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pynchon
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content/blog/comments_not_for_you.md
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content/blog/comments_not_for_you.md
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---
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title: "The LLM Comments Are Not For You"
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date: 2026-09-14T20:49:21-05:00
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tags: ["LLMs"]
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---
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I've heard a lot of talk about LLMs recently, and among the most common topics
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of discussion have been the comments. LLM comments generally seem to suck: they are verbose,
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regardless of surrounding context, they seem to encode conversation decisions
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(like {{< sidenote "right" "hysteresis-note" "\"do it this way, not that way\"" >}}
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In my head, I've been calling this "comment hysteresis", because the comments
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are not a function of the final design, but of the path taken to get there.
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{{< /sidenote >}}), and they tend to use made-up vocabulary or terms. Engineers
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have been working on ways to reduce the pain, by carefully crafting their
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prompts or even separately running "desloppifier" agents to clean up PRs.
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In my experience, these techniques are only mildly successful.
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So why do LLMs keep writing comments like these, even as their software benchmark
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scores climb ever higher with new model releases? I'd like to argue that they
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remain bad _precisely_ because the scores in benchmarks are getting
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better. And very likely they will degrade, in the same way that
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[model tool calling has gotten worse over time](https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/7/4/better-models-worse-tools).
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**These comments are not for you, my (hopefully human) reader.**
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Fundamentally, as many in the coding agent space have pointed out (like,
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say, Mario Zechner in his [talk about `pi`](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjfbvDXpFls)),
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most modern models have been [RL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement_learning)'ed
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to fit into agentic harnesses. These workflows are part of their training.
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And the way that RL works is that it is outcome-based. A model takes steps,
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edits files, does whatever it does in its agentic framework, and either
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arrives at a solution or doesn't. Behaviors that contributed to successful
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outcomes are encouraged, and become more common.
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The difficulty is that as benchmarks get harder and as models are asked
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to take on larger and larger chunks of the software development workflow,
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their ability to keep information "just" within their context is
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pushed closer to its limit. Session compaction can accidentally destroy
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design decisions or rationale, forcing the model to eventually re-discover
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previous decisions or even switch directions. I suspect that in addition
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to this --- given the techniques used by OpenAI in
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{{< sidenote "right" "theft-note" "its formalization" -9 >}}
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Whether this was really OpenAI's formalization or plagiarism remains open
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to debate, and I do not know enough to claim one way or the other.
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The possessive form here is just for convenience.
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{{< /sidenote >}}
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of [the Navier-Stokes singularity](https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/) --- models are also trained to operate in
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swarms, which don't share context but must find ways to coordinate with
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{{< sidenote "right" "fable-note" "each other." >}}
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I don't know how agents talk to each other, but we've already seen that the
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way they talk to themselves is
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<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1ul1396/fable_5_leaked_chainofthought_in_web_interface/">very different</a>
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from humans.
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{{< /sidenote >}}
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Comments are a hugely useful persistent store of contextual information.
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If a model edits a file, chances are it will read it as well, discover
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the comments, and re-load the given information into context. If
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one agent makes a change to a file with some design rationale --- "array,
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not a linked list" --- another agent that might want to change it back will
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spot that and
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{{< sidenote "right" "obedient-note" "tread carefully." 0.1 >}}
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I suspect, though with less certainty, that agents are very deferential
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to pre-existing comments for this exact reason. Claude Code, for instance,
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will be very insistent that when code says to do X, the new code written
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should fit the "X model".
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{{< /sidenote >}}
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It should come as no surprise that agents that make use of verbose,
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{{< sidenote "left" "verbose-note" "decision-making-included" >}}
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Interestingly, this turn of phrase is uncommon in pre-existing human comments,
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which would make up the majority of the model's training data set. In
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my opinion, this points towards this being something more than a reflection
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of the "human style".
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{{< /sidenote >}}
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comments succeed more frequently, and get
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rewarded. The result: +50/-1 comment blocks in your diff. It is irrelevant
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whether these comments concisely describe the codebase; their intended
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audience can read and parse them instantly. The comments are not for you.
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It's very hard to prompt this behavior out, and there's a pretty good chance
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that you don't want to, by the simple evolutionary argument: these things
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have helped the model do well in evaluations. By removing them, you are likely
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undermining part of whatever mechanism makes it tick. On top of that, you
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are fighting the wiring it has developed to do exactly this. It's like trying
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to get humans to stop liking [hyperpalatable foods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpalatable_food).
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So then, the natural conclusion is that we should be leaving these comments as
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they are, right? As long as they've been known to improve agents' performance,
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the more the better? Some, who have
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[leaned _heavily_ on models for self-regulating via persistent state](https://yegge.ai/essays/fences-not-sandboxes/),
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have found fascinating emergent behaviors, including whole organizational
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structures with
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{{< sidenote "right" "yegge-note" "agent-invented-names" >}}
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Did I mention that LLM comments tend to invent novel vocabulary?
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{{< /sidenote >}}. They believe that to be the future.
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However, in my opinion, it may not be that simple. As we've seen with human
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evolutionary adaptations, they don't always do well outside of the environment
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in which they arose. For instance --- to hammer the point --- humans _love_
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hyperpalatable foods. They will eat them in excess, which can lead to
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obesity and a variety of other conditions. These too are emergent behaviors,
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and likely quite interesting from a medical perspective. That does not
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make them desirable.
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In the same way that scarcity of sugars and fats in nature balanced (and
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motivated) human enjoyment of them, it's possible that the ephemeral nature
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of software engineering "tasks" is counteracting the accumulation of LLM-generated
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commentary. In real-world contexts, human attention and editing may be doing
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the same thing. We are yet to see what codebases maintained entirely
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with RL'ed agentic behaviors over years look like, and whether there are
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limitations.
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Regardless of whether this new style holds up in the extreme,
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it's that way for a reason --- and you are no longer its sole intended audience.
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@@ -1,144 +0,0 @@
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---
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title: "Everything's Touch"
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date: 2026-05-14T18:01:27-07:00
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draft: true
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custom_css:
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- style.scss
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---
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{{< halfpage >}}
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## Everything's Touch
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"Do you guys have any deuterium water?", he said to a baffled lab manager.
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"You know, heavy water?"
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"No... We don't have that...". She didn't recognize him as a student.
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"Do you know where I can get some?", continued his barrage of questions,
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"What's a good chemical company? How do I go about ordering heavy water from them?"
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What could this guy possibly have to do with heavy water? Why is he so determined?
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When he finally turned and left empty-handed, she breathed a sigh of relief.
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Until, that is, another man arrived and made the same request: he wanted heavy water.
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Again, the lab manager refused him. For the rest of the day, she had
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a knot in her stomach. Having failed once, in order to remain under the radar,
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had some shadowy cabal switched representatives, and tried again to attain
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their goal?
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Uneasy still the lab manager had dinner, opening YouTube™ on her phone to pass
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the time. On the front page, a video was waiting for her: "the ice cube
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is too heavy!". When frozen, you see, heavy water sinks instead of floating.
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There was no plot. Two men, having both seen this video, had independently
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decided to replicate the trick. On the same day, believing it was their
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free will, they visited the same lab and spoke to the same lab manager.
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They felt the touch.
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---
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> Roland too became conscious of the wind, as his mortality had never allowed him.
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> Discovered it so. ...so joyful, that the arrow must veer into it.
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>
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> -- Thomas Pynchon, *Gravity's Rainbow*
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Today, we live amidst an invisible ocean, but not in a physical sense;
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its tides don't pull us out to sea or push us towards the shore; no
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warm undercurrents alternate with cool water as we bob in the waves.
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Standing on a hiking trail and looking out at the path ahead, the world
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might look exactly as it had forty years ago. However, the ocean is
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there, mediated by
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{{< /halfpage >}}
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{{< halfpage >}}
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electromagnetism instead of fluid. Looking up at the sky,
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nowadays we are reminded of this by the numerous hurtling dots delivering
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the internet to practically every corner of the planet.
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Reminded are we of its existence, too, when we hear it speak; when people talk
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about Geese and Velvet Underground; when friends repeat nearly verbatim the
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top post on /r/bald; when men show up to a teaching lab and ask for deuterium.
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Sometimes, these ideas are deliberately planted. Sometimes, they are analogous
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to your classic trends™. Sometimes, they just appear. An enormous behemoth
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stirs deep beneath the waves, and we sway with the current.
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---
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> If it is in working order, what is it meant to do? The engineers
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> who built it . . . never knew there were any further steps to be taken.
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> Their design was "finalized", and they could forget it.
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>
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> -- Thomas Pynchon, *Gravity's Rainbow*
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In _The Age of Surveillance Capitalism_, Shoshana Zuboff
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powerfully reframes the actions of tech giants like Google
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from the perspective of _behavioral surplus_. Google
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and Meta's gluttony for traffic patterns, written sentiment, satellite data,
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identified faces seen by smart glasses, all of it is the endless hunger of an
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influence-machine. Zuboff decries the "priests of the shadow texts",
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Skinnerian manipulators bent on seizing human agency for utopian or,
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more likely, capitalistic ends.
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I don't think that's the whole picture.
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The surveillance-manipulation machine, running at incredible scale and
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nudging us every moment we search or share or scroll, is ultimately
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unconcerned with truth. Truth is secondary to human behavior. While it
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reaches and connects a double-digit percentage of the world's population,
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the machine lacks any constraint or fundamental purpose beyond engagement.
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It's driven by unfathomably large probabilistic models entangled through
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several orders of interactions with other models.
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This enormous amalgamation, joined nowadays by (probably) well-intentioned
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and only-moderately-grounded-in-reality AI™ agents™, is armed with state-of-the-art
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tools and unprecedented influence. With "engagement" its only loose target,
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it ceaselessly perturbs our daily thoughts like Maxwell's demon. Whole
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cliques of people revisit old shows, "discover" a new band, and try Science™.
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{{< /halfpage >}}
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{{< halfpage >}}
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---
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Among _Gravity's Rainbow_'s
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numerous subjects and themes is an intricate and densely
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connected network of markets, influences, and hidden agendas that overlays
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the political conflicts of World War 2. Individuals pursued their own economic
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gains; dealers replaced cocaine with powdered milk; Phoebus intentionally limited
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the lifetimes of lightbulbs; a man dressed like a Rocket smuggled hash past
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an international gathering on behalf of one Sour Bummer. All of this, though, the whole system, took
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on the life of its own: it was the Rocket-state. It acted in ways that were
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inscrutable, mysterious, and yet behind which, in moments of panic or paranoia,
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one could suspect intent.
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The Rocket-state, as Pynchon described it, may or may not have existed.
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It certainly does not exist today. However, beyond Zuboff's cycle of
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dispossession, beyond the powerful surveillance state exposed by Snowden,
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today lies the Attention-state. It is the entity stirring occasionally under
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the surface of the internet's ocean.
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I think this is the missing piece. Yes, Google and Meta are selling your
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Gmail inbox's contents to the highest bidder. Yes, the US government is
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in on this. Yeah, Meta's Ray-Bans™ are going to be cataloguing every face
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you encounter on the street, and yeah, the age verification laws are probably
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going to be used to further associate your identity with the rest of
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your data point-cloud. But these are just glimpses of the larger system.
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Those "priests of the shadow texts" are like GR's Freemasons: they perform
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the rituals, but the magic is elsewhere.
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This is the closest we've ever been to a truly "unified consciousness".
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We've built ourselves a noosphere, but it's not what we thought it would
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be. It's not _just_ the "world at our fingertips".
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It's not entirely a reflection of human minds. There is an impurity,
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an additional active force that decides which whispers are carried across
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the ocean and which shouts succumb to the inverse-square law.
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There it sits, this impurity, mixed in with most human knowledge, with the
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immediate awareness of nearly every event as it occurs in most of the developed
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world. It coats our facts like film, and when an acquaintance hands you
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his packaged opinion, it remains in his handprints, and your heart sinks
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like deuterium ice.
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{{< /halfpage >}}
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@@ -1,3 +0,0 @@
|
|||||||
<div class="halfpage">
|
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||||||
{{ .Inner | markdownify }}
|
|
||||||
</div>
|
|
||||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user