<div dir="auto"><div><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Sep 30, 2026, 7:33 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
so that its language is familiar to you? (why say 'complexity'? That's confusing)<br>[snip]<br>
Er, what?<br>
That seems to be a rather convoluted and pompous way of saying that "People wrote stuff on Exi-Chat".<br><br>
> That's why I called it a <br>
> treasure trove of information.<br><br>
You've been talking to LLMs too much. I suggest taking a fortnight off, and learn to speak like a normal human being again.<br>
But that phrase ('treasure trove of information') ignores the fact that Exi-Chat is just as full of irrelevant noise, biased opinions and muddled thinking as any other special-purpose chat list. Hyping it up way beyond what it really is, is not helpful.<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Because normal humans say "fortnight"? If you meant to say "two weeks" why didn't you just say that? Y'know, because "fortnight" seems like a convoluted and pompous way of saying "fourteen days." Well whatever, i just wanted to nitpick over word choice to return the favor.</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
> We have discussed<br>
> both our own nostalgia and the fact that we had these ideas before they<br>
> were mainstream.<br>
<br>
<br>
FFS.<br>
I have never 'discussed my nostalgia' (I might have indulged in it a couple of times, but that's nothing to be proud of), and /of course/ we've been having and discussing ideas ahead of the mainstream. That's the whole point of the list!<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Ok, so I'll be sure to footnote "* except Ben" next time I refer to this group as 'we.' I meant there have been emails discussing the early years' big ideas, but you might not call that nostalgia. I see you flipped "our" from my general case to "my" because yours is the only view I am supposed to consider. I've already promised to except you from any further "we" membership, just in case. As far as the point of the list discussing ideas, you took offense to me calling it a trove because it also contains noise? </div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
> That means some of the geometry <br>
> of words and sentences that it modelled and<br>
> distilled may have been inspired by what WE wrote.<br>
<br>
"Geometry of words and sentences". Can you understand why all this stuff reads like post-modernist poetry to me (and I can't be the only one), and rapidly becomes unintelligible? That phrase is meaningless. Geometry doesn't apply to words and sentences. If you mean "the text it was trained on", why not just /say/ that, instead of making up some fancy-sounding and confusing nonsense?<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">What I understand is that I shouldn't have assumed you wanted me to share with you what *I* was thinking. I don't presume to know what you understand, clearly it isn't hyperdimensional vector mathematics. Why not just /say/ you gave up instead of calling it confusing nonsense?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
No, as far as I can understand what you're saying, I have no argument with it (you could have said "mistakes" instead of "incursion from 'oops'". Clearer and shorter).<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So the part you understand you have "no argument" and also nothing to contribute via "yes, and..."? Still you want to correct my use of language to only the words you deem acceptable. You may not realize that "mistake" greatly flattens the meaning I intended, but I realize you do not care.</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>> My point was not <br>
> to survive the defense of a thesis, it was to suggest another path.<br>
<br>
That doesn't make any sense.<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">I wasn't trying to publish on arXiv or provide citations to support my hypothesis. You already chopped that part, so isolating one sentence to call it out "doesn't make sense" also illustrates that you probably did give up.</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>[snip]<br>
You certainly seem to be in a position to understand this danger. But you still seem to be doing exactly what you say we should be avoiding, at least if your language is any indication. You say it wasn't, but a lot of this looks as if an LLM wrote it.<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">I'm not sure if you are still trying to say you hated everything I thought you invited me to write. So you really should just /say/ you hated reading it.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Perhaps there's some scope for an automatic translator, that changes overblown, unnecessarily tangled and jargon-riddled LLM language into plain english. I see far too many attempts to use analogy where it's unnecessary or even inappropriate or misleading. I find that often, so much mental effort is needed to make sense of and keep track of the analogies used, that it's easy to lose sight of what's actually being discussed. Try dropping the analogies in your paragraph above, and re-write it. You might see what I mean. (We want to make things easier - end up making them TOO easy - lose important skills).<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You write words. Words hard. You bad. - yup, i see, so much better</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
When the aim is communication, poetry is a poor tool.<br></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I wrote the dense version first. You couldn't unpack it. I wrote "poetry" (ffs, really?) to try to be more expressive - you hated that too.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Whatever. It isn't worth the hassle</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
-- <br>
Ben<br>
<br>
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