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Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

thesignalist.io

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Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#131

Post by nakedneuron »

theendisney wrote: post #86

Something funny i discover: i had thoughts or tried to explain something decades ago and made a drawing. Some of these are just a circle with some arrows. Turns out it is really hard to make a drawing bad enough that you dont know what it is. It sometimes works better than even a written description. So you can just doodle in a notebook and tell yourself you've written it down. If you look at it regularly im sure rec…

Interesting observation indeed!

You are compressing thoughts/ideas to symbols. Via a visual feedback loop your mind can operate on more complex ideas as your working memory doesn't need to hold everything at once. The term "second brain" really applies here. While you're "doodling forth" you become proficient in your on-the-fly invented symbol language.

Key is also the slowdown effect of being careful to draw properly. It's like a harness for your thought process. Fixating your thoughts on paper is a way to be safe not to go astray; like a climber who puts hooks in the wall.

It's really more complex than it seems from the outside. A picture of a group of people drawing lines in the sand comes to mind. And one wonders - once again - how language came into the world.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#132

Post by nakedneuron »

baumgarn wrote: post #50

Heinrich von Kleist – On the gradual production of thoughts during speech is a classic german text from 1805 on this subject that I have always valued deeply https://franxfiction.com/on-the-gradual-fabrication-of-thoug...

Really interesting someone brings this up here. It's kind of an obscure little piece of text. But I always thought, yeah, this is more or less how we produce thought, and how LLMs operate, too.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#133

Post by brian138205 »

lowdude wrote: post #122

It started out as an interesting read, until I got to this paragraph: > The value didn't come from what was said at that moment. It came from what had been built across many such moments: a pattern of mutual recognition, a shared context, a baseline of trust that made the later exchange possible. The relationship was the infrastructure. The conversation was where it had been built, one cup of coffee at a time. And th…

how can you tell it's llm that wrote this paragraph

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#134

Post by fasterik »

brian138205 wrote: post #133
lowdude wrote: post #122

It started out as an interesting read, until I got to this paragraph: > The value didn't come from what was said at that moment. It came from what had been built across many such moments: a pattern of mutual recognition, a shared context, a baseline of trust that made the later exchange possible. The relationship was the infrastructure. The conversation was where it had been built, one cup of coffee at a time. And th…

how can you tell it's llm that wrote this paragraph

It's the cadence and the density of cliches. I've seen Opus produce very similar output. That's not to say it's 100% that this was written by an LLM. They had to learn this style from human writing in the training data. It's just a very condensed form of bad writing.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#135

Post by tripledry »

brandnewideas wrote: post #130
lowdude wrote: post #122

It started out as an interesting read, until I got to this paragraph: > The value didn't come from what was said at that moment. It came from what had been built across many such moments: a pattern of mutual recognition, a shared context, a baseline of trust that made the later exchange possible. The relationship was the infrastructure. The conversation was where it had been built, one cup of coffee at a time. And th…

This shit gets me irrationally mad. Well, the existence of such content doesn't, but the fact that other people aren't disdained by it (this dogshit has almost 300 upvotes on _HN_ right now) is what gets me.

As someone who doesn't follow the specifics of how LLMs write, how can you be sure it's an LLM?

I'm asking this genuinely because I've been using stuff like these separators before LLMS - now someone can just say "ahh dismiss the content they used style X it's LLM, it's dogshit".

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#136

Post by nakedneuron »

brandnewideas wrote: post #130
lowdude wrote: post #122

It started out as an interesting read, until I got to this paragraph: > The value didn't come from what was said at that moment. It came from what had been built across many such moments: a pattern of mutual recognition, a shared context, a baseline of trust that made the later exchange possible. The relationship was the infrastructure. The conversation was where it had been built, one cup of coffee at a time. And th…

This shit gets me irrationally mad. Well, the existence of such content doesn't, but the fact that other people aren't disdained by it (this dogshit has almost 300 upvotes on _HN_ right now) is what gets me.

The topic brings an interesting melange of people together. That makes up for it and made me upvote.

I too noticed a shallowing of the piece somewhere in the middle. It started with an interesting observation but ended with triviality (like you'd expect from a synthetic mind without a body).

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#137

Post by endymion-light »

fasterik wrote: post #134
brian138205 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can you tell it's llm that wrote this paragraph

It's the cadence and the density of cliches. I've seen Opus produce very similar output. That's not to say it's 100% that this was written by an LLM. They had to learn this style from human writing in the training data. It's just a very condensed form of bad writing.

I think whenever a blog post begins to sound like a marketing campaign from versace - it's always a great sign that it may be LLM generated.

This isn't just a comment. It's a an experience. A shared cognition between parties -- To collaborate & exchange ideas. It's not procrastination, it's culture. Culture is what builds civilization.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#138

Post by brandnewideas »

tripledry wrote: post #135
brandnewideas wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shit gets me irrationally mad. Well, the existence of such content doesn't, but the fact that other people aren't disdained by it (this dogshit has almost 300 upvotes on _HN_ right now) is what gets me.

As someone who doesn't follow the specifics of how LLMs write, how can you be sure it's an LLM? I'm asking this genuinely because I've been using stuff like these separators before LLMS - now someone can just say "ahh dismiss the content they used style X it's LLM, it's dogshit".

That's the worst part, I'm never 100% sure, and that uncertainty is so ... disempowering?

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#139

Post by LeoDaVibeci »

Great write up, thanks for posting. I think I could have avoided so many mistakes in my life if I had just spoken to someone about my plans first.

And not necessarily just based on their feedback, but just hearing the words come out of my mount and predicting their reactions would have helped a ton.

Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone

#140

Post by zrail »

fasterik wrote: post #134
brian138205 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can you tell it's llm that wrote this paragraph

It's the cadence and the density of cliches. I've seen Opus produce very similar output. That's not to say it's 100% that this was written by an LLM. They had to learn this style from human writing in the training data. It's just a very condensed form of bad writing.

"Density of cliches" is a great way of putting it. It's exhausting to write that way and unpleasant to read back in the edit process which is why that kind of thing doesn't happen (often) in human-led pieces. LLMs don't get exhausted.
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