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When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

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Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#11

Post by esjeon »

I don't think most normal people will spam their own SNS/blogs using LLMs. If you hate writing, you won't be writing at all, instead of using LLMs to generate stuffs. If you have a message to send, you'll be taking much of your time creating a piece even with LLMs. Obviously, there can be many exceptions here (e.g. trolls, flamers), but the key point is that using LLMs only can reduce the cost of act of writing, but it hardly lowers the barrier of writing itself, especially when there are implications to consider.

So, I think OP(Paul Graham) is basically overestimating people's will to write, probably because he's a such good writer himself.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#14

Post by rcme »

Sometimes I wonder if I'm using the same ChatGPT as everyone else. I pay for GPT4 access in ChatGPT, and it is a really terrible writer. I also pay for Copilot, and I think a can count the number of times it has been helpful with one hand. I'm trying to get on this hype train, but I'm left with an empty feeling every time I try to seriously spend some time with these new tools.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#15

Post by happytiger »

zmmmmm wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough, you can reverse this statement: "when you gain the ability to write, you gain the ability to think" - and in part gain some insight into how LLMs seem to suddenly have "emergent" behaviour to perform quite impressive feats of logic.

That’s quite an interesting idea.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#16

Post by imtringued »

rcme wrote: post #14

Sometimes I wonder if I'm using the same ChatGPT as everyone else. I pay for GPT4 access in ChatGPT, and it is a really terrible writer. I also pay for Copilot, and I think a can count the number of times it has been helpful with one hand. I'm trying to get on this hype train, but I'm left with an empty feeling every time I try to seriously spend some time with these new tools.

Everyone knows that using ChatGPT is about signalling your non Luddite status so that the police won't go after you.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#17

Post by meerita »

rcme wrote: post #14

Sometimes I wonder if I'm using the same ChatGPT as everyone else. I pay for GPT4 access in ChatGPT, and it is a really terrible writer. I also pay for Copilot, and I think a can count the number of times it has been helpful with one hand. I'm trying to get on this hype train, but I'm left with an empty feeling every time I try to seriously spend some time with these new tools.

Maybe you're not using the right prompts. But yes, ChatGPT needs more creativity input.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#18

Post by weinzierl »

rcme wrote: post #14

Sometimes I wonder if I'm using the same ChatGPT as everyone else. I pay for GPT4 access in ChatGPT, and it is a really terrible writer. I also pay for Copilot, and I think a can count the number of times it has been helpful with one hand. I'm trying to get on this hype train, but I'm left with an empty feeling every time I try to seriously spend some time with these new tools.

There is also a huge difference between code generation (be it Copilot or ChatGPT). With Code you still have the compiler that rejects the utter nonsense and then you hopefully have tests to check if what was generated makes sense.

With prose it's all your manual work again to check. If your text is mundane it might be trivial but for anything a pg would write I guess an AI is pretty useless in its current state.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#19

Post by yawnxyz »

paulg equates "writing" with "writing for a public audience for exposure bucks".

He probably feels like writing inwardly for the purpose of thinking for yourself, e.g. in your own notes and notebooks, isn't really writing at all.

At least, I suspect he's kind of person who treats this kind of writing as nonsense. But writing for yourself, in your own shorthand, I think makes you faster and better at thinking than writing clearly for the public. Of course, using an LLM to write for yourself like this makes no sense.

Most writing for others isn't really writing to think. It's to please others and fit in and make sure people aren't mad because your one-word email reply ("no.") would be misinterpreted.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#20

Post by toldyouso2022 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #8

How much is ChatGPT replacing human writing? It still seems to me like most of the articles on HN are human-written, and I heard CNBC tried replacing writers with ChatGPT and it went terribly. But I've also heard anecdotes of freelance writers getting replaced [1] [2] [3], and every once in a while I spot or hear about something ChatGPT-written in the wild. I'm sure ChatGPT replaces boilerplate writing (e.g. legal do…

While reading your post I wondered if it was written (in part) by chatgpt. I hope you don't take offense, I'm not saying that it's written badly, it's more about of paranoia activating when there is long-form content talking about chatgpt writing posts in forums and such.
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