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The Need to Read

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Need to Read

#11

Post by itisit »

zktrust wrote: post #4
sixstringtheory wrote: post #2

I find the quality of my thinking is much higher when writing by hand, but it’s so slow I feel like I get down a particular path and forget so many of the other things I was considering in parallel. I can type much faster than I can write but it feels like a messier thought process. It feels more like jamming a gearbox, while writing by hand feels like a smooth shifting bicycle, with the wind in my hair. Should I try…

you must be much older than me. i never had a chance to handwrite my notes or thoughts. all goes to straigh to typing. I fear though my generation and future generations are missing out substantially.

> i never had a chance to handwrite my notes or thoughts.

Really? Yet to come across a pen and paper in your however many years of life? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are those things so exceedingly anachronistic to you that you'd be at a loss? I'm sorry, but I feel you're being disingenuous.

Re: The Need to Read

#12

Post by zktrust »

wskish wrote: post #5

Here is the output of GPT reading and summarizing this (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33748363 ). Model seems to be hallucinating the author. Any thoughts on how to improve it? "The Need to Read is an essay written by Kevin Kelly. In it, he argues that reading is essential not just for acquiring knowledge, but for learning how to write. He cites the example of a science fiction book in which reading has be…

i think that's also rubbish, just like PG's written opinion piece. How on earth did we then get the great work by William Shakespeare. ShakeSPeare born a time when reading a lot wasn't even possible. There was little to none good content material out there. He was writing more than he could have possible read anywhere else.

Re: The Need to Read

#13

Post by npunt »

There’s much more to the story than writing is a way of thinking, and reading is a big input into writing. Specifically, how each interplay with ideas, as most of us after all are in the business of creating things. And here, the most important bit is not reading, its curiosity. Curiosity about others’ ideas drives reading, curiosity about one’s own ideas drives writing.

The time we spend chasing each type of curiosity is important. If we want to create, reading must have it’s limits, and sometimes pretty harsh limits, else we’ll be infected with others ideas about everything. Some choice quotes on this:

"When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process..." "This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking" - Albert Einstein

"If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions. The reading is necessary to know what is going on and what is possible. But reading to get the solutions does not seem to be the way to do great research. So I'll give you two answers. You read; but it is not the amount, it is the way you read that counts." - Dick Hamming

EDIT: On the other hand, if you first principles all your thinking and just write write write, you may spend hours on something that could be understood and moved on from in seconds. This meme explains the reading/writing spectrum quite well: https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/vwq8yh/this_true/

Re: The Need to Read

#14

Post by vortegne »

zktrust wrote: post #3

have you seen nassim taleb's recent comments about this guy? Taleb while harsh, always is truthful to the truth. I'm too young to know the story behind Hacker News and ycombinator, but reading some of the recent stuff makes me question prevailing sentiments about PG.

I think they're both egomaniacs who treat their own word as gospel. PG is just less brash about it, so comes off as more "reasonable" to many. I think they're both just prime examples of survivorship bias and I try to avoid any of their opinions at all times. Of course, sometimes curiosity takes over, but I never leave feeling good after reading anything they have to say.

Re: The Need to Read

#15

Post by wskish »

TekMol wrote: post #9
wskish wrote: post #5

Here is the output of GPT reading and summarizing this (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33748363 ). Model seems to be hallucinating the author. Any thoughts on how to improve it? "The Need to Read is an essay written by Kevin Kelly. In it, he argues that reading is essential not just for acquiring knowledge, but for learning how to write. He cites the example of a science fiction book in which reading has be…

Does GPT-3 offer summaries out of the box? Or do you do it by a prompt like "The summary of the text above is:"?

we are strategically prompting it as such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750013

open to all ideas here

Re: The Need to Read

#16

Post by Arisaka1 »

jholman wrote: post #7

I think there is clear historical evidence that this thesis is, at a minimum, greatly exaggerated. Socrates never wrote, and I think he had more good ideas than Paul Graham ever will. Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful. I mean, I do personally find that writing is a powerful tool for thinking. Maybe that means that Paul Graham and I are normal, an…

Socrates had the ancient agora, which was (oversimplifying) a group of experts gathering in the same place bouncing off ideas from each other verbally. It's time to stop discounting the role of one's environment in personal growth.

Re: The Need to Read

#17

Post by TekMol »

wskish wrote: post #15
TekMol wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does GPT-3 offer summaries out of the box? Or do you do it by a prompt like "The summary of the text above is:"?

we are strategically prompting it as such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750013 open to all ideas here

Is a "prompt prefix" a thing in GPT-3 or do you mean you combine that prefix with the text of the page into a prompt?

Re: The Need to Read

#18

Post by eternalban »

jholman wrote: post #7

I think there is clear historical evidence that this thesis is, at a minimum, greatly exaggerated. Socrates never wrote, and I think he had more good ideas than Paul Graham ever will. Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful. I mean, I do personally find that writing is a powerful tool for thinking. Maybe that means that Paul Graham and I are normal, an…

> Muhammad was not even literate, and unless he was inspired by divinity, his ideas were extremely powerful.

He used to take retreats in the caves near Mecca to meditate and reflect. It was during one of these sessions that he later claimed that he was overwhelmed with the inescapable presence of archangel Gabriel who commanded him to "Read!". This directive of Gabriel to Mohammad is held to be the first verse of the divine revelation in Islam.

   Read! 
   In the Name of your Lord Who created
   Created Man(kind) from a clot of blood

   Read! 
   And your Lord is Ar-Rahman
   Who Taught by the 'Pen'
   Taugh Man(kind) that which he knew not.

   [Q.96 'Al-Alaq']
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad%27s_first_revelation#...

As mentioned in a comment to a dup post, Paul is neglecting the reflect phase. For some this occurs prior to writing. Others, take time when writing to pause and reflect.

p.s.

> Muhammad was not even literate

We do know that he dictated and others wrote messages [correspondences] that were sent. So no records of him writing, but this was not an uneducated man. He was a merchant, traveled, and conversed with other men at markets, oasis rest stops along the trade route. (And he was not a frivolous man.)

The reason Muhammad is said to have been "illiterate" is because Qur'an refers to him (yes, it is the most meta book I've ever read) as "the un-lettered Prophet". "Ummi".

Personally, I think this is a misreading, since these are technical terms (like 'Pen' in above cited verses), and 'letter' refers to the 'mystic letters* given to Moses'.

i.e. Mohammad the Gentile Prophet. The prophet for the un-Lettered, the Gentile.

*consult your local Rabbi :)

https://aish.com/the-mystical-power-of-hebrew-letters/

Re: The Need to Read

#19

Post by bustedblade »

zktrust wrote: post #3

have you seen nassim taleb's recent comments about this guy? Taleb while harsh, always is truthful to the truth. I'm too young to know the story behind Hacker News and ycombinator, but reading some of the recent stuff makes me question prevailing sentiments about PG.

read all of PG's stuff.. promise you will think otherwise. Taleb's books is hilarious and insightful but PG's essays convey those same truths and many more in a much more succinct format.

Re: The Need to Read

#20

Post by wskish »

TekMol wrote: post #17
wskish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we are strategically prompting it as such: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33750013 open to all ideas here

Is a "prompt prefix" a thing in GPT-3 or do you mean you combine that prefix with the text of the page into a prompt?

We prepend the prompt prefix to the page text to create the actual model prompt. GPT doesn't have any such abstraction.
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