[jamestimmins]

I actually love the idea of totally new naming schemes for experimental software.

Certain name types are so normalized (agent, worker, etc) that while they serve their role well, they likely limit our imagination when thinking about software, and it's a worthwhile effort to explore alternatives.

[tom_]

This reminds me of Moldbug's Urbit. I can't be bothered to look it up, but his comment was along the lines of "existing words bring assumptions, so safest to make new ones". To which, my comment would be: perflufflington flibnik qupnux.

[vessenes]

Not just this, but I’ve been thinking that naming things with aggressively strong connotations might help Claude get out of ‘nice/helpful’ mode. “You are the Deacon, grrrrr”. So there might be actually be a bit of effectiveness added by naming an agent appropriately. I offer no opinion on the word polecats.

[ivankra]

Maybe helps the LLM, but at the cost of confusing humans. It would've been better left as an internal implementation detail. I've got better things to keep in my head that remembering wtf deacon is, etc.

[3dsnano]

yes, totally. AI-luddites see this as whimsy, but it's actually wizard-level power of abstractions and context ascension. if u know u know

[tptacek]

I do too, but you can take things too far, which I'd argue has happened the moment "figuring out what the names mean" becomes enough of an intellectual challenge to provide a dopamine hit; at that point, you've (intentionally or otherwise) germinated a cult. It's human nature: people will support the design not on its merits but rather as loss aversion for the work they put into decoding it.

[jamestimmins]

Yes at some point innovative software and naming are at cross purposes, and if your naming gets too extreme ultimately that will get all of the attention.