It's easy to think "it's not talking down, because I don't understand it, and I'm intelligent". But how is less intelligent being supposed to fully understand a more intelligent one, honestly speaking? All I know is that Claude understands Claude perfectly. I have the common session pause/resume setup that sometimes produces completely incomprehensible markdown files, but a new Claude session picks them up perfectly, down to the smallest details. What if what we consider excessive circular gibberish is actually highly precise set of instructions needed to minimize error cases for that unreliable human?
If Claude understands Claude, Claude understands human, and human doesn't understand Claude, that doesn't argue well for "Claude is a caveman".
I treat the Claude output that is hard to comprehend as an encoding/encryption. Claude knows how to decipher it, humans don't. I see this frequently in design docs from inexperienced engineers who used LLMs - they will contain terms (often two words hyphenated) that aren't obvious and should be defined, or simply replaced with simple language. If you prompt claude it is able to decipher and explain / replace this gibberish.
> But how is less intelligent being supposed to fully understand a more intelligent one, honestly speaking?
It is really simple. It is on the supposedly more intelligent person to be able to phrase things in simple way. Writing something incomprehensible and convoluted is easier then writing something simple to understand. Even for people.
> a new Claude session picks them up perfectly, down to the smallest details.
I genuinely doubt so.
> What if what we consider excessive circular gibberish is actually highly precise set of instructions needed to minimize error cases for that unreliable human?
It is not highly precise set of instructions and it is not following them in highly precise way.
If Claude understands Claude, Claude understands human, and human doesn't understand Claude, that doesn't argue well for "Claude is a caveman".