> as cognitive hygiene
LLMs are not cognizant. It's a terrible metaphor. It hides the source of the issue. The providers cheaped out on sourcing their data and now their LLMs are filled with false garbage and copyrighted material.
LLMs can get "brain rot"
121–130 of 310 posts
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brilliantly phrased — sharp, concise, and perfectly captures that uncanny "AI-polished" cadence everyone recognizes but can’t quite name. The tone strikes just the right balance between wit and warning.
One thing I don't understand, there was (appropriately) a news cycle about sycophancy in responses. Which was real, and happening to an excessive degree. It was claimed to be nerfed, but it seems strong as ever in GPT5, and it ignores my custom instructions to pare it back.
"Any Compliments about my queries cause me anguish and other potent negative emotions."
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a text generator regurgitating plausible phrases without understanding and producing stale and meaningless pablum. It doesn’t even know what the intended information is, and judging from the above neither did the human involved. It doesn’t help writing it stultifies and gives everything the same boring cheery yet slightly confused tone of voice.
> It’s a text generator regurgitating plausible phrases without understanding and producing stale and meaningless pablum. Are you describing LLM's or social media users? Dont conflate how the content was created with its quality. The "You must be at least this smart (tall) to publish (ride)" sign got torn down years ago. Speakers corner is now an (inter)national stage and it written so it must be true...
I really could only be talking about LLMs but social media is also low quality.
The quality (or lack of it) if such texts is self evident. If you are unable to discern that I can’t help you.
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a text generator regurgitating plausible phrases without understanding and producing stale and meaningless pablum. It doesn’t even know what the intended information is, and judging from the above neither did the human involved. It doesn’t help writing it stultifies and gives everything the same boring cheery yet slightly confused tone of voice.
> It’s a text generator regurgitating plausible phrases without understanding and producing stale and meaningless pablum. Are you describing LLM's or social media users? Dont conflate how the content was created with its quality. The "You must be at least this smart (tall) to publish (ride)" sign got torn down years ago. Speakers corner is now an (inter)national stage and it written so it must be true...
[deleted]
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#126“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.
If it conveys the intended information then what's wrong with that? You're fighting a tsunami here. People are going to use LLMs to help their writing now and forever.
it’s not really clear whether it conveys an “intended meaning” because it’s not clear whether the meaning - whatever it is - is really something the authors intended.
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#127Earlier 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.
Assist without replacing.
If you were to pass your writing it and have it provide a criticism for you, pointing out places you should consider changes, and even providing some examples of those changes that you can selectively choose to include when they keep the intended tone and implications, then I don't see the issue.
When you have it rewrite the entire writing and you past that for someone else to use, then it becomes an issue. Potentially, as I think the context matter. The more a writing is meant to be from you, the more of an issue I see. Having an AI write or rewrite a birthday greeting or get well wishes seems worse than having it write up your weekly TPS report. As a simple metric, I judge based on how bad I would feel if what I'm writing was being summarized by another AI or automatically fed into a similar system.
In a text post like this, where I expect others are reading my own words, I wouldn't use an AI to rewrite what I'm posting.
As you say, it is in how the tool is used. Is it used to assist your thoughts and improve your thinking, or to replace them? That isn't really a binary classification, but more a continuum, and the more it gets to the negative half, the more you will see others taking issue with it.
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#128> as cognitive hygiene LLMs are not cognizant. It's a terrible metaphor. It hides the source of the issue. The providers cheaped out on sourcing their data and now their LLMs are filled with false garbage and copyrighted material.
Likewise, cognitive decline isn't what's happening here since that would require cognition. At best it is a simulation of cognitive decline.
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#129Earlier 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.
I've always read AI messages in this voice/style [0]
Re: LLMs can get "brain rot"
#130Earlier 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.
I think this article has already made the rounds here, but I still think about it. I love using em dashes! It really makes me sad that I need to avoid them now to sound human https://bassi.li/articles/i-miss-using-em-dashes
Same here. I recently learned it was an LLM thing, and I've been using them forever.
Also relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45226150