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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

#81

Post by varispeed »

8bitsout wrote: post #48

I thought LLMs were a great tool for learning new topics - perhaps even complex ones. But overtime, I have had several frustrations with this. First, I get exhausted reading LLM prose. I really don't want to read anything generated by something like Opus 5 at this point. Second, as I dive deeper, I need a way to organize the information in a useful way as I begin to branch out in many different directions. I have tri…

> First, I get exhausted reading LLM prose.

Often "be concise, to the point." is enough, but you can also paste it some stuff you like as an example text and ask to do style transfer.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#84

Post by lanfeust6 »

8bitsout wrote: post #48

I thought LLMs were a great tool for learning new topics - perhaps even complex ones. But overtime, I have had several frustrations with this. First, I get exhausted reading LLM prose. I really don't want to read anything generated by something like Opus 5 at this point. Second, as I dive deeper, I need a way to organize the information in a useful way as I begin to branch out in many different directions. I have tri…

LLMs help me refine my search. If I want to dive deeper into any topic, I can yield a strong list of primary sources relatively quickly.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#85

Post by epolanski »

> I personally find the style used by LLMs to explain things difficult to follow. It's just too simplistic

I also struggle with LLMs explaining things, but for the opposite reason.

I consistently have problems to get short, precise but plain/simple answers.

Instead I'm overwhelmed with walls of texts, often filled with jargon that is a mixture of imprecise and unneeded.

The style at which I learn better is by asking about stuff interactively. I ask you what something is, you give me a 3-4 sentences top answer. Then I explore and dig into the topic from your answer on the things I want to know better.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#86

Post by cortesoft »

8bitsout wrote: post #48

I thought LLMs were a great tool for learning new topics - perhaps even complex ones. But overtime, I have had several frustrations with this. First, I get exhausted reading LLM prose. I really don't want to read anything generated by something like Opus 5 at this point. Second, as I dive deeper, I need a way to organize the information in a useful way as I begin to branch out in many different directions. I have tri…

I have been using this tool for the past few months that was posted on here: https://github.com/devenjarvis/lathe

It generates tutorials for you, and serves a webpage that lets you complete them. It does a remarkable job.

It still has a bit of the LLM prose problem, but it does help you fine tune the ‘voice’ it uses.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#88

Post by dan_mctree »

jdalsgaard wrote: post #51

I guess we all learn in different ways. I prefer reading, and can fairly fast find the articles that make sense to me. Colleagues often suggest podcasts and videos - I very, very rarely listen to them or see them. The bandwidth is too low. It's not efficient and ultimately I'm bored. This is a nice project, it looks cute. I watched some of the pages But I want more than that, more information, and faster - still a Wi…

Imo the podcast and the video are better served as background material for some other task. The low bandwidth becomes an advantage because it's often ok if you miss out on some parts due to lack of attention.

Indeed it's often a waste of time to just focus on talking people fully if you want to learn fast, reading and especially deliberate practice are better for that. But if you don't have the time, energy or focus, then listening to interviews in the background can be useful supplementally

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#89

Post by hirako2000 »

gb2d_hn wrote: post #80
copperx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much better to feed the book to the LLM and ask questions as you read along, instead of asking the LLM to basically write a custom book for you from scratch.

I came across the socratic method recently, and have used it to learn a couple of topics that I was having trouble getting to stick. There are some SKILL.md's available for it. It works for concepts as opposed to facts, and causes the model to guide you to answers through your own reasoning, which is both much more engaging than reading a wall of LLM text and helps the information stick.

I was so annoyed I made a Socratic wrapper based on predefined curriculum:

https://adaptive.bounded.cc

Trying to diagrams/animations didn't yield good results even with frontier models. But pure text, any model does a decent job.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#90

Post by c_moscardi »

8bitsout wrote: post #48

I thought LLMs were a great tool for learning new topics - perhaps even complex ones. But overtime, I have had several frustrations with this. First, I get exhausted reading LLM prose. I really don't want to read anything generated by something like Opus 5 at this point. Second, as I dive deeper, I need a way to organize the information in a useful way as I begin to branch out in many different directions. I have tri…

Yeah, I am currently trying to work with Opus 5 to refresh myself on deep learning fundamentals, and... it's a mixed bag. I'm glad I already am familiar with the subject matter, as I can prompt for refinement and improvement. It is kinda following the Karpathy videos so far (a couple lessons in) but adding more math/derivations, which was what I asked for. It has trouble staying on topic, presenting information in a coherent/meaningful order, and providing all the context necessary to move through steps in its "course notes".

Like I said, I'm essentially continually prompting to refine the material. LLMs certainly continue to append, and never cut back. It just keeps spitting out additional content at me. So that's a bit annoying too. But I can basically get figure out what's going on with a few extra promps.

If youre curious what i've got so far... just be warned it is quite literally AI slop plus me continually prompting for clarification/cleanup etc. : https://github.com/cmoscardi/ai-for-ai

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