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Do your own writing

alexhwoods.com

111–120 of 265 posts

Re: Do your own writing

#111
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm finding AI great to have a conversation with to flesh out ideas, with the added benefit it can summarize everything at the end

I do this a lot. Start by telling the AI to just listen and only provide feedback when asked. Lay out your current line of thinking conversationally. Periodically ask the AI to summarize/organize your thoughts "so far". Tactically ask for research into a decision or topic you aren't sure about and then make a decision inline. Then once I feel like I have addressed all the areas, I ask for a "critical" review, which u…

I usually create a document/folder with my thinking on what I want to do, any background information that is relevant, conversations on the topic, technical manuals, links etc. Then enter a conversation and explore the problem space and do something very similar to what you are doing.

Re: Do your own writing

#112

I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…

If you drop the premise of writing, drop the premise that you need something well written. Just give me the same information you would have given the LLM.

Re: Do your own writing

#113
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your context, I'm an AI hater, so understand my assumptions as such. > The obvious best solution is to have your agent write release notes for your agent in the future to have context. No more tedious writing or reading, but also no missing context. Why is more AI the "obvious" best solution here? If nobody wants to read your release notes, then why write them? And if they're going to slim them down with their AI…

This is kind of a fundamental issue with release notes. They are broadcasting lots of information, and only a small amount of information is relevant to any particular user (at least in my experience). If I had a technically capable human assistant, I would have them filter through release notes from a vendor and only give me the relevant information for APIs I use. Having them take care of the boring, menial task so…

I read a lot of release notes in my job and the idea that that is some kind of noticeable time sink that needs to be streamlined is bizarre to me. Just read the notes.

Re: Do your own writing

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your context, I'm an AI hater, so understand my assumptions as such. > The obvious best solution is to have your agent write release notes for your agent in the future to have context. No more tedious writing or reading, but also no missing context. Why is more AI the "obvious" best solution here? If nobody wants to read your release notes, then why write them? And if they're going to slim them down with their AI…

What better solution do you have in mind? This scenario is AI being used as a tool to eliminate toil. It’s not replacing human creativity, or anything like that. If you have a problem with that, then you should also have a problem with computers in general. But maybe you do have a problem with computers - after all, they regularly eliminate jobs, for example. In that case, AI is only special in its potentially greate…

It's not eliminating toil, it's externalizing it from the writer to the reader.

If writing something is too tedious for you, at least respect my time as the reader enough to just give me the prompt you used rather than the output.

Re: Do your own writing

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find folks bringing up rubber ducking as a thing LLMs are good at to be misguided. IMO, what defines rubber ducking as a concept is that it is just the developer explaining what their doing to themselves. Not to another person, and not to a thing pretending to be a person. If you have a "two way" or "conversational" debugging/designing experience it isnt rubber ducking, its just normal design/debugging. The…

Sometimes I don't want creativity though, I'm just not familiar enough with the solution space and I use the LLM as a sort of gradient descent simulator to the right solution to my problem (the LLM which itself used gradient descent when trained, meta, I know). I am not looking for wholly new solutions, just one that fits the problem the best, just as one could Google that information but LLMs save even that searchin…

> I'm just not familiar enough with the solution space

Neither is the LLM

Re: Do your own writing

#116

I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really co…

>I've long considered writing to be the "last step in thinking". I can't tell you how many times an idea, that was crystal clear in my mind, fell apart the moment I started writing and I realize there were major contradictions I needed to resolve. Likewise I also have numerous times where writing about something loosely and casually revealed to me something that fundamentally changed how I viewed a topic and really consolidated my thinking.

I read somewhere that Thinking, Writing and Speaking engage different parts of your brain. Whatever the mechanism, I often resolve issues midway while writing a report on them.

Re: Do your own writing

#117
post #4

> When I send somebody a document that whiffs of LLM, I’m only demonstrating that the LLM produced something approximating what others want to hear. I’m not showing that I contended with the ideas. This eloquently states the problem with sending LLM content to other people: As soon as they catch on that you're giving them LLM writing, it changes the dynamic of the relationship entirely. Now you're not asking them to…

Lots of people want to use LLMs to produce things and nobody wants to consume the things LLMs produce. The market-clearing solution is to have some mechanism by which the producers pay the rest of us to consume the products. Whoever comes up with that framework will probably do very well.

Re: Do your own writing

#118
I am not a native English speaker, I can do reading fine, but writing is a big trouble for me, especially formal writing and academic writing, AI can do help me writing better, of course I'll review what AI generated.(Above all are not written by AI obviously.)

Re: Do your own writing

#119
Write down the core facts, questions and answers in a very rough around the edges draft. Don't bother spell or grammar checking. But make sure the facts are all there.

Then, ask an LLM to fix up the article, make it look professional and fill in the "fluff". Explicitly tell it to not include facts not already in the document.

Review the document and if its all good, its done.

Re: Do your own writing

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I don't want creativity though, I'm just not familiar enough with the solution space and I use the LLM as a sort of gradient descent simulator to the right solution to my problem (the LLM which itself used gradient descent when trained, meta, I know). I am not looking for wholly new solutions, just one that fits the problem the best, just as one could Google that information but LLMs save even that searchin…

> I'm just not familiar enough with the solution space Neither is the LLM

Oftentimes it is though, good enough for my purposes.
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