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Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

ericgardner.info

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Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#71

Post by jplusequalt »

absurdo wrote: post #68
thorum wrote: post #61

If you're interested in preserving your ability to think for yourself in the age of AI, I recommend Henrik Karlsson's blog Escaping Flatland. While not directly about AI, his articles "Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born" [1] and "Childhoods of exceptional people" [2] explore similar themes of how to train your mind to have original ideas and learn to solve problems on your own. [1] https://www.henri…

Unfortunately a lot of this kind of writing teeter-totters between being a massive coping strategy or a circlejerk. Using the lives of exceptional people as a blueprint for the everyday person is ridiculous. I’m reminded of people following professional bodybuilding schedules and meal plans to lose a bit of weight, getting caught up in nonsense like “cheat meals” and “cheat days.” Likewise, if you don’t have any exce…

>Right now working with one’s hands seems to be in vogue

Working with one's hands has been in vogue since the dawn of human history.

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#72

Post by thorum »

sph wrote: post #69
thorum wrote: post #61

If you're interested in preserving your ability to think for yourself in the age of AI, I recommend Henrik Karlsson's blog Escaping Flatland. While not directly about AI, his articles "Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born" [1] and "Childhoods of exceptional people" [2] explore similar themes of how to train your mind to have original ideas and learn to solve problems on your own. [1] https://www.henri…

Thanks for the links, but just a note. The thesis of being alone is not enough to be creative in this day and age. As advice, it worked quite well before the advent of modern technology, so the oft-quoted works on solitude from Nietzsche, Jung, etc. just don’t mention a state of being that was quite commonplace at the time, but has practically disappeared: the long hours of contemplation, which for the modern philoso…

Thanks for the recommendations and I agree completely.

There's some hope, we can get better at this even in small ways by carving out pockets of time away from phones and notifications and other external distractions and inputs.

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#73

Post by thorum »

absurdo wrote: post #68
thorum wrote: post #61

If you're interested in preserving your ability to think for yourself in the age of AI, I recommend Henrik Karlsson's blog Escaping Flatland. While not directly about AI, his articles "Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born" [1] and "Childhoods of exceptional people" [2] explore similar themes of how to train your mind to have original ideas and learn to solve problems on your own. [1] https://www.henri…

Unfortunately a lot of this kind of writing teeter-totters between being a massive coping strategy or a circlejerk. Using the lives of exceptional people as a blueprint for the everyday person is ridiculous. I’m reminded of people following professional bodybuilding schedules and meal plans to lose a bit of weight, getting caught up in nonsense like “cheat meals” and “cheat days.” Likewise, if you don’t have any exce…

> To actually get to the bottom of things: I think most normal folks are concerned more about getting by and making decent money in “the age of AI” than they are about being brilliant whizkid prodigies coming up with original ideas. A lot of those end up being poor anyway. But the desire to live a quality life is a more universal thing. No amount of “mind training” will help here. Just steer clear of paths that AI can dominate (they’re expanding), and failing that, use it to your advantage as best as you can.

In my experience most people working on this are attempting variations on a handful of generic ideas. Most AI startups are fairly uninspired “XYZ but with AI chat” type things or ideas that have no staying power because Claude 7 will one-shot the whole product with a prompt. Succeeding here in the long run means doing something truly different and new and interesting and that’s what the linked articles are about.

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#74

Post by absurdo »

jplusequalt wrote: post #71
absurdo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately a lot of this kind of writing teeter-totters between being a massive coping strategy or a circlejerk. Using the lives of exceptional people as a blueprint for the everyday person is ridiculous. I’m reminded of people following professional bodybuilding schedules and meal plans to lose a bit of weight, getting caught up in nonsense like “cheat meals” and “cheat days.” Likewise, if you don’t have any exce…

>Right now working with one’s hands seems to be in vogue Working with one's hands has been in vogue since the dawn of human history.

Not quite. Look at how some countries value/treasure things like soft hands and paler skin tones, and how it relates to social status. It’s not that simple.

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#76

Post by [deleted] »

absurdo wrote: post #74
jplusequalt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Right now working with one’s hands seems to be in vogue Working with one's hands has been in vogue since the dawn of human history.

Not quite. Look at how some countries value/treasure things like soft hands and paler skin tones, and how it relates to social status. It’s not that simple.

[deleted]

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#77

Post by jocoda »

agnishom wrote: post #4

> Obsidian: An Org-Mode replacement? I doubt it. Obsidian is not open source, and the core is maintained by a small group of people, rather than a community. What happens when the company dies? That said, I am willing to have more faith in Obsidian, than many other things since they are not [VC funded]( https://stephango.com/vcware )

The big win is using standard markdown. If they disappear, you still have your content.

The other big win is it's truly cross platform. I initially used syncthing to keep different systems in sync but switched to their sync service. Syncthing works fine but I found adding a new system and integrating was cumbersome if you haven't done it recently. With Obsidian's sync service setting up a new system was trivial.

Shortcoming - printing. Need to generate a pdf and use it's print feature. Another shortcoming is merging a hierarchy of folders and notes into a composite document.

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#78

Post by edanm »

cjauvin wrote: post #38

> Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together…

> I don't find that it's possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use only ONE tool to rule them all.

It's not about being "pure". I was originally interested in Emacs because of the idea of only ever having to learn to use one tool, that would give me a better experience in many different domains.

Since, as you say, that doesn't really work, I personally don't find using Emacs compelling anymore, hence my not using it. (I actually used vim for a long time, then Emacs briefly, and now VSCode/Cursor/other things as the need arises.)

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#79

Post by nextos »

edanm wrote: post #78
cjauvin wrote: post #38

> Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together…

> I don't find that it's possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use only ONE tool to rule them all. It's not about being "pure". I was originally interested in Emacs because of the idea of only ever having to learn to use one tool, that would give me a better experience in many different domains. Since, as you say, that doesn't really work, I personally don't find using Emacs compelling anymore,…

In what ways do you find VSCode or Cursor superior or more convenient to Emacs?

Re: Knowledge Management in the Age of AI

#80

Post by edanm »

nextos wrote: post #79
edanm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't find that it's possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use only ONE tool to rule them all. It's not about being "pure". I was originally interested in Emacs because of the idea of only ever having to learn to use one tool, that would give me a better experience in many different domains. Since, as you say, that doesn't really work, I personally don't find using Emacs compelling anymore,…

In what ways do you find VSCode or Cursor superior or more convenient to Emacs?

Note that I worked with Emacs already a few years ago, and it was Spacemacs specifically.

That said, VSCode is - much nicer looking, a lot of things come working out of the box that I had to work hard to make work in Emacs (even with Spacemacs), a lot of great plugins exist and are easy to add to VSCode.

Really it's the "great experience out of the box" and lack of weird edge cases where custom code/plugins interact with other custom code/plugins in ways that don't work well.

And the vim mode in Spacemacs was great, probably best in class, but the vim mode in VSCode is also pretty good. Missing a bunch of stuff but close enough.

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