I don't think most normal people will spam their own SNS/blogs using LLMs. If you hate writing, you won't be writing at all, instead of using LLMs to generate stuffs. If you have a message to send, you'll be taking much of your time creating a piece even with LLMs. Obviously, there can be many exceptions here (e.g. trolls, flamers), but the key point is that using LLMs only can reduce the cost of act of writing, but…
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
#32title of this post could have been written by gpt. oh, and twitter - no thanks. can we simply stop posting twitter stuff here? it's just unreadable to anyone that doesn't use that platform. (i.e. most people)
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#33I 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.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#34Sometimes 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 agree that there is currently way too much hype. I mean GPT4 is certainly cool and probably going to be useful in some limited use cases, but it's not the new electricity and it's not going to take over the world.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#35Sometimes 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.
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. ChatGPT gave me command lines straight away.
That's what they're good for right now. Beginner / common tasks in areas you're not familiar with.
And a further implication, they're great for one man bands, generalist roles where simple things need to be done in lots of different areas. For specialist deep roles where you have all the tacit knowledge in mind already, not nearly as useful.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#36Sometimes 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.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#37title of this post could have been written by gpt. oh, and twitter - no thanks. can we simply stop posting twitter stuff here? it's just unreadable to anyone that doesn't use that platform. (i.e. most people)
Aren't most HNers using Nitter? https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#38Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#39Sometimes 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.
Especially in refactoring or working with poor codebases. I do notice with copilot specifically some people seem to get wildly different response times with it, for me it gives suggestions almost instantly so as im typing ive got an ongoing suggestion I can accept at any time as it gets closer to what I intend or ignore if not. A common really useful thing is when I have to set up a series of something (recently in a power plant code I set up parameters for a certain kind of battery) and then I just start writing for each other kind of battery it suggests the whole boilerplate for every case, I can go back and fill in the details and exceptions.
As for chatgpt its more useful at interpreting existing code. I often give it a giant function and say "I want you to split off this part and put it into its own thread, get the output with a queue" or something like that. Again, output can often need a little bit of massaging, but I find it reduces cognitive load involved in doing such a task. The trick is to be naturally skeptical of the output but appreciate how much of your life is spent writing nonsense.
I've also found that learning to put what I want exactly into words can be a particular skill that has helped my communication. Making sure you know the name and function of every tool you use. I think if I had said that to myself before I started using these things id have been incredulous, "of course I know the name of things" but no, its a different thing to be talking about them often, especially when you have an idiot savant that takes everything you say too literally. You have to learn to be consise and precise
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#40> 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…
One can tell from the opening of your comment. Composition, cadence, vocabulary, repetition. It ties together.
I prompted an LLM to produce an enthusiastic expression around writing, but it came up with drivel like
> Writing fills my heart with pure delight, igniting my soul and inspiring my mind with boundless creativity.
I found myself tempted to instruct it on how to write well but that sort of defeats the point.
And maybe I suck at prompting but the appropriate combination of profanity, brevity, yet seriousness was hard for me to get it to do.