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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

#161

Post by dalbasal »

piokoch wrote: post #143

This is so not true... For the whole Middle Ages people rarely could write, but still there were lawyers (yes, lawyers who could not write), doctors, scientists, poets, merchants, mighty and clever kings (yes, there were kings who could not write). Middle Ages gave us crucial inventions that built European civilization (mills, windmills, agriculture inventions like three-field system, ships building technology and so…

"Middle Age" Europe is poorly named. It's based on an idea that ancient europe is Greece and Rome. Then, dark/middle ages. Then Renaissance and modernity.

The problem is geography. France, Britain, Germany and such were never part of the ancient world. Rome had colonies there. But, these were (relatively) short lived outposts of civilisation. Civilisation was never a dominant culture in non-Mediterranean "Europe."

In the East, civilisation existed for thousands of years before Rome. They always had roads, kingdoms, bureaucracy, restaurants, banks and such. Even in dark ages, after collapse... these were collapsed civilisations. They didn't revert to tribal, oral societies.

The european Renaissance (excl Italy) was never a Renaissance. It's the actual birth of civilisation in europe. It's the first time writing became a major thing.

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

#162

Post by klabb3 »

neilv wrote: post #109

I'd love to see numbers on what percentage of ChatGPT writing is for BS that the prompter doesn't actually care about -- they only have to be able to say they did it. Examples: homework, corporate busywork. I'd also like to see numbers on writing with ChatGPT that the prompter does care about a bit, but that is effectively worthless BS, especially if generated by LLM, and just makes more piles of garbage for someone…

I don’t know what the numbers are right now, but I will eat my own hat if the categories you mention are not the majority once we see widespread adoption.

Everything from email to blogs to podcasts to even discussion forums turned into content mill venues of spam. Any new type of digital medium should absolutely be aware of human incentives, because your intentions don’t matter. People have very limited intuition about game theory type of things, even the smart ones who want to build cool shit.

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

#163

Post by rprospero »

tkgally wrote: post #52

Many people find writing very difficult or are not confident about their ability to do it accurately. For people like that, GPT can be a godsend. If they need to write an e-mail or short report for work, they can just give GPT a few bullet points and it will produce a perfectly serviceable, error-free text. People who need to write in a second language will find GPT especially useful, because they can write those bul…

If my entire message can be condensed into a few bullet points that could be fed into ChatGPT, wouldn't it be an insult to my audience's time to provide them with anything but that very list of bullet points?

This is exactly the thought that puts me in your category of "people [who] find writing very difficult"

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

#164

Post by yason »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This reads like Plato's warning (through Socrates' words) 2,400 years ago that writing will make people forgetful: "For this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have inven…

Plato had it easy... When we were young, there was no memory. You had to work everything out yourself, each time. And it was a hard life having none of that fancy thing of memorizing but, frankly, life was better for it.

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

#165

Post by bayindirh »

Last5Digits wrote: post #157
bayindirh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato's warning is true, actually. Since I started to write, I remember less and less about the things I have written down, because the brain replaces them with a pointer. However, writing for thinking and writing for storage is two different things, and it activates different parts of the brain. I'm an avid pen and paper user, and using a real pen on a paper allows me to think much more deeply. It regulates thinking…

I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain? No, the brain does not "replace written information with a pointer". I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it, but I can tell you that you can construct computer analogies in support of either case. I could posi…

> I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain?

No, because I literally don't remember my to do list after writing to my EDC notebook. The only thing I know is, it's in the notebook. So I only know the address of my to do list. I'm a literal sitting duck if I leave my notebook at home.

> I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it ...

I can tell you because I observe myself over 5+ years since I started to write my daily plans consistently to my notebook.

> I could posit that writing actually improves your memory, because the minute movements of your arm require more of your brain to compute, therefore creating more neural connections and possibilities of recall.

What it improves is not the "verbatim memory", but the concepts you work on. Working on something slowly, and with a reflection medium (i.e. pen & paper) allows your brain to refine the thing you're working on better and store it as a concept, rather than memorized string.

> This is likely just as wrong, but demonstrates that thinking up some vague explanation is insufficient to make a point about a system as complex as the human brain.

I have read a paper about supporting the claims I did in this comment, but I failed to find it in a whim. Will update/reply this comment if I find it. I use these analogies because of that paper.

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

#166

Post by spacebanana7 »

dalbasal wrote: post #154
marginalia_nu wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato's criticism is very true on an individual basis. What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to exchange ideas over physical and temporal distances. It turns out that was a greater benefit that to some extent makes up for losing the exceptionally well trained memory of scholars from a verbal tradition. Not that that last part isn't a loss though, and his…

I think it's better to think of these as different, rather than superior... especially given our times' proliferation of mediums with differing cognitive implications. Is Twitter > books? Is HN > podcasts? Every medium has its tendencies... positive, negative and complicated. We don't actually choose between them. It's useful to keep an eye on losses, not just gains. Oral traditions, for example, naturally evolve and…

> This is, largely, the story of monotheist religions. Whether or not they had sacred scrolls in ancient times, the religions were mostly based in folk traditions, temple authority, prophets, judges... people. As the moved from oral tradition to authoritative canon, the religions became extremely stiff an unyielding.

The Catholic Church is interesting counterpoint. Their religious teaching still openly draws upon tradition, institutional church authority and individuals like the Pope.

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

#167

Post by nforgerit »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This reads like Plato's warning (through Socrates' words) 2,400 years ago that writing will make people forgetful: "For this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have inven…

Plato.. wasn't that the guy who invented the acronym "IIRC"?

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

#168

Post by Kim_Bruning »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #98
Arisaka1 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only begin to wonder what would his opinion on Google search would be since we (developers) always practice the "don't memorize what you can easily search", and there's a sizeable amount of people claiming that memorization shouldn't even be a concern most of the time, and that's an advice given to people who are new in the field (like myself).

Do people really practice this? Like I usually physically unplug my computer from the network as I develop as it's such a distraction to have emails and stuff popping up. Doesn't really feel like a limitation to not be able to look stuff up.

I go in the completely opposite direction nowadays. I have chatgpt [*] up, I use google searches, I have online api documentation and tutorials open. I log on to IRC and chat with (other) skilled developers. (psst... I even read stack overflow ... sometimes [*]) ... so ... I definitely use the internet a lot while developing.

As mentioned above, I do try to research things to the point of understanding. Which is something human contact definitely helps with. To stay on topic: ChatGPT is obviously less good, but is often good enough, is patient, and guaranteed to answer you in a couple of seconds.

[*] My exact workflow would not quite fit into this footnote, but I seldom cut-and-paste answers, unless it's for something exceptionally non-critical. I try to understand what is written and then type out my own version (which should be very close), or at very least I type it across by hand rather than use ^C-^V. (the latter is an edge case). In general, there's this AI-koan about how some things only work if you also understand them, which has a kernel of truth to it. ( http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html first one about tom knight)

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

#169

Post by asimpletune »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #134
mike_hock wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, we'd never know what he said had it not been written down.

Plato gives multiple hints across his works about the esoteric, unwritten teachings [1]. We can only speculate about the content; for me, they were surely tied with the Eleusinian Mysteries [2]: early, myths-driven psychonautics based on ergot. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_unwritten_doctrines [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries

I also think he had a bunch written teachings that were intended only for his students. Obviously they’re lost to time.

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

#170

Post by blitzar »

martin-adams wrote: post #26

I just had an interview candidate come up with questions to ask us about the company. It sounded formulaic and when I queried it, they said they used ChatGPT. I’m not disappointed, but I’m now wondering how much thinking was left to AI than being genuinely inquisitive.

It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if it pays off for them.
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