[ExI] LLM hyperbole

[Ben Zaiboc]

On Friday, 26 June 2026 at 17:42, spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> 
> ....> On Behalf Of Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
> Subject: [ExI] LLM hyperbole
> 
> >...Is there no LLM that can communicate without constantly, relentlessly
> using unnecessary, ridiculously over-hyped language? A big objection I have
> to these things is that absolutely everything seems to be Astonishing,
> Marvellous, Profound, Masterful, Fundamental, etc., etc.
> ...---
> Ben
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 
> 
> But Ben, we live in astonishing marvelous (etc) times!
> 
> We should be asking BillK.  The British are famous for their way of
> understating profound, masterful things.
> 
> spike
> 


There may be such a thing as British Understatement, but it's dwarfed by a tidal wave of American Overstatement.

Superlatives are now routinely abused. In fact it seems to be mandatory these days. Take the word 'great' for example. What does it mean? It used to mean something. It used to mean 'better than average', 'really good', etc. Nowadays, if you don't say that something is 'great', what does that imply? That it's bad. There's no middle ground any more. If someone asks you how they did, and you say 'good', they'll be disappointed!

Nobody says that something is 'good' these days. Good used to mean actually good. Now it's not enough. Things have to be Great, or they're not good enough. The problem is that this removes something. How do we now say that something really is Great, when the word is used for things that are simply good, or even just average?

Can we constantly keep bumping up superlatives, making good things great, great things superb, superb things awesome, awesome things, er, what? super-awesome? Where does it end?!

In the meantime, I have a really good guitar here which is, it would seem, not even fit for purpose.

---
Ben