<story><title>ChatGPT Explained: A normie&apos;s guide to how it works</title><url>https://www.jonstokes.com/p/chatgpt-explained-a-guide-for-normies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nevermark</author><text>I feel like as an intro aimed at &amp;quot;normies&amp;quot; it still manages to communicate in a more abstract and overthinky way than necessary.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;People often find it difficult to intuit examples from abstract descriptions. BUT, people are great at intuiting abstractions from concrete examples.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You rarely need to explicitly mention abstractions, in informal talk. People&amp;#x27;s minds are always abstracting.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If I’m relating the collections {cat} and {at-cay}, that’s a standard “Pig Latin” transformation I can manage with a simple, handwritten rule set.&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Translating {cat} to {at-cay}, can be managed with one “Pig Latin” rule:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  If input is {cat} then output is {at-cay}.&amp;quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
&amp;quot;Translate&amp;quot; is normie and more context specific to the example than &amp;quot;transformation&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;Set&amp;quot; is not &amp;quot;normie&amp;quot; (normies say &amp;quot;collection&amp;quot;), and its superfluous for one rule.&lt;p&gt;Concrete, specific, colloquial, shorter, even when less formally correct, all reduce mental friction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pdntspa</author><text>&lt;i&gt;And&lt;/i&gt; it talks down to the reader. &amp;quot;Ok! You made it! Phew! I&amp;#x27;m sorry you&amp;#x27;re too stupid to understand this stuff, so I&amp;#x27;m going to blow emotional smoke up your ass so that you aren&amp;#x27;t so intimidated&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Gag.&lt;p&gt;edit- and then he just casually starts talking about collapsing wave functions and hermeneutics. With no explanations, just assuming the reader knows it. (I had to look up both those concepts) So who exactly is he writing to here?</text></comment>
<story><title>ChatGPT Explained: A normie&apos;s guide to how it works</title><url>https://www.jonstokes.com/p/chatgpt-explained-a-guide-for-normies</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Nevermark</author><text>I feel like as an intro aimed at &amp;quot;normies&amp;quot; it still manages to communicate in a more abstract and overthinky way than necessary.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;People often find it difficult to intuit examples from abstract descriptions. BUT, people are great at intuiting abstractions from concrete examples.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;You rarely need to explicitly mention abstractions, in informal talk. People&amp;#x27;s minds are always abstracting.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If I’m relating the collections {cat} and {at-cay}, that’s a standard “Pig Latin” transformation I can manage with a simple, handwritten rule set.&lt;p&gt;Or...&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Translating {cat} to {at-cay}, can be managed with one “Pig Latin” rule:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  If input is {cat} then output is {at-cay}.&amp;quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
&amp;quot;Translate&amp;quot; is normie and more context specific to the example than &amp;quot;transformation&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;Set&amp;quot; is not &amp;quot;normie&amp;quot; (normies say &amp;quot;collection&amp;quot;), and its superfluous for one rule.&lt;p&gt;Concrete, specific, colloquial, shorter, even when less formally correct, all reduce mental friction.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>notahacker</author><text>Technically it&amp;#x27;s a transformation rather than a translation because Pig Latin isn&amp;#x27;t a real language, it&amp;#x27;s the product of a word game to make up new words out of English words by rearranging them according to certain rules. The article does assume you know this though (and doesn&amp;#x27;t consider the alternative of picking a simpler example like cat to CAT in capital letters or cat to &lt;i&gt;chat&lt;/i&gt; in French)&lt;p&gt;Same goes for its super brief explanation of a core term like &amp;quot;latent space&amp;quot;, and it explain probability distributions by invoking atomic structures rather than a more basic stats example like a bell curve of adult human heights. It&amp;#x27;s definitely aimed at the &lt;i&gt;sort of &amp;quot;normie&amp;quot; that reads Hacker News&lt;/i&gt; rather than actual normal people! I liked it though...</text></comment>