We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
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We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker
What I also love(d) about search with boolean operators is that it forces me to abstract from my worded question and that it inducts thinking through that necessity. Often I found out what I really wanted to look for during the process of forming a working search term. -
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker thanks for making this connection, I'm getting really tired of people making fun of me for being bad at web searching all of a sudden
turns out I'm just not good at communicating with neurotypicals, or with stochastic parrots of neurotypicals trained to respond like them -
Thank you for caring, and seeing, and using previse language, and writing this. Thank you for your work.
I grieve for the early internet. This is why. It felt like it was full of family, people who finally made sense. I trusted what we built.
I trust what we are building now. But I miss our virtual home.
-
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker @darthnull There's a place where you can get web search with all those things, without AI (unless you want it), and feels like the google search of the aughts and early '10s.
No ads
No telemetry
No cluttered junk above the first real search resultcc @kagihq
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We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker Un-solving a solved problem, for the sake of the next cool thing. A hallmark of consumerism.
-
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker
Nothing to do with Neurotypical, but malicious massive corporations.The original search implementations were informed by study of computer science and mathematics. CS is practically dead now, having been replaced by churning out code-monkeys that never learn programming but only a programming language.
Even if you don't use "AI Search" , Seach parameters are broken even on Qwant. Even the "-" prefix for exclude now fails.
It's greedy capitalism.
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We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker AI and how it is used is the antithesis of critical thinking. Critical thinking is the toolkit we use to discern fact from fiction, bias, context, hidden meaning, value.
Without critical thinking, students cannot learn, only repeat. Students then cannot become teachers. Knowledge cannot move forward, therefore the people and models training AI will stagnate, and stop improving, instead copying those educating it in a race to the bottom and artificial stupidity.
Why can't people in the tech world understand that we need to learn how to find and question things in order to grow. AI has the potential to do amazing things that we cannot, like processing vast amounts of data to find solutions to genetic medical problems, environmental data to help find optimum green energy placements for the future, and so much more.Instead it can violate privacy and de-clothe women, spread hateful rhetoric, and answer questions we don't need answers to in the first place.
The planet is not a get rich quick scheme for billionaire bullys.
Sorry, rant over.
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We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker In a past life I worked at an "AI search" company, and the example search they always used to promote natural language searching was "Who shot Dick Cheney in the face?" The correct answer is "nobody", but search results always return hits for when Cheney shot his buddy Harry Whittington in the face while quail hunting. That's a pretty hard thing to describe with keywords and booleans unless you add some semantic relationships into the queries, and that's not a simple thing to do. Sometimes natural language is the most precise way of expressing a query, but the technology for understanding and processing that query still leaves a lot to be desired, even in cases where you'd think it should work better than keyword or structured queries.
I think you're probably right about there being a double-empathy like issue with how NTs and NDs use information tools. I think all we ND folk have personal experience with that. The AI search we have now is not what we thought we were building back then. Though I can't say it's not what the founders and investors envisioned - you never know their secret exit plans. But we were trying to get better search results, not inaccurate results that feel like they should be correct.
-
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker
I mourn. -
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker I don't think it is only a matter of being neurodivergent or neurotypical. Marketers and money chasers ruined everything. Beside that natural language is a bad idea for doing the stuff we want to do because it's ambigous by nature.
-
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker I am neurotypical as far as I know and I have been online since 1999. Never, ever have I thought to myself "search would be better if I could just write the whole question".
Search has been broken before AI, at least the boolean operators OR and NOT stopped working for me before the LLM hype. I think Google started "guessing what you meant" before that too.
What I'm trying to say is that neurotypicals want the early web back too. Before it was colonised by corporations. -
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker Happy memories of boolean search specific searches.
-
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker my kid's other mom asks chat gpt mental health questions apparently frequently, sometimes about our child. On the fediverse and in my lefty news podcasts I hear that people hate AI, but most people I know seem to be leaning on it for a lot. It's pretty concerning.
-
We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker a coworker recently complained that I had used "prune" vs "filter" and that prune was much more CPU intensive. This same bloke uses like 10 constantly-running agents to basically do his job. I don't think you get to use LLMs and also complain about big O notation. Those two things are mutually exclusive.
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@tinker I am neurotypical as far as I know and I have been online since 1999. Never, ever have I thought to myself "search would be better if I could just write the whole question".
Search has been broken before AI, at least the boolean operators OR and NOT stopped working for me before the LLM hype. I think Google started "guessing what you meant" before that too.
What I'm trying to say is that neurotypicals want the early web back too. Before it was colonised by corporations.@AimeeMaroux @tinker
probably undiagnosed
just kidding - the OP was just a generalization, of course there are neurotypicals who dislike bullshit and value preciseness, and there certainly are neurodivergent people who love LLMs (some people describe them to feel like gambling, i.e. dopamine hits when it seems to work, so it keeps you using it, which can be a trap especially for folks with ADHD - and one reason I avoid that crap like the plague)
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We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
This is such a painful phenomenon!
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@tinker In a past life I worked at an "AI search" company, and the example search they always used to promote natural language searching was "Who shot Dick Cheney in the face?" The correct answer is "nobody", but search results always return hits for when Cheney shot his buddy Harry Whittington in the face while quail hunting. That's a pretty hard thing to describe with keywords and booleans unless you add some semantic relationships into the queries, and that's not a simple thing to do. Sometimes natural language is the most precise way of expressing a query, but the technology for understanding and processing that query still leaves a lot to be desired, even in cases where you'd think it should work better than keyword or structured queries.
I think you're probably right about there being a double-empathy like issue with how NTs and NDs use information tools. I think all we ND folk have personal experience with that. The AI search we have now is not what we thought we were building back then. Though I can't say it's not what the founders and investors envisioned - you never know their secret exit plans. But we were trying to get better search results, not inaccurate results that feel like they should be correct.
@joshsusser I think that's an easy problem to solve with keywords and booleans though? "shot Dick Cheney" as a quoted string should not return any results for "Dick Cheney shot" and no competent journalist is writing "Shot: DIck Cheney, in the face, says hospitalized hunter"
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We went from precise web search with boolean operators to "natural language models" of AI search.
You can tell nuerodivergent, Autistic, ADHD, AuDHD, etc folks created the early internet...
...and you can tell that neurotypical folks are now leading the current overlays of the internet.
We used to have very precise search mechanisms. Specific words found in web pages with boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc) to filter out the web pages that contained specific words and did not contain other words.
Now, we search for web sites (or don't even search for web sites, yay abstraction layers that separate us from actual raw information) using "natural language" to try and coax out info.
Have you ever been frustrated when you use very precise and direct language to communicate a specific idea with someone who then takes those specific words and adds obscure meaning and connotations and personal fears and bias to what you said... thus completely misunderstanding you... only to then try and clarify what you said with more precise language only to have that further degrade the conversation?!
Yeah. That's the internet with AI "search" now.
They took something that worked precisely and directly and muddied it.
We've introduced the "double-empathy problem" to web search.
I'm noticing that everyone in my circles, family, and especially work that are nuerotypical LOVE LOVE LOVE the new AI search mechanisms. They'll tell me exactly what the answer they received was - regardless of whether it's right or has multiple possible and conflicting answers. They just repeat what the AI said like it was the Gospel Truth.
And they love talking to it like it was a "real person."
It certainly takes my search parameters and adds its own interpretation to which I have to clarify and correct which is then misinterpreted further...
I haven't tried vibe coding, but I can only imagine the horror.
Can you imagine vibe pentesting with Claude / Mythos?!?!?!
You know how neurodivergent folks gravitated towards IT because it was precise?
Yeah, that's gone now.
@tinker i get unreasonably upset when i try to use a search the way it was intended and get in response: “fuck you here is what we decided you should have searched for and also here are some slops”
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@AimeeMaroux @tinker
probably undiagnosedjust kidding - the OP was just a generalization, of course there are neurotypicals who dislike bullshit and value preciseness, and there certainly are neurodivergent people who love LLMs (some people describe them to feel like gambling, i.e. dopamine hits when it seems to work, so it keeps you using it, which can be a trap especially for folks with ADHD - and one reason I avoid that crap like the plague)
@Doomed_Daniel @tinker Who knows
I have a STEM degree and and that might be why I appreciate precise search. The 2000s internet also felt very alive with all its small personal websites.
I totally get the LLM gambling thing. "Will it do it right this time?" can be fun entertainment but also a time and money sink (if you pay for the LLM) and also a high environmental cost in any case
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@tinker Enshittification
