thadt

Has anyone done any work on what it is that makes LLM Voice hard? Something I've noticed, and have seen other people comment in passing is that reading LLM output is "exhausting". It's often attributed to trying to detect the machine, or filter out BS or word density or some other explanation, but it feels like something more than just that. Like - there is something about LLM output that just doesn't "fit" our minds correctly, even though words are in the right places.

Surely someone with a neuro/psych background has picked this up and developed an evidence-backed explanation.

Rather reminiscent of when the Congo was being exploited for rubber. Thanks to Kara for bringing it to the world, he’s in good [1] company [2].

[1] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Crime of Congo” 1909

[2] Mark Twain, “King Leopold’s Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule” 1905

Wow, a 155 page book for a relatively new project is interesting - what was your workflow for that? It looks mostly generated - is it used in its entirety as context to a top-level agent when working on new features, or are you directing it to just take relevant subsections? Why the PDF output (it does look nice)?

> There is a palpable public hunger for historical perspective in the 2020s. How could it be otherwise? Most citizens grasp very well that they are witnessing changes of momentous significance right now and that historical change of a profound kind is taking place in our time. Yet this moment finds the academic profession of history ill-prepared to benefit. Many historians experience their discipline as being in terrible crisis. Thousands of promising graduates are unable to find sustainable positions, while those who do often have to work under institutional constraints and pressure from administrators or colleagues, making them likely to postpone or even abandon the kind of rich, bold, innovative synthetic work that would help refresh the field and reestablish its intellectual centrality to understanding the world in the eyes of the public.

So, academia has become preoccupied measuring metrics and (temporarily) lost perspective: history isn't about the past - it's about the future.

I would argue that in this moment, history is too important to be left to just the specialists. We're not "witnessing change" - we are actively making change, and there is a lot more to be done before we're anywhere near equilibrium again. We can't go back and repeat the past (nor would we want to), but we can make better decisions about our future if we're aware of it. The generations not long before us went through a world in significant change - and now it's our turn. We should learn from their experiences.

Could you elaborate on your feelings on that? I was reading about BlueSky's PBC status literally yesterday, and am rather interested in what people's perception of such an entity is, vs a hybrid such as Wikipedia/Enterprise Wikimedia.

This isn't confined to "documentaries" - everything we accept as unfiltered 'facts' must be from 'a certain point of view'. Consider the Canon illustration from the article. Those present a man from different lighting, angles and perspectives. No matter how much a photographer might want to convey objective truth, a picture will always be from some perspective and lighting.

The same can be said for the news we watch. Or the history we read. Or the stories we tell each other. In 2026, we have swung too far toward the fanciful end of the spectrum of storytelling. We're now beset on all sides by BS generators (both human and artificial) and it's more important than ever to carefully handle truth in our stories.

But make no mistake - the teller of a story is absolutely crafting a reality for you. It's on you to decide whether you trust the narrator, or not.

I mean, at least you didn’t spend the last 20 years hashing 2^51 sentences in your research.

Well said.

Part of working through history from (only) 100 years ago is an impression of how quickly societies were changing then. This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.

Which isn't to downplay the upheaval that people are in - it is definitely traumatic. But we've been through disruption before. Hopefully we'll make fewer costly mistakes this time...

With respect - I believe you’re correct. I mentally reacted to a minor phrasing nit, jumped to a response in my head, dashed it and went on my way before really digesting the entirety of what you were saying.

Which illustrates your very point, right? In an environment where we have a firehose of information pointed at us, our natural reaction is to fast filter/summarize and then discard or react. You’re saying we need to slow down and engage with each other (real people) on more than that superficial level. I agree. Thank you for taking the time to write this.

> the possibility that the author is an idiot

What about the alternative possibility - the author is a rather intelligent being, but what they've written in this instance is idiotic?

Just because I like to think of myself as a non-idiot, doesn't mean I haven't brought strings of words into existence that were ill-conceived. In those cases, having someone come along and say something like "eh mate - you're confusing correlation with causation here!" is valuable feedback.

> I think it's past time for this "Right Answers" cryptography meme to die, though.

Politely disagree. I read Colin's when it came out and it was as useful in 2009 as Filippo's is today. If you only pay attention to the cryptography community every few years when you need it for something, then usually a whole lot has happened in the interval. It is incredibly useful to get the perspective of someone paying attention to give you a breakdown of "where we're at today".

A great example is the other conversation about SHA-256. Colin's recommendation was "hey, better plan to migrate from this in the future." The thing that's happened between then and now is, well, SHA-256 is actually still 'ok' when used in current constructions. That's useful to know in 2026.

If I get busy building stuff, it'll be nice to have a check-in again in a few years (or earlier if something significant happens first).

So companies can use passkeys and set policies around what hardware they're stored on. IMHO, not particularly useful or desirable for everyday Internet users, but really nice if you have specific requirements.