[proggy]

In my view the author is putting the cart before the horse here. His primary argument seems to be that people already think in bullet points, so the fluff around them is unnecessary and can be excised without destroying the original message. But that fluff is there for many reasons. It adds context, it allows us to commingle our meaningful and valid emotions alongside our facts, and ultimately, it lets us tell a human story.

The way in which we create and consume information has a direct effect on our experience of the world, and I think there is a deeper point to be made here about how the way we use communication technology. The endless firehose of information is drowning our brains to the point that we are compelled to find a way to cope. But I would argue that the way to do that is to rate limit receipt of messages so that only the quality stuff gets through, rather than letting everything through and destroy every human aspect of them in the process. It’s Twitter’s 140 character limit argument from last decade all over again; the medium becomes the message, so we must be careful what mediums we use.

[supriyo-biswas]

> But that fluff is there for many reasons. It adds context, it allows us to commingle our meaningful and valid emotions alongside our facts, and ultimately, it lets us tell a human story.

That was the case prior to the availability of LLMs. However, the practice of sending over LLM-expanded content from the sender to the recipient and the use of LLM-aided summarization on the recipient's side is only about to become prevalent. Once it reaches some sort of saturation point, people would either forego LLMs entirely, or move to other forms of communication that you speak of where this sort of social convention won't be needed entirely.

In my case, I predict that this is going to make people interact a lot more in meatspace and supersede Internet communication in the same way email has been relegated for many people over channels such as Discord, WhatsApp, etc.

[MITSardine]

It's a little bit sad that people are wasting all these kWh of compute power to save a few seconds hassle (apparently) of communication. I don't know how to translate this in English, but LLM-driven emailing is a real "gas factory", an absurd level of complexity and effort (albeit hidden) for a trivial task.

Why not just adopt a more direct style of communication? Why fret so much over emails? You wouldn't leave an actually important e-mail to an LLM, I would hope not. And, if it's more casual (even in a work setting), just write as you usually do, the other person most likely knows you and doesn't give a shit.

[wahnfrieden]

How much email activity is directly valuable to these individual workers vs boss and owner-mandated low-value nonsense?

It feels like blaming emissions on commuters as individuals instead of the ones making RTO mandates

[supriyo-biswas]

At my previous employer, there was a kind of a top-down mandate to "use AI in your daily work to become efficient", which senior management would interpret in all sorts of braindead ways.

This, of course, lead to hilariously nonsensical emails, such as a IT security team member sending out a LLM-generated email about how users should be reading CVE reports for the software they use, instead of doing the right thing and lock out people running old software.

[nemomarx]

isn't it kinda already the case that you send emails and people want you to jump on a video call to explain it?

or have I just had bad luck

[taneq]

I don’t think it’s just you. “This site visit could have been an online meeting which could have been a phone call which could have been an email which could have been a text.”

[supriyo-biswas]

None of the places I've worked at required sending an email -- although I've been on the receiving end of people asking to set up calls for trivial issues.

[KaiserPro]

> It adds context, it allows us to commingle our meaningful and valid emotions alongside our facts, and ultimately, it lets us tell a human story.

You are correct of course, The fluff is the "delivery vehicle" but that also introduces errors.

the problem is, this kind of extra information is hard to do effectively, and its not really taught formally. Worse still its very hard to do if there are cultural or neurological differences(ie being on the spectrum, or a Dutch person talking to someone English)

[bko]

I agree, I think he overstated the desire to add fluff. It's true that LLMs now add a bunch of fluff by default, but I imagine that will get better.

I actually do the reverse of the example the author gave (bullet points - fluff). I give train of thought to an LLM about what I want to communicate and instruct it to use no BS and make it tight and it gives me a well structure short message with clear action items logically structured. It adds the minimal amount of fluff (e.g. "Thanks for taking the time to speak with me today") but it makes it a lot easier for the other person to comprehend, without using an LLM.

[ericmcer]

Yeah totally agree, the fluff is important.

The "fluff" is a careful orchestration driven by our desire to maintain social standing. 5,000 years ago rejection by the tribe meant death, and that fear is subconsciously influencing all our communications and actions. That is why a bullet point email of what is wrong with a coworker is not acceptable, it lacks all the nuance that allows you to read into the other persons past perceptions and future intents.

[danielbln]

There is a huge range of cultural influence though. Americans, on average, have quite a different communication to let's say Germans or Scandinavians. Fluff will be present everywhere, but to vastly different degrees.