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LLMs can get "brain rot"

llm-brain-rot.github.io

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Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#111

Post by Starlevel004 »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #99
standardly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.

why do they always say "not only" or "it isn't just x but also y and z"? I hated that disingenuous verbosity BEFORE these LLMs out and now it'll all over the place. I saw a post on linked in that was literally just like 10+ statements of "X isn't just Y, it's etc..." and thought I was having a stroke

GPT loves lists and that's a variant of a list

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#112

Post by Sparkle-san »

stavros wrote: post #89
1121redblackgo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6-7 ٩(●•)_

Can someone explain this? I watched a South park episode that was all about this, but I'm not in the US so I have no idea what the reference is.

It's a meme without a lot of real meaning behind it. While it has its origins, I wouldn't say it's a "reference" to anything specific.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6-7_(meme)

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#113

Post by stavros »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #112
stavros wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain this? I watched a South park episode that was all about this, but I'm not in the US so I have no idea what the reference is.

It's a meme without a lot of real meaning behind it. While it has its origins, I wouldn't say it's a "reference" to anything specific. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6-7_(meme)

Ahh, thanks, so it's just a thing kids say.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#114

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Starlevel004 wrote: post #111
itsnowandnever wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do they always say "not only" or "it isn't just x but also y and z"? I hated that disingenuous verbosity BEFORE these LLMs out and now it'll all over the place. I saw a post on linked in that was literally just like 10+ statements of "X isn't just Y, it's etc..." and thought I was having a stroke

GPT loves lists and that's a variant of a list

Lists have a simpler grammatical structure than most parts of a sentence. Semantic similarity makes them easy to generate, even if you pad the grammar with filler. And, thanks to Western rhetoric, they nearly always come in threes: this makes them easy to predict!

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#115

Post by moritzwarhier »

itsnowandnever wrote: post #99
standardly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.

why do they always say "not only" or "it isn't just x but also y and z"? I hated that disingenuous verbosity BEFORE these LLMs out and now it'll all over the place. I saw a post on linked in that was literally just like 10+ statements of "X isn't just Y, it's etc..." and thought I was having a stroke

It's not just a shift of writing style. It symbolizes the dangerous entrapment of a feedback loop that feeds the worst parts of human culture back into itself.

scnr

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#116

Post by dist-epoch »

andai wrote: post #65

I encourage everyone with even a slight interest in the subject to download a random sample of Common Crawl (the chunks are ~100MB) and see for yourself what is being used for training data. https://data.commoncrawl.org/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2025-38/segm... I spotted here a large number of things that it would be unwise to repeat here. But I assume the data cleaning process removes such content before pretraining? ;) Al…

Karpathy made a point recently that the random Common Crawl sample is complete junk, and that something like an WSJ article is extremely rare in it, and it's a miracle the models can learn anything at all.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#117

Post by xanderlewis »

askafriend wrote: post #51
binary132 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brainrot apologists have arrived

Why shouldn't the author use LLMs to assist their writing? The issue is how tools are used, not that they are used at all.

Is it really so painful to just think for yourself? For one sentence?

The answer to your question is that it rids the writer of their unique voice and replaces it with disingenuous slop.

Also, it's not a 'tool' if it does the entire job. A spellchecker is a tool; a pencil is a tool. A machine that writes for you (which is what happened here) is not a tool. It's a substitute.

There seem to be many falling for the fallacy of 'it's here to stay so you can't be unhappy about its use'.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#118

Post by 1121redblackgo »

stavros wrote: post #113
Sparkle-san wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a meme without a lot of real meaning behind it. While it has its origins, I wouldn't say it's a "reference" to anything specific. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6-7_(meme)

Ahh, thanks, so it's just a thing kids say.

Yep

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#119

Post by actionfromafar »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #108
standardly wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is indeed an LLM-written sentence — not only does it employ an em dash, but also lists objects in a series — twice within the same sentence — typical LLM behavior that renders its output conspicuous, obvious, and readily apparent to HN readers.

Lol. This is brilliant. I'm not sure if anyone else has this happen to them, but I noticed in college my writing style and "voice" woukd shift quite noticeably depending on whatever I was reading heavily. I wonder if I'll start writing more like an LLM naturally as I unavoidably read more LLM-generated content.

Yes. It’s already shifting spoken language.

Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"

#120

Post by [deleted] »

avazhi wrote: post #47

“Studying “Brain Rot” for LLMs isn’t just a catchy metaphor—it reframes data curation as cognitive hygiene for AI, guiding how we source, filter, and maintain training corpora so deployed systems stay sharp, reliable, and aligned over time.” An LLM-written line if I’ve ever seen one. Looks like the authors have their own brainrot to contend with.

[deleted]
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