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It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

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31–40 of 93 posts

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#31
I don't get the second brain thing. I don't keep a second brain, I just read and think a lot. I once did a physics masters and, when asked how to make steady progress, one of the professors (who had published with Paul Dirac no less) made the comment "well, my secret is that I think about physics all the time"

I started practicing this for the stuff I'm interested in ... and the result is that I generate a lot of ideas. 99% of them are garbage.

Before AI, a conversation with colleagues would help me weed out the garbage, and possibly give me a new perspective ("here's something surprising about what you just said!")

Now, AI plays a helpful role in helping me weed out the garbage for the subset of ideas that I can test empirically -- and sometimes it does give me a new perspective, but with significantly more noise than my colleagues, who would take me right to the point that would be useful for me to see.

I've never felt like I needed a second brain ... because if I had such a thing, I think I would be keeping the 99% garbage around -- instead I just let biology GC it.

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#32
Could anyone enlighten me as to why to use Obsidian in one's daily life ? I have a dozen ideas popping a day and nothing comes close in terms of ease than a paper notebook for capturing and some apple notes equivalent for storage. Used to have a Notion but all the "Second Brain" movement seems...fishy to me ?

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#33
post #31

I don't get the second brain thing. I don't keep a second brain, I just read and think a lot. I once did a physics masters and, when asked how to make steady progress, one of the professors (who had published with Paul Dirac no less) made the comment "well, my secret is that I think about physics all the time" I started practicing this for the stuff I'm interested in ... and the result is that I generate a lot of ide…

Hey, love the hivemind comment to mine. Maybe we do have kind of a second brain...? /s

How do you take notes, generally speaking ?

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#34
post #31

I don't get the second brain thing. I don't keep a second brain, I just read and think a lot. I once did a physics masters and, when asked how to make steady progress, one of the professors (who had published with Paul Dirac no less) made the comment "well, my secret is that I think about physics all the time" I started practicing this for the stuff I'm interested in ... and the result is that I generate a lot of ide…

Hey, love the hivemind comment to mine. Maybe we do have kind of a second brain...? /s How do you take notes, generally speaking ?

I've never been a good note taker. In the things I think about, when I'm really invested in something, I have to reverse engineer it to experience the why.

Reverse engineering can take several forms for me: it started with writing parts of systems from scratch, and now (due to academic training) it oftens looks like "thinking about how to explain the system to a group of colleagues", which is one degree of separation from writing the system from scratch, but is much faster - and seems to work well when working with LM agents on code (because you have to confront your ignorance)

part of the training in academia is how to know when you don't understood the thing, so this ends up working well for me now.

One trick: you can force yourself to understand something better by making a presentation and imagining you're going to be grilled by someone smarter than you. This is kind of the feeling of pressure that academic paper reviews give (in an ideal world) and it translates when you think about explaining something to someone else.

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#36

Could anyone enlighten me as to why to use Obsidian in one's daily life ? I have a dozen ideas popping a day and nothing comes close in terms of ease than a paper notebook for capturing and some apple notes equivalent for storage. Used to have a Notion but all the "Second Brain" movement seems...fishy to me ?

Taking the notes (and being able to read them again if I want) is all I need from my "second Brain". This perfectly can be pieces of paper, as long as i can carry them around with me. More realistically some digital notes software fulfills that requirement.

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's for you to find out. When we automated muscles in the industrial revolution, people used to value strength. Today they value thought. They may value something else in the future.

Seems like the only thing left to value will be social capital. If all forms of labor are free, the only thing that matters is how many people you know, what they think of you, whether they listen to you.

Nightmare fuel. This sounds like totally worthless to me.

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#38
post #31

I don't get the second brain thing. I don't keep a second brain, I just read and think a lot. I once did a physics masters and, when asked how to make steady progress, one of the professors (who had published with Paul Dirac no less) made the comment "well, my secret is that I think about physics all the time" I started practicing this for the stuff I'm interested in ... and the result is that I generate a lot of ide…

So I operate more in line with how you do, but having tried some organizational systems I think I understand the "second brain" people.

One, it forces you to do a crude approximation of critical thinking. It allows you to examine and organize your thoughts, either physically or digitally. It isn't the same as being able to sit and break something down in your mind, but for those who struggle with that, a "second brain" allows them to reap some of those benefits.

Two, it allows you to turnover things quickly in your head. By training yourself to immediately dump out an idea into an organizational system, you don't have to hold so many things in your head. Furthermore, words are immutable and the thoughts in your head aren't.

But for me, the good thoughts usually rise to the top. And there are a lot of things I'm thinking about that are so vague, it's just a feeling. And trying to write those down robs those thoughts of the long term, "on the backburner" mental processing they need to become actual ideas. They're thoughts that are still in the embryonic phase. I can't write down the qualia of them, and when I try to I move them into a "second brain" I lose it.

I think organizational systems are work dependent. Running a business lends itself well to an organizational system. Where it's good to try a lot of shallow things. But something like physics, for example, requires playing with ideas in your mind over a long period of time until they become solid enough to chase more seriously.

I think programming probably straddles that line and it depends on what you're doing at any given time.

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#39
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the only thing left to value will be social capital. If all forms of labor are free, the only thing that matters is how many people you know, what they think of you, whether they listen to you.

Nightmare fuel. This sounds like totally worthless to me.

I agree.

Re: It’s so hard to finish an idea that is not yours and is just suggested by AI

#40
Ironically, this is why one of the best ways to manage upwards is to prompt managers into coming up with your idea as if it were their own: they’re dramatically more likely to execute and deliver on it. Of course, this also obviously leads to undue credit given for coming up the idea, which is certainly a core problem with AI as well, but it’s still charming to watch managerial psych being rediscovered by this new generation of managers.
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