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Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

bcantrill.dtrace.org

291–300 of 449 posts

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#291

These are all important points and I love the analogy. But there is an even bigger issue with having LLMs write for you: Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your tho…

Yeah. I've been using AI a lot in my projects but I still write code and especially the documentation and articles for my website. It's slowing me down a lot compared to just letting the AI rip through projects but I think it's worth it. I see it as distillation of the AI's weights into my own brain.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#292
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not all writing is thinking Would love an example where you’re able to write without transferring your thoughts. Besides the obvious: fjcjfjrnjfjfifjfnrnakosifnrbwkofgjrj

I can think of the following: (1) Translation from one language into another (2) Transcription from one medium (audio) into another (text) (3) Deception to obfuscate your thoughts (4) Posting things like "First!", "This.", "Just google it.", etc. (5) Textbook answers with no original thought.

> Translation from one language into another

Bad example, because translation is deeply creative. You can't blindly mill one language into another, because words and phrases and concepts and cultural references in one language frequently don't map 1:1. You have to find a way to convey meaning as closely as you can and not necessarily the words.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#293
I don’t want to read content written by AI.

A feature I would like on LinkedIn would be a 100% verified human content flag for users. LinkedIn can then do the scans and flip that to false for any users it catches posting AI assisted content. Let me filter that out of the feed.

If we don’t do something to maintain some standard of discourse, we lose intellectually and as a piece of our humanity.

LinkedIn is the only social media I use and it is on thin ice.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#294

These are all important points and I love the analogy. But there is an even bigger issue with having LLMs write for you: Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your tho…

Sometimes. Other times writing is just communicating thought that already happened. Say for instance a weekly status update. Maybe you get something out of that, but frequently you don't get much or anything.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#295
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instructions you really care about, yes of course you review the assembly output! Usually when you're doing SIMD or want to check atomics are doing what you expect.

You can do that with LLMs for the parts you really care about too. The LLMs aren't regenerating the codebase from scratch every time, so the results stick around.

Only if it's not too byzantize to understand what part you should look at

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and the AI agree, but how about you and the team who will eventually read and do code review. Cognitive burden increases marginally with AI assisted coding. This is why we haven't seen big projects(think browsers and browser engines) spawning in the past year.

> but how about you and the team who will eventually read and do code review. Why are you reviewing AI code in detail? Do you also review the assembly output of GCC line by line?

No, because GCC doesn't randomly fuck up the assembly generation (much less on a fairly frequent basis the way LLMs do). If it did, you bet I'd be reviewing the assembly line by line, or decline to use such a poorly performing tool (as I have with LLMs).

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be not picking up on the subtext here. Others are, though.

There is no subtext to bigstrat2003's argument, other than "I'm wrong, and I don't care." If you give persistent, repeatable instructions to a computer, you are programming it. If you disagree, you are gatekeeping. It's that simple. The most popular programming languages in 2030 will, in fact, be English and Mandarin. Deal with it and get over it. ---------------- Edit, to bcrosby95: Look up the etymology of the word…

[deleted]

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#299

I don't agree. Good writing and good ideas are entirely different things. Just read all the beautifully written, inaccurate stuff by the NYT or the Guardian. Also, non-native English speakers have to use LLMs to share their views so that they are not judged on their writing. This post is also a good example; it's well written, and I enjoyed it. The idea could have been expressed simply as: "People can smell LLMs in y…

> I don't agree. Good writing and good ideas are entirely different things. Just read all the beautifully written, inaccurate stuff by the NYT or the Guardian. I'd be very curious of some examples when great ideas are being presented in bad writing (or bad speaking for that matter). > Also, non-native English speakers have to use LLMs to share their views so that they are not judged on their writing. weird statement.…

One example that comes to mind is math textbooks – the early textbooks in a field are usually much worse than later ones that come along. To pick on one, I think most people who've read both would agree that the commutative algebra section of Lang's Algebra is much worse than Atiyah & McDonald's Commutative Algebra book, despite covering basically the same ideas, theorems, etc.

Re: Your intellectual fly is open when you use an LLM to author a post (2025)

#300

These are all important points and I love the analogy. But there is an even bigger issue with having LLMs write for you: Writing is thinking. Thinking and deciding. There have been many times when I start out writing something substantial - could be an email, a blog post, a software design document, anything - when my own views substantially changed during the writing process. Writing forces you to serialize your tho…

This is why I like fountain pens… I regularly write down the things that are important to me.

Things I need to do, ideas I want to ponder on, people I need to remember or get respond to.

Writing is learning. Writing is understanding.

I have so many conversations with people who are always telling me I’m “retro” or “old school” for doing this.

I don’t even bother explaining the psychology behind it anymore. I’ve got no time for the ignorance.

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