotiate the feelings of the people involved. With LLMs there is no social tax, I can be as blunt as I like. But there are other taxes to pay with LLMs; they don't learn, they BS relentlessly, there is less fun and camaraderie.

But "social tax"? No, there is not a social tax.

by dsjoerg

6/26/2026 at 4:19:19 PM

Agreed, I haven't yet internalized them not remembering feedback from a couple days ago, which humans typically would. The process of remembering to update the context isn't entirely natural to me to this day.

by xpct

6/26/2026 at 4:15:08 PM

The first-order social consequences aren't truly there but i think the format in which you interface with the tool can trick you into behaving as if they were, which is taxing it itself.

by Butterchuck

6/26/2026 at 4:17:21 PM

There are ways to put a superficial personality on the LLM which can break up some of the mannerisms that get old. Give it a new accent, allow it to keep a memory of things that nudge it into one personality or another, make it behave differently on weekdays vs weekends. Its still superficial, but if you work with it any reasonable amount of time, I think having the ability to change some of the characteristics can make it more..."fun" I guess.

by mym1990

6/26/2026 at 4:14:31 PM

I agree. I’m a social person but I also like my purely functional conversations with LLMs, and I have a lot of them going at once!

Doesn’t replace conversations with other people but at the same time I feel no tax talking to the LLMs.

by peter422

6/26/2026 at 4:31:47 PM

One giant issue with say Claude Code is the speed, say you ask it to do something and you want to review the response, then I want to ask questions , I want to chat about the changes , but the slow speed of responses it just breaks the flow.

Unfortunetly now vibe coding is demanded to be used, to produce 10x more code or else some other developer will take your place.

by simion314

6/26/2026 at 4:29:56 PM

> With LLMs there is no social tax, I can be as blunt as I like. But there are other taxes to pay with LLMs; they don't learn, they BS relentlessly, there is less fun and camaraderie.

My experience is the opposite. They bullshit a lot, derail the conversation/coding session, get defensive, and gaslight. It is not “social tax”, but they mirror sometimes the worst human behaviour.

by zsoltkacsandi

6/26/2026 at 4:49:06 PM

They only respond to the inputs. Try adding some communication preferences to your system prompt.

by fcarraldo

6/26/2026 at 7:13:44 PM

There was no system prompt, I asked claude thru the CLI to implement something. It did not agree that I need that feature and offered something else. I started debating with it, why did I need it, and it started derailing the conversation, and explaining why I was wrong. And this is not the first and only case.

by zsoltkacsandi

6/26/2026 at 4:31:14 PM

Man, I don't know. LLMs (with the good and bad) feel like the first time a tool has genuinely been an extension of me. And quite the opposite. I'm a quite introverted person. Spending time in a meeting or talking with other humans I find quite exhausting. I don't really get that at all with talking with LLMs.

by Jonovono

6/26/2026 at 4:33:08 PM

It’s because large language models give a variable reward and it’s essentially an addiction that many people have not even recognized.

by iwontberude

6/26/2026 at 4:56:20 PM

That is interesting, but also I do wonder, what in life doesn't have a variable reward? You could say that any routine activities like maybe cleaning, etc, is all the same, but most non routine things in life seem like they would have variable reward?

E.g. talking to people definitely yields in very variable rewards, if you do non routine work, there's constant variable rewards, etc.

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 5:10:39 PM

Happiness is derived from a balance of a meaningful life, and pleasant experiences we may choose.

Also, one may have no pain or concerns, and still existentially despair over a meaningless life built on intelligence campaigns exploiting millions of people.

Only psychopaths find short lived joy in harming others, and only make up around 1% of general populations. Have a wonderful day =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 5:18:49 PM

I think happiness is very complicated. Would you think there's a perfect formula to follow that will yield you the "happiness"? And how does this relate to different brain wirings of different people? Would you say per brain wiring there's a different specific ideal formula one would have to follow? E.g. there's some base things like getting proper sleep, exercise, diet, but then there's some more specific things for that brain wiring?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 5:36:30 PM

>Would you think there's a perfect formula

The advice comes from coursework most medical students must do in year 2. It is backed by research data on integrated healthcare programs.

Simply avoiding misery is not the whole equation. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 5:49:05 PM

Would you say you are happy as in you have solved happiness for yourself?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 6:12:04 PM

On occasion, as I often chose wisdom, logic, and indifferentism. =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 6:29:33 PM

Do you mean those three things are what let you solve it, or that they're what kept you from solving it more often?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 6:40:52 PM

Philosophical indifferentism is part of it for sure. lol =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 7:18:01 PM

And what is the reason for indifferentism as opposed to atheistic agnosticism?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 7:44:07 PM

Indeed, indifferentism must recognize both distinctive positions with similar regard. =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 8:01:38 PM

I see, that totally makes sense. You got stuck there and there's just no way out.

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 8:43:59 PM

Indeed, indifferentism must recognize both positions with similar regard. Then address ambiguity with logic and wisdom. For example, Bayes' theorem projects a reasonable expectation given available data. =3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q1dgn_C0AU

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 9:10:10 PM

Wouldn't Bayes and logic lead you to immediately believe that some claims, ideas, and beliefs may be more logically sound or matter more than others, steering you away from indifferentism, but the reason why I thought you might be stuck is because you were indifferent to moving away from it.

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 9:58:43 PM

On occasion, the wisdom of rational self-interest resolves a precedence of each area of metaphysical, imaginary, and scientific subject matter. Often, conflating each area of study leads to nonsensical contradictions.

For example, Bayes theorem does not guarantee the best outcome, but does offer the best unbiased choice at that moment. =3

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

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 5:14:19 PM

[dead]

by cindyllm

6/26/2026 at 4:50:54 PM

Yep, LLM chat is classic skinner box design. It’s effectively gambling.

by fcarraldo

6/26/2026 at 4:53:29 PM

In what sense is this true that isn't true of a simple web search?

by tptacek

6/26/2026 at 5:09:00 PM

And on the other hand talking to people, but I guess most extroverts in a way are "addicted" to talking to people as well, so it's a fair comparison. From my personal experience talking to people can end in wildly differing and unexpected results. In fact, I think rewards from LLMs are way more static as opposed to rewards from talking to people.

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 5:00:00 PM

A web search doesn't use isomorphic plagiarism of naive users work to sell to other users.

LLM are actually good at context search, but are mostly not being used as intended. The LLM hype bubble has to end sooner or later. =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 5:02:00 PM

How does that answer the question or relate to variable reward and addiction mechanisms? This just seems another unrelated negative sentiment argument towards LLMs?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 5:24:09 PM

Not really, people are simply fooled by pernicious sycophantic idealism, and their own cognitive biases.

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

LLM are great for context search, but were never real "AI" in any sense except in media/PR sensationalism. Scientific hubris and unethical use of LLM is interesting as exposes the primitive impulsive nature of many. Best of luck =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 8:39:24 PM

This is my read on how people react to LLM responses, especially about personal/social issues too - that many are fooled by the LLM. On occasion, someone has shown me LLM output, believing it to be a profound and illuminating response to their prompt.

Even being able to see the original prompt, the response just seemed kind of empty (blocking out the advertisingesque magnificent language leaves little substance behind), but somehow they were convinced that it was a coherent answer to their prompt and even peeved with me for not sharing their astonishment at how well it addressed their concerns.

It's a kind of symbiosis between the LLM and the prompter, where the prompter's own cognitive biases fill in what the LLM can not. Since I don't share their same biases, the response is nearly meaningless.

Very uncomfortable experience having to pretend to agree with how profound it is to not make their prompter upset.

by dqv

6/26/2026 at 8:47:54 PM

Why did you pretend to agree with them?

Would a person with such biases, seeking validation from an LLM having been anything else without an LLM?

If everyone in real life are trying to avoid upsetting such person, the humans in their real life would offer the same experience, no? Or alternatively said person would go into conflict with anyone pointing out issues in their views, ending up only surrounding themselves with people who will agree with them in order to not upset them.

I guess my concern is why did you agree with them instead of using the opportunity to showcase another point of view?

by mewpmewp2

6/26/2026 at 10:49:16 PM

Emotional intelligence. These interactions aren't people sharing points of view, they are sharing something they see as meaningful, and no matter how politely I convey it, it's still going to come off as "that sounds stupid and meaningless". It's not like I have better advice to give. Not worth dying on that hill.

by dqv

6/26/2026 at 11:11:56 PM

What is your relation to those people? Because, what is the use of emotional intelligence if it doesn't help them to see their biases and instead confirms them. If presumably their biases are harmful for their lives?

I just see those excuses of "emotional intelligence" to stay dishonest in my life a lot, is that the right way to live though? In a way those LLMs are doing the same though, and in a lot of ways those people are then treated as some beings that can't handle the actual real world.

I guess, just in real life when talking to people, I would just not pretend and go along with something like this, so it's uncomfortable for me to also imagine that someone would go along just for the sake of not upsetting someone for some virtue called "emotional intelligence".

I can understand being polite for the sake of it to someone old and in their deathbed, but I just really don't like the idea of pretending or lying to people with their whole lives ahead and going counter to what you believe to be the truth for some social comfort or emotional intelligence aspect. If they can't handle whatever is the truth, it's their problem to deal with, but they better know alternative views to their malformed or harmful ideas of life.

by mewpmewp2

6/27/2026 at 12:19:19 AM

They are acquaintances and friends, although not close friends. It's also unclear what their biases are since I can't read their minds, so there is no way of knowing if their biases are harmful for their lives. If I knew what their biases were, I would probably have had better understanding of what the output meant to them; hence the conclusion that we do not share the same biases.

I see emotional intelligence as a tool, not some virtue to uphold. Here it is identifying the value of a relationship and avoiding potentially breaking that relationship apart simply because one aspect of it is not optimal. Not every relationship needs to have perfect alignment with my beliefs.

But more importantly, I don't have enough information about them to properly navigate a conversation about their use of the LLM for advice.

> I just really don't like the idea of pretending or lying to people with their whole lives ahead and going counter to what you believe to be the truth for some social comfort or emotional intelligence aspect.

Fine, but you're also doing that for your own comfort, and not necessarily for the benefit of the other person. It can (and often does) cause the friendship to end before you've actually helped them understand what you want them to understand. I've lost friendships this way.

I'd rather keep the relationship intact and revisit the conversation when the time is right than risk abruptly ending the relationship with the same outcome where they go through their whole life with malformed or harmful ideas. You incorrectly assume that they would "know" the alternative views just by communicating, but much like their biases allowed them to "understand" the output of the LLM, their biases may disallow them from understanding the alternate views you are trying to impart.

by dqv

6/26/2026 at 5:36:35 PM

> it’s essentially an addiction that many people have not even recognized

A little patronizing, no? Maybe some people actually like it, even if you or I don't.

by akramachamarei

6/26/2026 at 5:05:16 PM

It's a slot machine that plays you.

by russ-curry

6/26/2026 at 4:55:24 PM

They used to call it schizophrenia, and put people in padded rooms for such delusions. Now, "AI" ego manipulation is a mental dildo for people that should know better philosophically. However, we shouldn't kink shame, so give this post a thumbs-down if you agree. lol =3

by Joel_Mckay

6/26/2026 at 4:38:46 PM

> When you use an LLM, you don’t get the tool magic: (almost) nobody will claim that Claude or Cursor feel like an extension of their body - they are not consistent or fast enough to trick the brain like a keyboard or a car can.

These all seem the same to me? None of them are an "extension of my body"; they're tools I use.

> With LLMs, you mostly just get more of the same: more code, more tests, more excuses.

You get more specs, more plans, more code, more tests. If you're getting excuses, something's wrong.

> Is it worth the social brainwork?

There isn't any social brainwork. I'm using natural language to build things, not engaging in social discourse.

> LLMs ask us to talk to them, but rarely reward that effort in kind.

Nor should they! They're not people, but they're designed to reach goals. If you set a goal (explicitly or implicitly) that you want a social conversation, they'll try to satisfy (and do poorly).

by kstenerud

6/26/2026 at 8:17:04 PM

With a car, when I turn the steering wheel a quarter turn, the car immediately starts to turn at a known rate (I can't quantify it, but my muscle memory knows it). With an LLM, if I ask it to "turn the car", my "steering wheel" is natural language. I have to spend effort to figure out how to convey the rate at which I want the car to turn, and because the LLM has a noticeable delay, I also need to preemptively include some language anticipating how the expected rate should feel and what to do if it doesn't seem to feel right. And then the next time I say the same thing, the LLM decides to steer the car a bit differently anyways.

by hatthew

6/27/2026 at 2:35:48 PM

I'm sure the first farmers said that when they drove a tractor. "I can't feel the land", but the ones that got over that could do 10x yield. The "feel" just moves up the stack.

by d0gsg0w00f

6/27/2026 at 2:56:39 PM

Why would you use an LLM to steer a car? That doesn't make any more sense than heating a water pressure chamber to drive a piston to steer a car. Wrong tool.

by kstenerud

6/26/2026 at 4:29:11 PM

Most of my workflows have slowly moved away from the chat interface with llms. Instead they look more like traditional Unix pipelines that just happen to call Unix tools that interact with llms.

This allows me to make more repeatable processes, not be tied down to vendor implementations of workflows and mix and match models for cost and efficacy.

There is nothing that ties you to talking with the text generator black box, and for most of my use cases it’s a negative.

by kasey_junk

6/26/2026 at 4:37:52 PM

Would you provide some examples? It sounds like you're feeding results from one LLM into another LLM invocation. Kind of like the loop thing everyone's talking about, but more like a workflow. Or programming with LLMs

by blucollar_coder

6/26/2026 at 5:51:50 PM

In the simplest incarnation I’m just using the built into the agent cli parm’s that trigger non-tui behavior (for instance calling codex exec instead of just codex).

by kasey_junk

6/26/2026 at 5:01:24 PM

I talk almost exclusively with AI these days. There's no one around me who knows programming, I get tired of reading code for projects I'm not interested in, and the projects I am interested in are too difficult, so I just talk with AI, organize my thoughts, and read books.

There's no one around me who does programming. There are hardly any programmers in my town.

The upside is that most programming-related tasks in my town end up going through me. The downside is that there's not much work to begin with, and I can't talk about the things I'm actually interested in.

I'd like to stay in touch with friends who are interested in programming or academia, but since I didn't go to a good university, it seems like I haven't had much of a connection with them

by jdw64

6/26/2026 at 5:05:12 PM

Why talk to AI though, there are plenty of humans you can reach online if you want to

Many evenings I spend on voice chat with friends around the world, these days

by bluefirebrand

6/26/2026 at 5:15:58 PM

You're right. Because conversations with AI don't force me to deal with boring code, don't scratch my ego, and they flatter me.

On top of that, talking to smart developers in real life is exhausting. Putting aside whether they share my interests, there are too many arrogant people. There's also the embarrassment of being asked, 'You don't even know this?' when they have knowledge I lack. The problem is that while that embarrassment could help me grow, it also leaves scars.

And on top of that, the Korean internet is more toxic than you'd think. Most of the male-dominated communities in my interests are filled with misogyny and derogatory remarks. (You can think of Korean internet communities as having 4chan as their baseline.)

So maybe I just chose AI to stay in a greenhouse.

So I'm not sure. Whether I lack the courage to leave the greenhouse, or whether I'm just genuinely exhausted.

The Korean programming communities just spam programming memes, and most of those are factually wrong. I don't want to bother fighting over them.

Even though I've successfully delivered to 40 different companies, my opinions are always seen as 'unsubstantiated personal views,' while those who come from prestigious companies have their opinions treated as 'insights born from experience.' So it feels like there's no one I can have an equal conversation with.

Ultimately, most relationships seem to require the other person to have something to give me, but I don't have anything to give them in return.

I get along quite well with people in real life. But I have no conversations with them about the things I actually care about. And that's lonely. They all say I'm kind and diligent, but I don't have anyone I can truly open up to.

by jdw64

6/27/2026 at 2:44:29 PM

They're speaking a language that you don't understand and you feel is inferior. You see the language that you speak with your LLM as "superior" but you struggle with to teach that to someone else. This is a bad situation for you and your mental health.

At the end of the day, we humans are social creatures. It can't be helped. Our happiness is directly tied to our social interactions.

I say "get over yourself", for your own sake. Being included is better than being "right" sometimes. If you reach out and try to meet them halfway, you can build a connection and teach them about your language. It's a game of give and take. You have to pay in other people's currency, then in return they pay you back.

by d0gsg0w00f

6/27/2026 at 4:23:50 AM

[dead]

by fatata123

6/26/2026 at 4:36:54 PM

I feel on the other side of this. Just yesterday I was reviewing some code output from Claude and I realized a change that I had asked for in a previous review step wasn't what I wanted. I had a moment of social anxiety, like I didn't want to bother a coworker with my indecision. But I have to remember, the LLM doesn't care. It doesn't have an ego. It doesn't get annoyed at being asked to redo work.

I still say "please" and "thank you" frequently, but I'm starting to embrace the fact that the LLM doesn't care about grunt work, doesn't care about rework, doesn't care about nitpicking, doesn't have a preference in general. It needs very little more than for me to be completely clear in my instructions.

by stillpointlab

6/26/2026 at 5:09:36 PM

Sorry to hear about the moment of social anxiety (I assume it happens with humans occasionally). But can't wonder don't you have also moments of joy because of job well done, an appreciative colleague or something similar?

I don't like either the "negative" part, but I find it necessary to have both negatives and positives in life to create bonds, meaning and more simply, not to get bored. I would be worried that if I just talk with a machine (no feelings involved) I will get depressed and demotivated.

by vladms

6/26/2026 at 5:47:52 PM

I'm pointing out how I noticed a particular emotional response when working with LLMs.

I've been an engineering manager in the past and I have tried my best to keep the needs of my team in mind when I am delegating work. I try to consider the person, their goals, motivations, preferences, frustrations. I consider before interrupting them if the minor issue I am bringing up is worth the distraction it might cause them, since switching tasks is a mental load.

But with LLMs, almost none of that matters. They don't have goals, motivations or preferences in the same way people do. I can interrupt it all day and it won't get frustrated or lose motivation.

I think anxiety is a harsher word than I mean, but it is close to the feeling I have when I'm about to deliver bad news to someone. When I'm about to say "you know all that work I asked you to do, I need you to throw it away and restart". And I model in my mind the frustration and demotivation this can cause a person. And then I feel anxious about causing them this frustration.

I have to train myself out of that when instructing LLMs. It doesn't mean I have to avoid moments of joy or appreciation. It means I have to understand LLMs have different needs than people, and I have to work towards those needs.

by stillpointlab

6/26/2026 at 4:38:39 PM

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear! And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until … the project is complete?

by loloquwowndueo

6/26/2026 at 4:20:24 PM

I’ve been experiencing similar feelings. Working with LLMs often takes almost as much mental energy as working with people, but the payoff does not always scale in the same way.

I think we are still on the early days of LLMs. Right now, using them productively requires deliberate thought and an acute knowledge of their limitations. As the author says, it’s easy to get angry at a model, or to foolishly let it nudge you towards more code and more tests — even when that is suboptimal.

To a certain extent, models keep getting better and better at discerning our intentions and providing value. Yet I am not sure whether we will reach a point where using them successfully no longer causes the kind of fatigue that it does today.

by thimabi

6/26/2026 at 4:11:55 PM

I just use it as Google, like 'ts Omit example' or something.

so I don't get exhausted. If you write complete sentences and say please to the clankers, you're definitely gonna waste energy.

I agree they are too slow though, especially when they "Think" for so long and then say "something went wrong" after 30s.

by yellow_lead

6/26/2026 at 4:27:25 PM

The productivity gains are well worth any nits I have about responding to the LLM.

LLM: "I've just refactored your code base. Would you like me to also fully document it?"

op: "you're so needy!!!"

by dllrr

6/26/2026 at 5:43:55 PM

I didn't expect LLMs to change their output so much depending on how I talk to them. I've done my own controlled tests and verified tone impacts quality even when content is held constant. This effect is called "Linguistic Convergence" or "Conversational Mirroring" and it's been studied extensively. The effect is minimal in coding contexts but becomes much more pronounced in collaborative contexts like creative brainstorming and concept development.

I noticed this because I use LLMs quite often as a note taker, research assistant and reference collector when I'm doing ideation, domain mapping and knowledge acquisition. In those kinds of sessions, if I issue purely directive instructions, the LLM's output quality will begin to drop quite quickly. And if adopt a tone of conversational engagement, the LLMs output quality remains high. As the article states, this can be a burdensome distraction which creates additional cognitive load. It's basically a non-economic cost to using LLMs in these contexts.

Reading research on this, it's fundamental to the nature of LLMs and can't simply be prompted away or easily fixed in fine-tuning. It's an artifact of attention dilution and contextual satiation. If I include semantic richness, structural variety, domain-specific terminology and explicit reasoning steps, it provides higher-entropy tokens to the model's attention mechanism which shifts the weight calculations toward richer areas of the model's latent space. By ingesting a composite of human's collective linguistic structures, it seems like models inherited some of our quirks and sensitivities too.

by mrandish

6/26/2026 at 5:12:38 PM

Could you imagine how destroyed people like this would be if they faced actual adversity in life? Like if they had to live through the Spanish Flu, or the Great Depression, or hell even lose a loved one to something as now trivial to treat as tetanus?

Oh, the horror, having to type to a system that will do your job for you while you sit in an air conditioned office in a comfortable chair listening to a podcast while you work.

by newtonianrules

6/26/2026 at 4:26:09 PM

Not my experience, but I'm still new at this.

The way I have worked so far is to look for ways I can influence the model's "thinking" and then add that to my main AGENTS.md. I try to steer it towards a thought process that mirrors or exceeds my own. I find it a fun challenge. I think this stuff becomes less necessary in a year or so as these sorts of tweaks become part of the shipped product from the model makers.

by 01100011

6/26/2026 at 4:35:39 PM

> When you use an LLM, [...] you get to pay the social tax: you converse and negotiate and convince and sometimes even get angry1 at the so-called tool.

Might be a subjective opinion, but this is how writing code always felt to me, even pre-LLMs. An ongoing inner conversation where I try to convince the text on the screen to match the text in my head. It never really felt like tool use in the sense of manual labor.

by JKolios

6/26/2026 at 4:42:12 PM

I think it depends. If talking to a tool solves a bigger exhaustion (a bug that has been bugging you for a while) then the exhaustion from talking to the tool becomes normalized. I guess this is true for any tool really. Using a hammer causes a bit of strain in your muscles but if it solves a bigger issue of nailing something in the wall then that strain in the muscle is fine. It will take some time to develop that muscle working with AI too.

by dwa3592

6/26/2026 at 5:14:26 PM

My exhaustion comes from how long winded LLMs are. I ask simple questions and get an essay with bullet points.

by interestpiqued

6/26/2026 at 4:36:33 PM

I talk to my AI all day. Sometimes my voice goes hoarse

by blucollar_coder

6/26/2026 at 4:55:45 PM

i read this post while AI was busy managing jira tickets for me. Otherwise I wouldn't have had the time to be browsing HN right now

by Brainspackle

6/26/2026 at 4:36:32 PM

Looks like the author submitted it themselves to lobste.rs. Some nice discussion there, as well.

https://lobste.rs/s/csgzki/exhaustion_talking_tool

As an aside, it's nice to see that Lobsters has remained a quiet success. As much as I love HN and the work Dan's done to keep it how it is, I welcome to variety. There are vanishingly few places for polite and earnest discussion online these days.

by joenot443

6/26/2026 at 5:05:43 PM

I quickly lost any interest in that site once I realized its dependence on social verification. That "bar" turns the site into an elitist social club. No thanks.

by esseph

6/26/2026 at 4:16:41 PM

>> Is it worth the social brainwork? IDK, for some tasks maybe - there are things a single person can do now that would have been impossible a year ago. But for all tasks? And wouldn’t that social brainwork do more good if it was directed at the real people you are working with?

It's the opposite. Many people find it exhausting to interact with humans, and do so only because they are required to.

Humans often don't understand what you are saying or asking, and they may not know exactly what steps they need to take to find the answer. They get tired. They might get their pride hurt. They might get angry or frustrated. They might judge you because your question is silly or just wrong.

LLMs, for all their faults, have none of these issues. I'm not saying I'd rather talk to LLMs all day every day, but when trying to get shit done, they really can be the superior coworker, especially if you're an introvert and suffer from social-battery-drainage issues.

by enraged_camel

6/26/2026 at 4:22:40 PM

Fooling yourself into thinking the LLMs are "understanding" what you are saying or asking is a trap. The output you get may be useful, but it is not due to any sort of understanding.

The elements of human work you mentioned are why it can be both rewarding and painful to interact with humans, but at the end of the day it is important to keep trying to do that work/keep trying to interact with each other. I don't know if we want to go back to cubicles where we just talk to robots all day. Of course some work environments are just awful, and there is not much remedy for that.

by mym1990

6/26/2026 at 7:17:16 PM

It’s going to sound delusional, but my own understanding of my understanding is that there’s probably no such thing, only a feeling of familiarity and some heuristics.

All I do is invoke “pictures” of semantic blobs in my mind, and my unconscious parts pull up more “pictures” in connection to that. Which I verbalize in turn, apply logic checks, and thus get this feeling that I’m meaningfully thinking about something, a sensation of comprehension. I could be even blatantly wrong about something, misunderstanding doesn’t feel any different in the moment.

And reasoning models (try to) capture that. The underlying processes are certainly different, it’s a Chinese Room alright - but if my own understanding is an illusion, the fact that machine model of it isn’t how I do it myself (but only a statistical approximation) doesn’t seem to matter - at least not for inputs and outputs between two black boxes (me or model).

I just don’t believe in p-zombies any more than I believe in Santa, I guess.

by drdaeman

6/27/2026 at 4:22:40 AM

You don’t think there is such a thing as “understanding” a subject? Knowing the fundamental buildings blocks of that subject? Rearranging those building blocks within other domains to make new discoveries?

A few days ago you commented, in reference to needing an expert for imagery:

“Because someone who knows something about pixels needs to make a judgement.”

Would this person not need “understanding” of how pixels emerge into tasteful art?

This is quite terrifying, a bunch of people who have no understanding of anything, prompting a thing that also has no understanding of what the human is prompting. Good times ahead.

by mym1990

6/27/2026 at 7:42:50 AM

> You don’t think there is such a thing as “understanding” a subject?

I probably misunderstood (lol) you, because I was thinking of the phenomenal feeling of "getting it" - which is the only thing that I was able to label as "understanding" that exists in humans, but (I think) not in machine models. But when we feel insight, that's not some "real" understanding, it's a heuristics-powered illusion. That's why I wrote that.

It's quite ironic: I genuinely thought I understand what you're referring to, but that was a misunderstanding.

> Knowing the fundamental buildings blocks of that subject? [...]

Ah, in that sense - as having a mental model of something at its structural level - yes, it exists. But then computer models can understand things too - LLMs are not just giant Markov chains with pure token statistics, they build internal representations way beyond that. Look for the Othello-GPT story, it's pretty small, but quite fascinating how a model had built a world model out of just moves.

> Would this person not need “understanding” of how pixels emerge into tasteful art?

First, let me be clear that the key point there was the judgement bit. A machine lacks personhood, thus it cannot be held responsible, thus cannot make a judgement. That classic IBM memo.

For a judgement alone, just knowledge is sufficient. Seeing an irregularity is pattern matching, "those pixels look sloppy" phase doesn't yet need a "why", just a trained eye. But - yes, understanding is necessary follow-up, how to make those pixels stop raising eyebrows. Gotta not just see that e.g. "this hand has weird fingers", but also why they're weird, and then how to correct that.

> This is quite terrifying

Yes, but - IMHO - not because of how shallow some understanding might be. Competence shifts are perfectly natural, skills that are in demand remain, skills that aren't atrophy, I don't see anything too scary about that.

What's uncanny is that a lot of people indeed pass on judgement and even agency to a tool that has none. "AI" takes jobs, "AI" destroys environment, "AI" makes people zombies, "AI" steals art - that's what's really scary, that a lot of slogans put a veil in front of the actual (very much human) agents and their actions.

by drdaeman

6/26/2026 at 5:22:33 PM

>> Fooling yourself into thinking the LLMs are "understanding" what you are saying or asking is a trap. The output you get may be useful, but it is not due to any sort of understanding.

I hear this a lot but I think it's a matter of semantics and ultimately not very useful. I don't care whether the LLM understands me the way a human would. I use the LLM to get useful output. I want it to do something and it does that thing.

by enraged_camel

6/27/2026 at 4:15:14 AM

You do you.

by mym1990

6/26/2026 at 5:17:19 PM

I feel this. These tools are viscerally unpleasant. Meetings used to be the thing I didn't look forward to but chatting with an AI is the new low point. Reading AI generated text is the written word equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

by throwawa14223

6/26/2026 at 4:36:51 PM

AI is the new dope for developers.

Introverts are first line of serious addicts.

ADHD developers are next.

Procrastinators are after that.

by chopete3

6/26/2026 at 4:56:35 PM

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by calbuilds

6/26/2026 at 4:35:31 PM

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by kumiko_studio

6/26/2026 at 4:46:30 PM

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by naga73