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I'm so triggered I'll actually add to this: there are many other things you rightfully call bloat, but these in particular I frequently see word for word regurgitated by ol' Claude, especially the coffee/weather bits verbatim plague approximately one in ten responses my digital golems give me. The padding is also more noticeable than usual, the entire The Least Painful Breakup section is stretched so painfully it should count as medical malpractice.
@self_made_human I like your writing but you're getting sloppy, pun not entirely intended. I understand rage-driven writing has a way of getting away from you, but please put the clanker on a tighter leash, this essay (while a great and deserved dunk I enthusiastically condone) is uncomfortably close to the kind of thing I grudgingly send Claude away to shamefully regenerate after editing [OOC: Use fewer similes/metaphors, be more concise and to the point!] into my last response.
Bruh. The overwhelming majority of the similes and metaphors are mine. When I used Claude for feedback, its first instinct was to tell me to trim the piece down by about 40%, which I refused to do. It also wanted me to cut down on the purple prose or the unbridled rage, it's too nice to sit by idly when I'm calling someone a tumor or a psychic vampire.
Here, you might want to see what Gwern has to say on the matter:
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/s/VNfN2XZEgE
If I had used Claude as heavily as I used to, this essay would be much shorter, much tidier, significantly less polemic, and in my humble opinion, worse for it. I try to be honest about AI usage, though I proactively disclose it only on places where it's required (like LessWrong), and even when it would be easy to deny or prevaricate. I told @Amadan that this essay is 99% human written, which, given that it's like 4000 words in length, is about 40 words of Claude in there that I either liked or didn't care to remove. Pessimistically, since I didn't sit here and count, it might be 97% human written, at which point that's 120 words.
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Not fair. Not fair !
There were people who wrote like this before LLMs. I love my analogies and metaphors. I love my bullet points. I love 'if this then that' framings. I did it first. It's not my fault that LLMs got trained on markdown loving verbose redditors.
It pisses me off. Claude and ChatGPT choose their respective writing voices precisely because they're effective. The LLM inevitably flanderizes these styles into a few repetitive tropes which together get recognized as 'slop'. But, that doesn't render the original styles invalid.
There is value in efficiency, but extra words aren't all filler. I like my ghost notes just as much as the accents. I love Paul Graham's - 'all killer no filler', in the way I like a tight 2:30s pop song. It's hook after hook. But dude, let that baby breathe a little. Let it paint a picture. Pace it to match the natural rhythm of emotions.
Rothfuss is the classic counter example to Paul Graham. I love both.
That being said, I agree with your main point. I'd rather read the raw authentic voice of an already good writer. Claude doesn't polish, it sands.
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