Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 880 posts

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#271

Post by [deleted] »

jcul wrote: post #214
derefr wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one other very useful form of "expansion" that LLMs do. If you aren't aware: (high-parameter-count) LLMs can be used pretty reliably to teach yourself things. LLM base models "know things" to about the same degree that the Internet itself "knows" those things. For well-understood topics — i.e. subjects where the Internet contains all sorts of open-source textbooks and treatments of the subject — LLMs really…

Yeah you're totally right with this use case. It feels like the information is there strewn across the internet, in forums, Reddit posts, stack overflow, specs, books. But to trawl though it all was so time consuming. With an LLM you can quickly distill it down to just the information you need. Saying that, I do feel like reading the full spec for something is a valuable exercise. There may be unknown unknowns that y…

[deleted]

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#272

Post by palata »

Aeolun wrote: post #260
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

> It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this I figured this out in high school. It can’t be all that uncommon of a thought that if you are already in school and paying and given time to learn, you might as well do so?

I think that figuring this out is a great achievement. Probably one of the goals of school. It depends on many factors and the sooner, the better.

Young kids don't get it, they just do what they're asked. That's okay. University students graduating without having figured it out is a problem. And somewhere in the middle is when the average student gets there, hopefully?

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#273

Post by johnea »

soerxpso wrote: post #253
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

[flagged]

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#274

Post by theturtletalks »

palata wrote: post #256
theturtletalks wrote: post #249

AI has changed how we learn by making the process of improving work much easier. Normally, learning involves writing a draft, finding mistakes, and fixing them over time. This helps build critical thinking. AI, trained on tons of refined data, can create polished work right away. While this seems helpful, it can skip the important step of learning through trial and error. The question is: Should we limit AI to keep t…

I would argue that if you are losing a consequent amount of your time fixing grammar, then it sounds like you need to spend that time to improve your grammar skills. > We need to teach students to use AI for deeper thinking by asking better questions. Same thing here: the whole point of learning critical thinking is that you don't need to ask someone/something else. Teaching you how to ask the LLM to do it for you is…

You’re getting to the crux of the argument, knowing when to use AI. Doing or learning “It” in 2025 means using AI whether to understand it better or use it to get better grades.

My take is teach them to get better at asking questions and then teach them when to use their own understanding to change their answer for the better. How many times has an AI’s answer been 5/10 and with a few fixes it’s a 9/10. That comes with time. Getting them asking questions and learning the “when” later is better at least to me.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#275

Post by palata »

soerxpso wrote: post #253
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

> I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000

I would argue that if it costs $60,000, both your education system and the recruitment in those companies that require this degree are broken. It's not the case in all countries though.

Not that it is your fault, just stating the obvious.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#276

Post by ebiester »

efavdb wrote: post #269
soerxpso wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

If this attitude prevails I would think the value of degrees will quickly diminish.

This seems to be the general feeling of students right now.

Academia put itself as a gateway and barrier to the middle class. Why would we be surprised when people with no interest in anything but the goal are not enthralled by the process?

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#277

Post by Aeolun »

Y_Y wrote: post #151
Nezteb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, I used your prompt but added "Do not make it a very formulaic physics-based puzzle." The output is pretty non-sensical: https://pastebin.com/raw/hetAvjSG

I liked the puzzle and I think I could DM it.

Hardest part is ‘combining emotions on the mesh’ and all the realizations involved. You can do your own thing with the setup alone though.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#278

Post by leereeves »

zeroq wrote: post #255
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

You're missing trees for forest. When I was a kid and got an assignement for writing an essey about "why good forces prevailed in Lords of the Rings" as a gate check to see if I actually read the novel I had three choices: (a) read the novel and write the essey myself (b) find an already written essey - not an easy task in pre-internet era but we had books with esseys on most common topics you could "copy-paste" - an…

> But they are not gaining any skill nor knowledege from that experience.

It sounds like you agree with GP.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#279

Post by gnatolf »

egglemonsoup wrote: post #203
laurentlb wrote: post #127

There are many ways to use LLMs. The issue, IMO, is that some people throw in a one-shot, short prompt, and get a generic, boring output. "Garbage in, generic out." Here's how I actually use LLMs: - To dump my thoughts and get help organizing them. - To get feedback on phrasing and transitions (I'm not a native speaker). - To improve tone, style (while trying to keep it personal!), or just to simplify messy sentences…

FWIW: Your original comment, in the first message you sent ChatGPT, was way better than the one you posted. Simple, authentic, to the point

I couldn't agree more, this 'polished' style the finished comment comes in is super boring to read. It's hard to put the finger on it, but overall flow is just too... Samesame? I guess it's perfectly _expected_ to be predictable to read ;)

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#280

Post by pton_xd »

eric_cc wrote: post #225
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

> Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

Writing is hard. Sometimes it means sitting with yourself, for hours, without any progress. Leaning on an LLM to ease through those tough moments is 100% short circuiting the learning process.

To your point, maybe you're learning something else instead, like when/how to prompt an LLM or something. But you're definitely not learning how to write. Whether that's relevant is a separate discussion.

Post reply on HN