is it bad that while this does look like a really cool method to explain a complex topic, my instinct on reading mic-droppy, RLHF AI prose is to be dismissive? there's just something about the persistent mic drops and this-not-that writing that feels so cheap
I think it's because the explainer is passive, there's no interiority, it tells and doesn't show. plus, stylistically, if this were rewritten in second person (like most explainers are) it would make it a heck of a lot more readable:
'You order a coffee on your coffee shop's tablet. 211.4 ms later you see 'Order Confirmed'.
There's a world of complexity behind that status confirmation. Let's see how it all works.' etc
Thank you for putting into words how a lot of AI prose makes me feel. 'Persistent mic drops' is the most accurate way I have seen it described and I would even argue the 'this-not-that writing' is part of it. Setting up a chain of ever increasing seemingly powerful phrases to then conclude in a final statement which may or may not actually explain the core concept.
It also made me think of the Feynman Learning Technique[1] or learning by teaching in general: being able to accurately explain in simple terms requires to fully grasp the concept and noticing gaps in the explanation is an insight to the explainer to evaluate and understand those parts again at a deeper level. An AI arguably does not have this understanding and will happily drive home any point we have asked it to make.
In a way I think it's tied to the other discussion from today[2] where it was posited that domain knowledge makes you better at prompting LLMs and, consequently, would enable you to also better structure and evaluate explainers. But then again, explaining well is a different skill altogether.
Dismissive is appropriate-- "By the time the confirmation renders, the request and its replies will have crossed North America six times"
35ms times 6 is 210ms-- so just about physically possible with current infrastructure. But: this leaves no time for any of the hosts to do anything, or the wifi in the cafe, or whatever.
And immediately get shown an ad "how to build a backend framework from the wire up".
The first thing you think to yourself is how does building a backend relate to a coffeeshop click? Why would you even have to click in a coffee shop in the first place? If you really insist on product placement, why not explain how your order page works instead?
"the rules of this page" is a terrible wall of text that expects you to read carefully and memorize instead of using the scroll mechanism itself to show the clock in the center of the screen and then move it with a fluid animation to the top, so you notice it is there. Same problem problem with the time stop. You have to introduce the time stop mechanic as you go.
"the cast" is terrible yet again, you've primed me to expect the clock to start and I scroll through the request and nothing happens??? Why emphasize the infrastructure at the end with text? Why are there six requests? You only need one HTTP request/reply and TCP does not have the concept of requests. The packet round trips created by TCP/TLS handshakes do not count as multiple requests. This explainer feels wrong from a technical perspective already .
Then there is the fact that the text columns are incredibly thin with heavy vertical separation, there's an incredible waste of horizontal and vertical space to the point where you hardly get to read anything at all. You can divide the screen into 9 rectangles and only one of those is used. 90% of the screen is empty.
It also keeps jumping from single column, to double column to single double column (yes) and left bound text.
Not only does it not hook me, I'm having a hard time believing that the creator of this actually looked at the output or iterated on it at all.
I think it's because the explainer is passive, there's no interiority, it tells and doesn't show. plus, stylistically, if this were rewritten in second person (like most explainers are) it would make it a heck of a lot more readable:
'You order a coffee on your coffee shop's tablet. 211.4 ms later you see 'Order Confirmed'.
There's a world of complexity behind that status confirmation. Let's see how it all works.' etc