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sshine 2 days ago

When I have conversations with uncritical agentic coding maximalists, they will use "load-bearing" in daily speech.

I don't cringe when I know it went through their head, because they didn't literally copy-paste it.

It's just a side-effect of immersion. It's exactly a tic, and I don't frown when people tic.

Economists say "all things equal" (which they're never outside of economic models).

My vanity compels me to not use Claude's linguistic identity. It gets sooo boring.

And in spite of reading hours of Claude every day, I don't sound anything like Claude.

Maybe I'm not as impressionable as Nolan. Maybe I'm less aware of my own words.

I was cultivating a "make an effort when you write" mental space, and this area only got stronger in my brain with Claude.

I suppose it's a fight to preserve my own linguistic identity. Or maybe I have enough monologue to keep the pressure out always.

Also, unrelated, I already had one of Nolan's blog posts open in my most recent tab. It should prove a thing or two about authentic human voice.

▲ goodmythical a day ago | parent | next [-]

You're still the product of your environment. You'd not be using words like 'uncritical', 'agentic', 'maximalist', 'cringe', 'cultivating' etc were you not.

You're just as branded as an LLM user by your admission that you read hours of its output daily as any potential use of 'load-bearing'.

'Cringe' for instance, rose to popularity once, became cringe itself, fell to obscurity, and was only relatively recently restored to frequent use. 'load-bearing', 'circle back', and 'let's be honest' were all also once heavily used in particular communities and are therefore heavily represented in any algorithm supplied with this data that is trained to sound professional and authoritative.

These words and phrases are simply suffering the same oversaturation point that all the greats (groovy, radicle, spiffy, cool) do at some point. At some point, some population that is not native to the word (say adults for 'fire' or junior devs for 'circle back') start to use them and the original culture begins to see that the term has been diluted and is therefore disfavored for some new or re-used construction.

My point is that the phenomenon of choosing ones words as a reflection of one's environment is not a new thing. It's really nothing to do with the machine generation component. As when the masses refuse eloquence as a snub against the bourgeoisie it's not really about the money itself so much as signalling a particular identity. This is just the latest hotness to signal distance from.

	▲	watwut a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Cringe' for instance, rose to popularity once, became cringe itself, fell to obscurity, and was only relatively recently restored to frequent use When were those changes supposed to happen? Cause saying cringe was never cringy in my neck of woods. And the word was in use the whole time. > load-bearing', 'circle back', and 'let's be honest' were all also once heavily used in particular communities and are therefore heavily represented in any algorithm supplied with this data that is trained to sound professional and authoritative. They dont sound professional nor authoritative. And never did. Load bearing was rarely use, circle back is just empty business jargon. Lets be honest is neither professional not authoritative. Never was. That is what people say when they are about to say something negative or ironic. > My point is that the phenomenon of choosing ones words as a reflection of one's environment is not a new thing. And that choice oftentimes used to flag you with negative implications ... precisedly because it made it clear which circles you are in.

▲ futune 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

One way to detect mathematicians is that we say "[...], in particular, [...]". I guess it's our version of the economist thing!

▲ sshine a day ago | parent | next [-]

Mathematicians and computer scientists will also say

  "for all" / "there exists" instead of "every" / "there's at least one"
  "let" as an imperative for establishing facts
  "fix" for choosing a value
  "given" instead of "if"
  "modulo" instead of "except for"
  "if, and only if," when the occasion warrants it
  "implies" instead of "means"
  "trivial" without intending to be mean
  "yes" when asked an "or" question
  "transitively"
  "by symmetry"
  "it follows"
  "canonical"

It's a lovely, concise language.

You can say a lot with few words when you have rich definitions.

▲ notarobot123 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I know when they say "such that ..."

	▲	goodmythical a day ago \| parent [-]
		"in most cases"