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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

#211

Post by MagicMoonlight »

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.

The point of it isn’t to write something like a book from scratch. Imagine if I told you “write a book about unicorn”, it would be trash.

The genius of it is that you could give it the notes of a meeting and get it to rewrite them in a different form. Nothing else can handle language like that.

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

#212

Post by theodric »

This strikes me as a very bold claim to just uncritically accept, especially considering it's just Some Guy making it because it Feels Truthy. Any sources to support the assertion? Any evidence at all? Absent that, this is likely just more hand-wringing about why GPT will cause the downfall of Western civilization.

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

#213

Post by tim333 »

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…

It may be true that writing makes people worse at remembering unaided, but better if they can check their diary. I imagine ChatGTP type things may likewise make people lazier at unaided thinking but better at AI aided thinking.

I tried asking ChatGTP what it thought and it came back with

>... it's also important to note that technology is a tool, and its impact largely depends on how it's used. For instance, AI writing tools ... can be used to augment human creativity and productivity, rather than replace it. These tools can help writers brainstorm ideas, overcome writer's block, write more quickly, and even learn to write better by providing examples and suggestions.

>Moreover, the use of AI tools might also stimulate new forms of thinking. Just as calculators didn't eliminate the need for mathematical understanding but rather allowed for more complex problems to be tackled, AI writing tools could help individuals refine and expand their thinking, enabling them to tackle more complex writing tasks or express ideas more effectively.

Which is kind of interesting - I didn't think of writers block on my own for example. Also lazy thinks at the moment probably tend to just go along with what they see in the media. AI aided thinking could improve on that.

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

#214

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

PG's premise is not really correct. We worry that AI will become super-powerful, but when you use AI you realize its superpower is the ability to collaborate with people. The combined system of one human plus one AI makes each component more capable and powerful than either acting independently.

So, what PG really should worry about is people losing the skill of independently writing, and instead getting really used to having AI work as a muse, or worse, a ghostwriter. My writing always will be better with an outside collaborator, and if youre so busy or important to rely exclusively on a ghostwriter, oh well. In all circumstances, AI will not be as good without strong human interaction, and likewise humans can take their work to a different level by leveraging AI.

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

#215

Post by Barrin92 »

largepeepee wrote: post #100
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…

It's also useful to point out that historical verbal tradition trained a very specific type of memory recall but that doesn't automatically make anyone wise. Just because you memorized 10000 random articles on Wikipedia, doesn't mean you now have the wisdom to apply that in a particular circumstance. Very much like early AI models.

Strong memory is almost always an indicator of exceptional skill. Whether it's chess players, musicians, writers or poets, mathematicians or also programmers, people who excel generally have astonishing ability to recall.

That's not an accident. Wisdom emerges out of practice and the effortlessness that comes with it. The genius piano player isn't that good because of some pie in the sky wisdom about music, just like the AI they just played tons of scales and training pieces. Literally meaningless stuff. This rejection of rote memorization as some sort of lower skill, that students should be 'smart and lazy' is one of the stupidest modern tendencies.

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

#216

Post by discreteevent »

jxramos wrote: post #125

“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.” ― Oscar Wilde The above quote may be apocryphal (I tried to source it once but only found secondary sources) but I shared it at work slack when chatGPT had a lot of action with our tea, chats. Seemed quite fitting much like a pilot rotting their flying skills leaning on the autopilot too heavily. You get…

"The spectator is a dying animal" - Jim Morrison

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

#217

Post by keiferski »

I think this can be generalized to, “when you lose the ability to create a certain Form, you also lose some of your ability to imagine new types of that Form, and instead just rely on shuffling existing versions of it around to generate novelty.”

A bit wordy, but I have the skill of drawing/sketching in mind. There is a big difference between sketching an idea on a blank sheet of paper, and using some kind of software tool that puts you on predefined rails from the start.

That said, I think the notion that ChatGPT replacing “good writing” as an artistic activity is basically nil. It’s more like the next generation of word processing: immensely useful for the right operator, not that useful for people without something interesting to say in the first place.

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

#218

Post by marginalia_nu »

bestouff wrote: post #172
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…

> people you talk to online are just googling up wikipedia articles to base their world view upon on the fly. Well you're lucky if they do; often they just make stuff up on the fly depending on what they saw on some dubious media or social network.

Well that's the human brain for you. It's very good at extrapolating new information from things it's seen and heard that may not be true, without actually telling you that it's basically making shit up as it goes. It's yet another reason why education matters.

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

#219

Post by Lewton »

raincole wrote: post #181
hammyhavoc wrote: post #25

> Most people hate to write as much as they hate math. Way more than admit it I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love . Some do it for pleasure, some do it as a career, others do it as a means to an end in their career, and they haven't found value in LLMs. There's writing and writing . If all you're doing is rewording what someone else has already done like a high sch…

Do people really hate writing? If so the comment sections of HN and Reddit, the timelines of Facebook and Twitter, the whole Medium... would be so empty.

99% of all online comments are generated by 1% of people.

ish

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

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

#220

Post by criddell »

yawnxyz wrote: post #19

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 wri…

He’s on Twitter a lot. I wonder what he would have to say about time and words spent tweeting?
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