[dcow]

Respectfully, when you’re responding to someone who doesn't know what RL is, and you say “it’s this—already used in [another even lesser known acronym that includes the original]…” it doesn’t really help asker (like if you know what RLHF is then you know what RL is). I’ll admit I knew what RL was already but I don’t know what RLHF is and the comment just confuses me.

What is RLHF?

[diggan]

Am I the only one who uses a search engine while reading comment threads about industries/technologies I am not familiar with? This whole conversation is like two searches away from explaining everything (or a two minute conversation with an LLM I suppose)

[open_]

That makes for poor communication by increasing the friction to read someone's thoughts.

As an author, you should care about reducing friction and decreasing the cost to the reader.

[duggan]

Some onus is on the reader to educate themselves, particular on Hacker News.

[mindcrime]

Am I the only one who uses a search engine while reading comment threads about industries/technologies I am not familiar with?

No. And yet... it's considered a Good Practice to expand acronyms on first use, and generally do things to reduce the friction for your audience to understand what you're writing.

[diggan]

> and generally do things to reduce the friction for your audience to understand what you're writing

Sure, if you're writing a blogpost titled "Architecture for Chefs" then yes, write with that audience in mind.

But we're a mix-match of folks here, from all different walks of life. Requiring that everyone should expand all acronyms others possibly might not understand, would just be a waste of time.

If I see two cooks discussing knives with terms I don't understand, is it really their responsibility to make sure I understand it, although I'm just a passive observer, and I posses the skill to look up things myself?

[ziddoap]

>But we're a mix-match of folks here, from all different walks of life. Requiring that everyone should expand all acronyms others possibly might not understand, would just be a waste of time.

Exactly!

Why would I waste 5 seconds of my own time, when I could waste 5 seconds of a dozen to hundreds of people's time?

My time is much better spent in meta-discussions, informing people that writing out a word one single time instead of typing up the acronym is too much.

[dcow]

Yes, I searched RLHF and figured it out. But this was an especially “good” example of poor communication. I assume the author isn’t being deliberately obtuse and appreciates the feedback.

[furyofantares]

This sounds impossible but I would guess RLHF is actually a better known acronym than RL. It became fairly popularly known among tech folks with no AI experience when ChatGPT came out.