Yes.

I’m not particularly dense but lately the walls of text I get back turn my brain in knots. When I start feeling my brain knot, I know I need to say something along the lines of “I need you to explain this very simply, with examples.” Only then can I parse the results without all the mental weightlifting.

On more than one occasion my mind has wandered into “is this purposeful to get me to spend more tokens?” territory, but I’m trying to not get too tinfoil-hat-like.

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openasocket 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I know exactly what you mean. Something about those AI explanations just make my eyes glaze over. Dozens of new terms and metaphors and analogies conjured out of the ether to explain even the simplest thing. And when I try making it explain with examples, or show me the code it is proposing, often it seems unrelated or even in tension with whatever it tried to say before. I’ve given up trying to assign any meaning to those weird little soliloquy’s. I’m convinced that those don’t really have any meaning under them, and when you have it actually make a code change it does the actual work.

	▲	tempest_ 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have gotten to the point that when it throws a wall of text at me I demand a diagram heavy primer from "first principles". This helps a bit but is a token burner for sure since CC seems to (and literally) be paid by the word.

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Jgrubb 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What's tin foil about that? It gets paid by the word and you get back walls of text.

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jodacola 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Because it’s one thing to get me to spend more tokens because of how well a model functions, and another thing entirely to purposefully speak in unparseable prose that requires me to spend more tokens to understand what is going on.

I’m fine with the former, while the latter is manipulative, and I rationalize to “surely that’s not actually happening.”

Maybe I’m not giving my thoughts enough credit, though: maybe it’s not tin foil hat, and is real.

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Jgrubb 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm saying "It gets paid by the word and you get back walls of text." - ie, what you don't want to think is happening is very obviously what is happening.

It charges by the unit and it decides how many units it produces. It decides how much money it makes, therefore it decides "more".

	▲	retsibsi 7 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> very obviously what is happening I don't think this is obvious at all. There's enough competition that this would at least arguably be a silly, self-destructive approach. And it's not like it's the only plausible explanation.
	▲	jodacola 13 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I get you, and maybe we’re talking past each other. My point is that, while I understand it’s paid by the word, there are more words and less clarity than I previously experienced, leading me to believe it’s intentional to get an artificially inflated increase in engagement and, thus, spend. If it could be as direct as I previously experienced, I wouldn’t need to ask for another different explanation of the same thing and experience the commensurate spend.