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Writes and Write-Nots

paulgraham.com

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Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#11

Post by dartharva »

fungiblecog wrote: post #7

Even smart people completely over-rate “AI” it seems

The threat to individual (and overall) development posed by easy access to shortcuts like ChatGPT provides is not benign. We are seeing very real cases where it's being overused at the expense of quality and understanding in not just academics and resumes, but also in corporate environments (consulting especially). Most people in offices are already refusing to compose their own emails and messages, and soon this will percolate into the lives of children. It is genuinely scary to me what this could bring on in the future.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#12

Post by dartharva »

ggillas wrote: post #3

We're also on the edge of the read, and read-nots. There is an abundance of content to consume and AI lets us consume it in any format easily. Why read a book when we can have an idea distilled in a quick infographic, a shortform video, or a pithy tweet? I love a deep dive book that lets you immerse yourself in idea and study it from multiple angles, done masterfully in Dune or Thinking, Fast and Slow. But are we los…

On the contrary (though it may not be everyone's case), my reading is better off with the presence of these shortform formats. By just going through these "trailers" I can now easily filter out the books that I should actually be reading, while still retaining the core ideas of those that I'd rather not read fully. It is doing wonders for discoverability in the right hands.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#13

Post by ji_zai »

> So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.

I'd disagree with "half" here because I can't imagine it being anywhere close to 50/50. I expect a power law distribution: most won't be able to write well. The ones who do will have a massive advantage, in the same way that those who can concentrate in our age of distractions have a significant advantage over those who can't.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#14

Post by dartharva »

mwidell wrote: post #8

That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking simply isn't true. Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind. He developed a remarkable ability to perform complex calculations and visualize intricate mathematical concepts entirely in his mind. He once mentioned that his ALS diagnosis, which limited his physical abilities, led him to focus intensely on theoretical physics, as it required more in…

Reading and writing are essential for the transfer and percolation of knowledge across society.

Stephen Hawking's thinking and imagination wouldn't have meant much had he not finally penned them down for others to read, and neither would his ideas have been taken seriously had he chosen to make tiktoks or podcasts to explain them instead.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#15

Post by ninalanyon »

mwidell wrote: post #8

That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking simply isn't true. Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind. He developed a remarkable ability to perform complex calculations and visualize intricate mathematical concepts entirely in his mind. He once mentioned that his ALS diagnosis, which limited his physical abilities, led him to focus intensely on theoretical physics, as it required more in…

But for most of the rest of us in practice I suspect that it is more true than false.

Most of us have neither the intellect of Hawking nor his situation.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#16

Post by leethomas »

mwidell wrote: post #8

That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking simply isn't true. Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind. He developed a remarkable ability to perform complex calculations and visualize intricate mathematical concepts entirely in his mind. He once mentioned that his ALS diagnosis, which limited his physical abilities, led him to focus intensely on theoretical physics, as it required more in…

> That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking simply isn't true.

You're correct here.

> Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind.

The post is obviously speaking of the general population or at best average professional, and in my opinion choosing one of the most brilliant exceptional scientific minds of our lifetimes is not a good counterargument for a piece that speaks of a potential problem with society at large.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#17

Post by baxtr »

mwidell wrote: post #8

That writing is the only way to do deep, clear, thinking simply isn't true. Stephen Hawking is the first example that comes to mind. He developed a remarkable ability to perform complex calculations and visualize intricate mathematical concepts entirely in his mind. He once mentioned that his ALS diagnosis, which limited his physical abilities, led him to focus intensely on theoretical physics, as it required more in…

It is weird he doesn’t think of AI as deep thinking tool at all.

Sure some will thoughtlessly copy and paste but for many AI helps to structure their thoughts and they think clearer as a result.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#18

Post by randomNumber7 »

I think this is a bit too simple. Some people might be good at thinking (e.g. in math) but bad at writing. AI can just help them to do their job better.

I am for example very good at math and reasoning etc. But when I write something I tend to construct long complicated sentences (probably because I think that way^^) and the result whould often be considered badly written.

Now of course you can feel superiour, for your better writing style. If it makes you happy ;)

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#19

Post by jimnotgym »

Paul Graham proving himself wrong....

He didn't need to right that article. He is already rich. So why did he do it?

Everyday hn is full of articles where people have some some amazingly complex thing, entirely for fun. Then they have written a blog about it entirely for fun.

Then we get one of the familiar detachments from reality

> In preindustrial times most people's jobs made them strong. Now if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who choose to be.

Except for all of the people whose jobs still make them strong. Scaffolders, tree surgeons, bricklayers, carpenters, et al.

I need to write a document next week. I have begun to analyse a complex system that chatgpt will not be aware of. I need to apply my specialism to it, to decide what to do with lots of steps. Writing it will test my understanding of the system, and encourage completeness. It will allow others to know what they are expected to do. It will allow a constructive discussion of the choices and reasons. ChatGPT wont help me, except perhaps in layout, rephrasing a sentence, something like that. My job will keep my writing muscles strong. Paul Graham has lost touch with reality.

Re: Writes and Write-Nots

#20

Post by rcarmo »

The idea that there will be a "middle class" that relies on AI to churn out missives without much thought scares me a lot more than having people who don't write a lot, honestly.

I'm seeing that happen today with corporate documents (there's always that one enthusiast in each team who says "oh, let me improve that with [LLM]", and it's a slog to go through pages and pages of things that could be a bullet point). Quality has been trumped by mediocre quantity, and the cluelessness of the people who do this willingly baffles me.

As someone who's been writing pretty much constantly for over 30 years and both uses AI code completion to speed up first drafts (of code) but switches off everything except macOS's (pretty good) word completion for prose--and absolutely refuses to use AI to generate work documents or even my blog post drafts--this post was a bit of a "oh, so this would be the ultimate consequence of keeping all of it on" moment.

Accelerating writing (with simple word completion) is fine. But letting the AI generate entire sentences or paragraphs (or even expand your draft's bullet points) will either have you stray from your original intent in writing or generate overly verbose banalities that only waste people's time.

I use iA Writer to draft a lot of my stuff, and its style checks have helped a lot to remove redundancies, clichés and filler, making my prose a bit more cohesive and to the point. That's been around for ages and it's not LLM-style AI (more of a traditional grammar checker), but that sort of assistance seems to be missing from pretty much every AI "writing aid"--they just generate verbose slop, and until that is fixed in a way that truly helps a writer LLMs are just a party trick.

Edit: I just realised that I wrote about this at length in February - https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2024/02/24/1600#the-enshitti...

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