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How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

laurentiugabriel.github.io

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Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#421

Post by TeMPOraL »

snmx999 wrote: post #388
TeMPOraL wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-consistency and consistency with your lived experience are good heuristics. Reality is self-consistent, so anything that doesn't add up indicated an error in the source or your understanding of it (or both). EDIT: I think it's a kind thing you need to tune yourself into. OTOH, I've observed many (most?) people seemingly being completely oblivious to self-consistency issues of their beliefs and mental models, or…

Reality is most likely self-consistent, but as we can only experience a tiny part of it it‘s impossible to tell. Also, parts of reality may appear to be contradictory with each other when some pieces are not known.

> Also, parts of reality may appear to be contradictory with each other when some pieces are not known.

Exactly. This tells you where something is off. The problem may be your lack of understanding or wrong understanding, or it may be with the source, or the framing, or you may have hit a genuine lack of data - still, the puzzles don't fit in some area.

And yes, not all self-consistent understanding is correct. But all inconsistent understanding is incorrect. And the more knowledge you gain, the less likely it is that it'll all connect self-consistently, but still be very wrong.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#422

Post by coderatlarge »

avilay wrote: post #296
coderatlarge wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i’m personally deriving a huge amount of value from the custom materials fable is assembling for me. for example i asked it to write a focused expository math paper on reed solomon to accompany an implementation module that it wrote for me. it’s remarkably useful to steer it to create graphs and diagrams of exactly how you like the material presented. or the bibliography researched and cross-linked with the body or t…

Good point. Same with me. Despite it being very tiresome, all the back and forth that I do with it really deepens my understanding of the topic. I have been on Opus so far, let me try Fable and see if it gets better. I haven’t tried voice either. Next time I go for a walk I’ll try that!

curious to hear about your findings!

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#423

Post by sublinear »

manfromchina1 wrote: post #406
matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

I personally don't get this attitude. For one thing, nobody on earth can give you a 500-word summary of quantum physics in a way that lets you internalize even a tiny bit of it. That's not how you learn anything. Here's how I do it: I open Baby Rudin (3rd ed.), second chapter, and read the main text - absolute brutality. I unpack almost every sentence with Claude/GPT until I finally get what's going on. No ELI5 nonse…

Is that meaningfully different from the study methods of the past? That doesn't require an LLM, and using one risks correctness in exchange for speed. You might not even get that speed if you're stuck in the weeds often enough.

A decade ago, a google search for study guides written by another professor would have been slightly slower. A decade before that, you'd be even slower fumbling through several books. Every single word could at least be trusted. You don't get that from an LLM.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#424

Post by abrbhat »

matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

Learning is not about what you put in, it is about what you can take out. It is also not zero-sum, but rather exists on a wide spectrum for any given knowledge domain. A good idea could be to prompt the LLMs to keep quizzing you on what you have read and test on both recall and understanding.

Also learning is not just about truth, it is about curiosity as well. The pop-sci metaphors could actually good for satisfying the curiosity of let's say a 10-year old. What to learn and how to learn is ultimately at the judgement of the learner. The better the judgement, the more the learner can stay closer to the exact scientific details.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#426

Post by TeMPOraL »

moffkalast wrote: post #383
TeMPOraL wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-consistency and consistency with your lived experience are good heuristics. Reality is self-consistent, so anything that doesn't add up indicated an error in the source or your understanding of it (or both). EDIT: I think it's a kind thing you need to tune yourself into. OTOH, I've observed many (most?) people seemingly being completely oblivious to self-consistency issues of their beliefs and mental models, or…

> consistency with your lived experience Aka confirmation bias. We like explanations that fit what we expect, even if they're completely wrong.

I said consistent with your experience, not with your expectations. Lived experience is empirical data.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#427

Post by bonoboTP »

matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

This is not a silver bullet that will make everyone a genius. Not even the best human tutor can do that. But it can be a massive clearer of certain roadblocks for people with no better human help available. Countless people have to resort to learning from teachers who themselves are confused and know the material only shallowly and give confused and wrong explanations that can be very hard to untie for the learner. For most undergrad level things, LLMs have a breadth and depth of knowledge and online search capability that it can make you unstuck on some misunderstanding quite effectively. You still have to work. It's not magic. But the goalpost cannot be to catapult the median person to become Einstein. It's a tool.

Luckily I had my dad available who is a scientist, during my high school and he corrected several fundamental mis-explanations of my teacher that even to my mind logically simply didn't add up. I learned not to relay this back to the teacher of course and sometimes regurgitated the wrong answer in tests. Not everyone is so lucky. This has been my frustration quite often. Textbooks are sometimes wrong, both because the author really doesn't have good expertise on that slice of the topic or out of didactic simplification reasons. Having an LLM that can consult the real grownup literature and give the full story, not the birds-and-bees is quite useful.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#428

Post by winnit »

sublinear wrote: post #423
manfromchina1 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't get this attitude. For one thing, nobody on earth can give you a 500-word summary of quantum physics in a way that lets you internalize even a tiny bit of it. That's not how you learn anything. Here's how I do it: I open Baby Rudin (3rd ed.), second chapter, and read the main text - absolute brutality. I unpack almost every sentence with Claude/GPT until I finally get what's going on. No ELI5 nonse…

Is that meaningfully different from the study methods of the past? That doesn't require an LLM, and using one risks correctness in exchange for speed. You might not even get that speed if you're stuck in the weeds often enough. A decade ago, a google search for study guides written by another professor would have been slightly slower. A decade before that, you'd be even slower fumbling through several books. Every si…

When studying a mathematics text, it is good practice to question what you are reading, trying to prove things to yourself etc., which IMO makes the problem of trusted sources much less than it is in things which you are not able to verify e.g. historical accounts.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#429

Post by coderatlarge »

matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

prompt: if a family has four boys, would a bayesian conclude that their next child would most likely be a boy?

fable taught me about the beta binomial and large observational studies that came down on both sides of the question about whether per family births are truly binomial. it also told me about countries like the uk and uae that are inching towards national genetic registries that might answer such questions definitively in time. as well as the efforts in Cyprus in this 80s to reduce beta thalassemia through voluntary testing of couples pre marriage.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#430

Post by Jtarii »

sublinear wrote: post #423
manfromchina1 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't get this attitude. For one thing, nobody on earth can give you a 500-word summary of quantum physics in a way that lets you internalize even a tiny bit of it. That's not how you learn anything. Here's how I do it: I open Baby Rudin (3rd ed.), second chapter, and read the main text - absolute brutality. I unpack almost every sentence with Claude/GPT until I finally get what's going on. No ELI5 nonse…

Is that meaningfully different from the study methods of the past? That doesn't require an LLM, and using one risks correctness in exchange for speed. You might not even get that speed if you're stuck in the weeds often enough. A decade ago, a google search for study guides written by another professor would have been slightly slower. A decade before that, you'd be even slower fumbling through several books. Every si…

If you have an actual mathematics professor to ask questions to then sure do that, but most people don't have that luxury. Also the error rate of frontier LLMs on textbook highschool/college level mathematics is going to be extremely low.

It is also significantly more engaging and fun.

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