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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

#261

Post by noobermin »

futureshock wrote: post #186
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.

I feel like this is the bias of a very smart, highly educated, highly capable person. If you are already an excellent writer and coder, can take vast fields of knowledge and blossoming ideas and spit them out onto paper in skilled form with minimal anxiety, GPT probably does very little for you. Maybe you could see if you were missing something very obvious and average. I read for probably 8-12 hours a day. I write e…

The thing is this will rob a whole generation of that learning. To struggle to learn to write, code, and all that is how you become a professional. A lot of people will never develop these skills, and the chasm between the talented and untalented will only grow.

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

#262

Post by DuckFeathers »

True. And nothing of value will be lost for most people and they will be less prone to propaganda-driven thinking... freeing them from many mental prisons. True bilinguals are naturally free of this, as I have written here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35684559

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

#263

Post by barrkel »

revelio wrote: post #66
barrkel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tools are at their most useful when they're replacing Stack Overflow searches for common tasks. An example I had last night: how do you split a pdf into separate pages on the command line, and how do you put them back together again (I replaced one of the pages with a scanned signed version). This is a basic task, a beginner's task in the world of pdf munging, but I didn't know the answer off the top of my head.…

By the way, on macos the preview tool can do this. You can drag and drop pages between documents using the sidebar and reorder them the same way.

Cool. I wasn't running macOS though.

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

#265

Post by leroy-is-here »

keiferski wrote: post #217

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 softwar…

I think the generalization is more minute than that. Take mathematics for example, we can write that down and so we have. A lot of people “hate” math because they understand math as the shuffling of symbols. They hear “math” and think “arithmetic”. Math appears a lot like some puzzle-game because when they read textbooks they see these symbols being shuffled around which produce exact answers, like 4.8473. But mathematics is about expressing ideas which can produce answers for specific problems, not specific answers in general.

It’s the allegory of the cave all over again, mathematics has become a shadow of itself in many people’s minds. Instead of a tool in which to express ideas, it just became stuffy definitions and arcane symbols which produce hard yes/no answers. Why? Because when those ideas are expressed by writing down the mathematics in textbooks, they are expressed in arcane symbols and stuffy definitions which have exercises that have hard yes/no answers.

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

#266

Post by thundergolfer »

nickagliano wrote: post #259

It's more complicated than, "using AI more and more will cause us to forget how to write." It's just a tool. I like comparing it to something like quizlet (online flash cards), which can be a great study tool, but which people will also misuse and abuse. Instead of studying and taking the online quizzes, people will often just find the right quizlet which has all of the answers to the online quiz. People who are hone…

You say it’s more complicated than PG’d claim, but your “just a tool” narrative is a classic oversimplification of technology’s relationship with man.

A tool is an extension of man, and it is not additive as you suggest, even for “talented writers”. A tool interacts with man’s mind and body, and society’s fabric, “adjusting the sense ratios” of man, to use McLuhan’s phrase.

“Just a tool” is lazy thinking that is most effectively used to stifle debate about technology. This has happened with the typewriter, the gun, the computer. For a more sophisticated engagement with technology, see Neil Postman, Ivan Illic, Marshall McLuhan, even Frank Herbert.

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

#267

Post by mannykannot »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #93
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'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…

Socrates (for it is he who was opposed to writing) did not appreciate how the act of writing exercises our abilities of both memory and reasoning, at least as much as speaking and certainly more than listening. Someone who has written extensively on a topic is almost certainly well-versed in it, and more so than when they began (even crackpots are generally masters of their own flawed theories.)

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

#268

Post by happycube »

tim333 wrote: post #213
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 writi…

Yeah - so much of writer's block is looking at an empty page/screen. It's very often easier to fix something bad than to write something good.

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

#269

Post by jasoneckert »

As an educator, I wholeheartedly agree with the author's points. The act of writing our thoughts allows us to make connections between concepts in our mind that we wouldn't otherwise make, often reorganizing and assimilating existing concepts in the process. Similarly, rewriting written notes (e.g., from a class) is an incredibly effective study technique.

Writing blogs, detailed emails, and articles also provides these same benefits. If we rely on others or AI to write them, we lose this learning benefit.

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

#270

Post by JBiserkov »

ricardo_nh wrote: post #243

I think that this question is also an existential one: how do we want to live our lives? besides the scientific/philosophical discussion about memory and writing, which is fascinating by itself, the question for me is what kind of human beings do we want to be? do we want to let AI's write down everything for us or do we want to leave a mark, leave OUR mark in the world and actually do the things ourselves? also, if…

This reminded me of a recent post of mine:

Control is an illusion.

But that also means that illusions can be used to gain at least some (sense of] control. See that mismatched bracket? I did that, despite the Universe screaming with a thousand voices that I shouldn't.

This text was written by a humane life form. #NoAI

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