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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#391

Post by luckystarr »

kubb wrote: post #362
luckystarr wrote: post #133

The way I use AI now feels more exhausting than the programming I did for the last 20 years. I pose a problem, then evaluate proposals, then pick the one I think is the "right one"(tm), then see the AI propose a bunch of weird shit, then call it out, refine the proposal until it feels just about right (this is the exhausting part), then let it code the proposal. The coding will then run for 1-5 hours and produce some…

How do you check if what it produced is even the right thing? Models love to go chasing the wrong goal based on a reasonable spec.

When the end result has problems and needs to be reworked.

You can't figure this out instantly except when you'd review everything the LLM produces, which I am not. So the round trip time is pretty long, but I can trace it back to the intent now because I commit every architecture decision in an ADRs, which I pour most of my energy into. These are part of the repo.

Using these ADRs helped a lot because most of the assumptions of the LLM get surfaced early on, and you restrict the implementation leeway.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#392

Post by darkwater »

ipython wrote: post #120
ctvdev wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is, we are not yet at the "aphorism" stage of the discourse we learn by doing

I’ve also seen along those lines “there is no compression algorithm for experience” - a nice summary of the hn posts from today.

I don't know. Growing up and seeing life and people around me I firmly believe that if you have enough brain power and intuition for $TOPIC you can speed-run it. At the same time, with time and experience and doing/re-doing it, you will learn or master $TOPIC [1] even with less brain power.

[1] Depending on the topic and the level of knowledge of it.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#393

Post by luckystarr »

Kiro wrote: post #372
kubb wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you check if what it produced is even the right thing? Models love to go chasing the wrong goal based on a reasonable spec.

Do they? I haven't experienced models deviating from a spec in a very long time. If anything I feel they are being too conservative and have started to ask to confirm too much.

The problem is not the LLM deviating from the plan (though that rarely also happens when it thinks it has a better idea) but rather if the plan is not strict enough and the LLM decides on the fly HOW it is going to build your plan.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#394

Post by hirako2000 »

ohNoe5 wrote: post #370
rimliu wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that by purging stuff from the brain we are losing thinking itself. Thinking is manipulating ideas and concepts in your head, assembling and linking. The fewer things there is, the more primitive the result. You cannot juggle without object to juggle, connecting the dots result in trivial patterns when you have just a couple of dots.

We will never fundamentally get rid of thinking; it's coupled to navigation of 3D reality we live And we don't need words to think; cognitive problem solving and language processing are separate processes [1] We will shift the problems we need to think about. Same as always; humanity isn't really solving building stone pyramids. Did we stop thinking? No just thought about a different todo list. [1] https://www.scient…

We also never run out of fuel. There will always be some energy left here and there to tap into.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#395

Post by hirako2000 »

kakacik wrote: post #366
netcan wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myopic is inevitable, to some extent. It's very hard to project this stuff. Socrates wrote about what was being lost as philosophy was becoming written rather than oral...and he was right. We can't even understand what was lost. Many methods of learning and thinking became entirely lost. You could say they were redundant, and they were. But... writing largely replaced oral traditions. It didn't just augment them. He…

Yeah but where comparison with philosophy falls short is - if we lost some ways of thinking, it was gradual and most didn't notice. Software code is on the other hand extremely formal, and either it works perfectly as intended, it works crappily and keeps breaking in various edge cases or just doesn't work (last 2 are just variants of same dysfunctionality, technically its binary state). There is no scenario where br…

I would argue it's virtually impossible going forward for a junior engineer to run that harder path.

Because the easier path seemingly delivers what's expected of them. Sigh, they may even be demanded to take the faster path.

I've seen many junior unable to walk that necessary path before LLMs were a thing.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#397

Post by rimliu »

darkwater wrote: post #392
ipython wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also seen along those lines “there is no compression algorithm for experience” - a nice summary of the hn posts from today.

I don't know. Growing up and seeing life and people around me I firmly believe that if you have enough brain power and intuition for $TOPIC you can speed-run it. At the same time, with time and experience and doing/re-doing it, you will learn or master $TOPIC [1] even with less brain power. [1] Depending on the topic and the level of knowledge of it.

Isn't intuition just distilled experience?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#398

Post by hirako2000 »

graydsl wrote: post #349
fainpul wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have people who can still do maths well after the introduction of the calculator. I assume by "do maths" you mean doing simple calculations, like adding a bunch of small numbers, in one's head. That's because in many situations it's more convenient to do so, than using a calculator. So the skill is preserved / practiced, because a calculator is too cumbersome to use. The skills of most people settle at the equil…

I would also argue, that most school system forbid the usage of a calculator the first couple of years (at least that's how it was Germany a few decades ago). The same with writing per hand. You can spell check by looking the word up and then manually correcting it. Both require manual "labor" which leads to learning.

And calculators took decades to become widespread. So we could learn of their side effects before they became mainstream.

Also to note. Calculators merely solve intermediary steps. LLMs are increasingly designed to do a one shot full blown work. Longer context, deep thinking, agentic loops.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#399

Post by hirako2000 »

snickerbockers wrote: post #292
gerdesj wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why you were dv'd. It still takes roughly nine months to make a human baby, regardless of how many women or babies are involved!

9 pregnant women produce one baby/month on average (assuming no miscarriages or late births,etc). On paper your CPU can execute at least one instruction per core per cycle but that's on average too, if you actually only have one instruction to run it takes several cycles.

But the context is to throw 9 women at the problem of having no conception and the hope to get a baby within a month.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#400

Post by freetime2 »

The scary thing is I have seen high level directors and executives say “I asked ChatGPT and it agreed with me” as a way to try to settle a debate. People seem all too willing to delegate even matters of judgement to AI.

On the other hand I have been in debates where someone asks ChatGPT to draft a list of possible approaches and pros and cons - and after reading through the list we were all in alignment on the best approach.

The latter I think is a constructive use of AI to elevate thinking, while the former has me thinking it may be time for a career change.

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