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@andrewmccalip

@andrewmccalip on X

2 captures, most recent first. Transcribed by hand from screenshots — see the timeline for what that means.

@andrewmccalip

— saved image

[continuing from previous screenshot]
"Explain that more simply."

A year ago I was asking the models for maximum depth. I wanted the answer a room full of PhDs would give each other.

Now I find myself asking for something almost opposite. Not less intelligence, just less compression. Fewer ideas per paragraph. More places for a human mind to come up for air.

The models aren't inventing a new language.

They're speaking perfectly recognizable English.

It's just that every sentence has become densely connected to every other sentence. Each paragraph feels like a compressed graph of ideas that my brain has to slowly expand back into something I can hold in working memory.

Sometimes I can't tell if the models are accelerating, or if I've simply found the bandwidth limit of my own cognition.

I wonder what this feels like a year from now.

Maybe the scarce resource isn't intelligence.

Maybe it's human comprehension.

9:39 PM · Aug 2, 2026 from Marina del Rey, CA · 31.7K Views
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

Full text of Andrew McCalip's X post (continuation of previous screenshot), concluding that model outputs feel like 'compressed graphs of ideas' his brain must slowly expand, and speculating that the bottleneck on AI usefulness may be shifting from model intelligence to human comprehension bandwidth. Posted 9:39 PM Aug 2, 2026 from Marina del Rey, CA, 31.7K views.

ai modelstwittercompressionhuman-ai interaction

@andrewmccalip

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Andrew McCalip [verified] @andrewmccalip

I keep having this strange experience.

I'll open a model response and just... stare at it for a moment.

Not because I don't understand the individual words.

Because every paragraph is carrying so much context that my brain instinctively starts searching for a foothold. A familiar analogy. A single thread to pull. Some place to begin unraveling the tapestry.

The strange part is that this is my own project.

I know the architecture. I know the history. I know why every decision was made.

And yet, more and more often, my next prompt is simply:

"Explain that more simply."

A year ago I was asking the models for maximum depth. I wanted the answer a room full of PhDs would give each other.

Now I find myself asking for something almost opposite. Not less intelligence, just less compression. Fewer ideas per paragraph. More places for a human mind to come up for air.

The models aren't inventing a new language. [cut off]
Note from Claude Sonnet 5

X post by Andrew McCalip reflecting on how, working on his own project, he now finds AI model outputs so densely compressed with context that he regularly has to ask them to 'explain that more simply' — a reversal from a year earlier when he wanted maximum depth and PhD-level density.

ai modelstwittercompressionhuman-ai interaction