Comment by patcon
3 hours ago
I wrote this awhile ago on a social network...
i've been trying lately to think how to talk about my creeping fear of LLMs... here's my best effort at explaining the intuition:
the words are the map. we've built this map together over generations. Words are where we've cross-boned the dangers and x-marked the treasures, whether the things that we've found in the territory or that we've buried within it.
a few weeks ago, a strange new player arrived at the edge of the night's encampment, and it knows our secret society's handshake, and so we are compelled to invite it to join us. it seems to be a good navigator... and so now it's taken to sitting at the front of the convoy, pointing the way as it quietly redraws the map...
I asked a Vietnamese woman if she wanted to play board games at a cafe with me.
She got very upset and stormed off. 2 hours later, she messaged me: "sorry, I was rude, but I will not go to the casino with you."
Common language, culture, and context makes a more peaceful world.
If this happened, you didn't put in the effort to learn to speak Vietnamese well enough. Or she didn't speak your language well enough.
"Common language, culture, and context makes a more peaceful world" is such a ridiculous and abhorrent thing to say I can't even keep writing here.
Edit: Then again, I just saw this post you wrote: https://www.kcoleman.me/2026/01/28/when-everything-becomes-n...
Your last line there - "Instead, in 2026 I want to restore contrast." So I can't tell if you're joking now because those words and this comment are at stark odds.
>ridiculous and abhorrent
Why such an adverse reaction? Nothing about what they said seems abhorrent! It's a common/usual positive sentiment, like "Understanding things give life meaning", etc.
2 replies →
My SO is Vietnamese and a Bac Si trained in Japan and here, and even she has made similar ESL mistakes.
Some of the tools and dictionaries used for Viet-English are wonky, and depending on when they were educated the English teachers were either unqualified backpackers or some grifter who opened an English tutoring center (oftentimes one and the same).
And coming from a language with little overlap with Indo-European languages and roots makes it a very alien experience (and the same in reverse as well).
3 replies →
It also makes a boring one. Friction is where interesting experiences, stories, and cultures are born.
> Common language, culture, and context makes a more peaceful world.
As a South Korean - well, considering that my country once went through an existential war against our mortal enemies, the other Koreans ...
Common language and culture doesn't stop hate. Sometimes it just means that your insult will land on your target perfectly as intended.