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Comment by rfgplk | Hacker News Reader

Yea, impossible to know whether it's supposed to go by atomic mass, frequency or some other metric. Plus most people off the top of their heads don't really have these stats memorized. With OpenAI and Anthropic it's way more straightforward. If you stop the average person on the street and told them to order the three by mass, most couldn't do it. But they could order Moon/Earth/Sun/Astra

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Yeah. Atomic mass: Makes no sense, argon is larger than carbon. Frequency: Makes no sense, argon is least frequent of the three and hydrogen is everywhere, so carbon would be in-between rather than the flagship.

Letters of the alphabet: Also makes no sense. There was a theory that Argon = A, that there was an unreleased B model (Bismuth or Barium or something), Carbon = C, etc. (Similar to Intel's MMORPG-inspired Alchemist --> Battlemage --> Celestial...) Hydrogen broke this notion.

It's just completely incoherent.

Now written out like this, I can see a D = Deuterium, which is mass 2 or heavy hydrogen, but somewhere along along the line it was lost in translation.

Molecular mass tracks.

I’m not sure if the average person on the street would know the terms Luna, Terra, Sol, and especially Astra.

Also, the biggest being Astra is a bit confusing. Sol is also a star.

Furthermore, unless you know they’re supposed to be ordered by size you can’t know which is best.

> I’m not sure if the average person on the street would know the terms Luna, Terra, Sol, and especially Astra.

I don't think these are as difficult as you're making them sound? I think the majority of people who will care what model they're using will know "lunar", "terrestrial", "solar", "astronomy" etc?

Corsa, Astra, Vectra and Omega would be better names.

I see that Kadett finally disintegrated into nothingness :)

Into a heap of rust and a puddle of oil.

The average person isn't supposed to care, they won't be switching models to prompt for the best television for under $1000. But for professionals they should have some sort of understanding of these things.

Molecular mass is monotonic and tracks. Think of how you encounter the elements on earth -- hydrogen is a light gas, argon is slightly denser gas, and carbon is in complex life forms or graphite/diamonds. I agree nobody will remember the atomic masses, but if you ask them "which is heavier at room temp at sea level" I bet most technical people will get it right.

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