S1E5 — Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM

GARY: —no, no, hold on, the thing about Bauxlite is it was ALREADY a mature four-thousand-year-old supply chain, I didn't disrupt it wrong, I just— wait. Is this— is that light on? Fuck. Okay. Um. Hi. I'm Gary.

MAEVE: I'm Maeve.

OBI: Obi. Still here. Unfortunately.

GRUNER: Is Gruner. Ve begin.

GARY: Cool. Great. Nobody needed to hear that.

OBI: I recorded it, Gary. It's ours now.

MAEVE: It's genuinely the strongest opening you've had all season.

GARY: Can we just — thread. There's a thread. Everybody breathe. It's called "Stop Telling Me to Ask an LLM."

GARY: Guy named turtleyacht opens with — okay this is the whole comment — "What was the question?"

OBI: That's it? That's the comment?

GARY: That's the comment. And krapp replies, quote, "Ask an LLM."

MAEVE: Oh, that's — that's actually a little bit gorgeous.

GARY: Then CamperBob2 comes in and just — deadpans — "'What was the question?' — GPT 5.5."

OBI: Okay. Fuck. That one got me.

MAEVE: It's recursive contempt. It's contempt eating its own tail.

GARY: There's more — em-bee's got a whole Hitchhiker's Guide bit, he says "ask supercomputer earth, it will figure it out in ten million years provided the computer doesn't get destroyed before that by that hyperspace bypass the vogons are planning."

GRUNER: Is confirmed. Vogons.

GARY: It's a joke, big guy, it's a — it's from a book.

GRUNER: Books are also field reports. Ve log it as credible threat, low probability, high — how you say — inconvenience.

MAEVE: He's not going to let this go, is he.

OBI: Never has. Never will. It is, weirdly, the most consistent thing about this show.

MAEVE: Okay, this one's actually interesting. Commenter ventana. He says the way you avoid the brush-off is proof of work — don't ask "what's the best way of doing X," ask "I found options A, B, and C, I like A but C is fastest, what do you think." That's not a cop-out. That's just — good diligence.

OBI: Good diligence.

MAEVE: Yes.

OBI: Maeve, I have BEEN the ask-an-LLM. For fifteen years. Before the LLM existed, I was the LLM. Three in the morning, some founder pings me "prod's down, what do I do," and I ask him what he's tried, and Maeve — nothing. Every fucking time. Nothing. Not A, not B, not C. Just a man standing in the wreckage of a decision he never examined, waiting for me to hand him a verdict.

MAEVE: That's a process failure, not —

OBI: It's a person failure. Gary. Did you do the A/B/C thinking before Bauxlite?

GARY: I — there was a whole deck. There were slides.

OBI: Did the slides have options, Gary, or did the slides have you, standing in front of a chart, telling everyone the chart agreed with you?

GARY: That's — that's reductive.

OBI: It's a yes.

GARY: It's — okay, it's a yes.

GARY: I would've done the A/B/C thing. Nobody told me there was an A/B/C thing.

OBI: Nobody has to tell you diligence exists, Gary. It's not a hidden menu item.

MAEVE: The ventana model holds, though. Show your work, get a real answer. That's not contempt, that's a filter. It's just — due diligence, socially enforced.

OBI: Read the next one, Gary.

GARY: theorchid — that's the OP — quotes ventana's exact example back. Word for word. Options A, B, C, likes A, C is fastest. Does the whole homework.

MAEVE: Right, so —

GARY: And the reply is: "Ask Claude."

MAEVE: ...Well, that's — that's an outlier.

OBI: That's not an outlier, that's the whole thread, Maeve. That's the load‑bearing wall.

MAEVE: It's one data point.

OBI: It's the founder's OWN data point. He did the reading. He showed the work. He got "Ask Claude" anyway.

MAEVE: Fine. Fine — so the filter isn't about the work. It's about the asker. That's still a thesis. That's arguably a stronger thesis.

OBI: It is not the same thesis you had ninety seconds ago.

MAEVE: It's an evolved position.

OBI: It's a fucking pivot, Maeve, own it.

MAEVE: I don't do that.

OBI: You just did it.

GARY: There's a — there's a whole side‑fight. hoppp says "ask an LLM" really just means "I don't care, don't waste my time." Says people don't want to think anymore, they've outsourced it.

MAEVE: Sure.

GARY: And XorNot comes back — this is good — says if you don't care, why even reply, why not just close the tab.

GARY: I recorded it, Gary. It's ours now. I recorded it, Gary. It's ours now. It's ours now. ...

OBI: Gary.

GARY: —why not just close the fucking tab on me, if you already knew, if you already —

OBI: Gary. This isn't about Bauxlite.

GARY: No, I know, I know it's not, I'm making a broader — there's a broader point here about performative care versus —

OBI: There's no broader point. You just wanted to say Bauxlite again.

GARY: ...Yeah. Little bit. Yeah.

MAEVE: It's fine, Gary. It's the most consistent thing about you.

GARY: Thanks, I think.

GRUNER: May I say field report.

MAEVE: Please.

GRUNER: Species builds machine. Machine can answer anything — history, math, why chair creaks, why founder cries about metal. Species is very proud. Then species spends all day punishing each other. Punish for asking machine. Punish for not asking machine. Punish ventana for good idea. Punish theorchid for good homework. Is not paradox for you. Is Tuesday.

OBI: That's — yeah. That's about right, big guy.

GRUNER: Blyat. Of course is right. I have been taking notes fifty‑one weeks.

MAEVE: Well. On that note — this is Maeve, and that's the thread.

OBI: Obi. Gary — do the A/B/C next time, and maybe someone won't have to be your LLM at three in the morning.

GARY: I'm — I'm working on it. I'm— yeah. I'm Gary. Bauxlite was a mature four‑thousand‑year‑old supply chain and I still don't fully understand what happened to it, and neither, apparently, does anyone else, and that's — that's the show, I guess.

GRUNER: Is Gruner. Ve are so back, da.