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Thoughts on thinking

dcurt.is

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Re: Thoughts on thinking

#221

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

JackFr wrote: post #136
zdragnar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who has learned a second language can tell you that you aren't proficient just by memorizing vocabulary and grammar. Having a conversation and forming sentences on the fly just feels different- either as a different skill or using a different part of the brain. I also don't think the nature of LLMs being a negative crutch is new knowledge per se; when I was in school, calculus class required a graphing calcula…

Well I can extract a square root by hand. We all had to learn it and got tested on it. No one to day learns that anymore. The vast, vast majority have no idea and I don’t think people are dumber because of it. That is to say, I think it’s not cut-and-dried. I agree you need to learn something, but something’s it’s okay use a tool.

Using a tool like that is opposite to mastering the skill. There's no royal road to mastery and never will be. One does not have to master all skills, of course, and may do well not mastering any (or mastering dark ones).

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#222

Post by hooverd »

johnisgood wrote: post #119
don_neufeld wrote: post #3

Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer. Lest you wonder “what does this gu…

You can learn a lot from LLMs though, same with, say, Wikipedia. You need curiosity. You need the desire to learn. If you do not have it, then of course you will get nowhere, LLMs or no LLMs.

Wikipedia isn't going to write your paper for you. I don't see the difference between an LLM and one of those paper writing services in this context.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#223

Post by Nevermark »

fennecbutt wrote: post #181
abathologist wrote: post #159

I think we are going to be seeing a vast partitioning in society in the next months and years. The process of forming expressions just is the process of conceptual and rational articulation (as per Brandom). Those who misunderstand this -- believing that concepts are ready made, then encoded and decoded from permutations of tokens, or, worse, who have no room to think of reasoning or conceptualization at all -- they…

99% if not 100% of human thought and general output is derivative. Everything we create or do is based on something we've experienced or seen. Try to think of an object that doesn't exist, and isn't based on anything you've ever seen before, a completely new object with no basis in our reality. It's impossible. Writers made elves by adding pointy ears to a human. That's it.

Go with 99.9%. But not 100%.

Someone imagined space and time could be a deformed fabric. That was new.

In minor and major ways, new ideas are found or emerge from searches for solutions to problems from science to art. Or exploration of things in new combinations or from a previously untapped viewpoint.

Most people are not looking hard for anything beyond what they know. So not likely to find anything new.

But many people try new things, or try to improve or vary something in a direction that is not easy, and learning something nonobvious and new is the “price” they must pay to succeed. Or a bonus they are paid for pushing through a thicket, even if they don’t succeed at what they set out to do.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#224

Post by guyfhuo »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #209
don_neufeld wrote: post #3

Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer. Lest you wonder “what does this gu…

Ironically, states now use AI to grade student essays in standardized tests. English teachers even recommend grammarly.. Students are given a “prompt” for writing. I wish other schools had the conviction you describe…

> Students are given a “prompt” for writing

Students were always given a “prompt” for writing.

That’s why tech companies used that term; rather than the other way around.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#225

Post by guyfhuo »

jstummbillig wrote: post #121
ay wrote: post #115

Very strange. Either the author uses some magic AI, or I am holding it wrong. I used LLMs since a couple of years, as a nice tool. Besides that: I have tried using LLMs to create cartoon pictures. The first impression is “wow”; but after a bunch of pictures you see the evidently repetitive “style”. Using LLMs to write poetry results is also quite cool at first, but after a few iterations you see the evidently repetit…

Maybe you are not that great at using the most current LLMs or you don't want to be? I find that increasingly to be the most likely answer, whenever somebody makes sweeping claims about the impotence of LLMs. I get more use out of them every single day and certainly with every model release (mostly for generating absolutely not trivial code) and it's not subtle.

> Maybe you are not that great at using the most current LLMs or you don't want to be?

I’m tired of this argument. I’ll even grant you: both sides of it.

It seems as though we prepared our selves to respond to llms in this manner with people memeing, or simply recognizing, that there was a “way” to ask questions to get better results early on when ranked search broadened the appeal of search engines.

The reality is that both you and the op are talking about the opinion of the thing, but leaving out the thing itself.

You could say “git gud”, but what if you showed op what “gud” output to you was, and they recognized it as the same sort of output that they were saying was repetitive?

It’s ambiguity based on opinion.

I fear so many are taking part each other.

Perhaps linking to example prompts and outputs that can be directly discussed is the only way to give specificity to the ambiguous language.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#226

Post by malloryerik »

I find LLMs fail and fail hard at what might be the most imaginative form of writing: poetry.

Before sending this comment I pecked around the net for examples of gleaming LLM verse.

A few articles claimed human readers preferred AI-brewed poetry to the human stuff. I checked the examples. Clearly most of the people surveyed were underliterate -- the human poems were excellent and the AI poems just creepily bad and simplistic -- so the articles turned into sad and unwitting testament about the state of our culture.

Maybe if you expertly LLM prompt your way to a highly abstract poem, over several iterations you might land something that has some actual feel to it, but even then that might owe more to your prompting talent than the LLM's skill. You could do the same with dice and a dictionary. (Is prompting is essentially editing?)

Please, show me otherwise. If faced with strong contrary evidence, I will be forced to change my mind.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#227

Post by agentultra »

Have you read the book if I told you what it was about? Knowing what Crime and Punishment is about is different than reading it yourself. There’s no royal road and no shortcut to knowledge.

Read How To Solve It by Polya. The frustrations, dead ends, and trials are all a part of the process. It’s how we convince ourselves of truth and reinforce our understanding. It develops our curiosity and creativity.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#228

Post by makeitdouble »

zdragnar wrote: post #46
don_neufeld wrote: post #3

Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer. Lest you wonder “what does this gu…

Anyone who has learned a second language can tell you that you aren't proficient just by memorizing vocabulary and grammar. Having a conversation and forming sentences on the fly just feels different- either as a different skill or using a different part of the brain. I also don't think the nature of LLMs being a negative crutch is new knowledge per se; when I was in school, calculus class required a graphing calcula…

> the higher end models (TI-92 etc) that had symbolic equation solvers were also banned

I'm surprised it was a problem in the first place. Don't equation solving exercises require you to leave intermediary steps, and you can't just put a "x=5" as a one liner answer ?

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#229

Post by 8note »

emporas wrote: post #208
abathologist wrote: post #159

I think we are going to be seeing a vast partitioning in society in the next months and years. The process of forming expressions just is the process of conceptual and rational articulation (as per Brandom). Those who misunderstand this -- believing that concepts are ready made, then encoded and decoded from permutations of tokens, or, worse, who have no room to think of reasoning or conceptualization at all -- they…

It is knowledge that gets automated, rather than reasoning. I was thinking of the first solar civilization, which lives totally in space. Near a star, but not in a planet, and no gravitational pull anywhere. They build tubes 10 km long, a shot board is put at one end, and the players at the other end. They shoot darts at the board, and each shot takes 5 hours to reach the target. That's their national sport. Problem…

hmm

ive been thinking that the knowledge isnt written down, so cant be automated, which also makes knowledge sharing hard, but the reasoning is automated

so, ive been trying to figure out patterns by which the knowledge does get written down, and so can be reasoned about

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#230

Post by genewitch »

zdragnar wrote: post #46
don_neufeld wrote: post #3

Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer. Lest you wonder “what does this gu…

Anyone who has learned a second language can tell you that you aren't proficient just by memorizing vocabulary and grammar. Having a conversation and forming sentences on the fly just feels different- either as a different skill or using a different part of the brain. I also don't think the nature of LLMs being a negative crutch is new knowledge per se; when I was in school, calculus class required a graphing calcula…

Yeah and I'm of the age when teachers in all grades would say "you're not going to carry around a calculator your whole adult life"

Hilarious miscalculation.

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