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Thoughts on thinking

dcurt.is

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Re: Thoughts on thinking

#311

Post by bonoboTP »

boppo1 wrote: post #306
cameldrv wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally noticed this as a big trend. For example, I had become more and more reliant on my GPS in the car. I've not really been the outer control loop of the vehicle. An automated system tells me what to do. I recently got a running watch. It suggests workouts that will help me improve my speed (which honestly I don't even care about!). If you turn it on it will blare at you if you're going too fast or too sl…

>When you use any social media, you're not really choosing what you're looking at. You just scroll and the site decides what you're going to look at next. Not necessarily. I'm into a very particular sort of painting and I have been totalitarian with Instagram about showing me that content and not other stuff. It works splendidly as long as I'm consistent. Thanks to Instagram, I have been introduced to tons of painter…

Is it better to be introduced to tons of painters vs fewer but in more detail? Or being told about a painter by someone in person vs by an algorithm?

In the 90s you only had certain songs if you knew someone who had it on cassette and you borrowed it and put it on your mixtape. Throughout the interaction, you also got initiated deeper into the culture of that thing in person.

I also notice that families rarely sit together nowadays to look through vacation photos. The pictures are taken, but people either don't have time to sort them and curate them. When film had a price, you only took fewer ones but it was more intentional. Then the fact that you only saw the picture once you were back at home, generated excitement that you could share and relive candid moments. Now people upload stuff on Instagram but it's intended to a generic audience, much unlike browsing through an album on the couch.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#312

Post by GeoAtreides »

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…

> states now use AI to grade student essays in standardized tests.

citation needed

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#313

Post by SilverSlash »

I noticed a similar effect on me in regards to critical thinking when I'm coding. My default response when faced with any coding problem now is to use an LLM.

But it gets even worse. Last year I'd get just an initial solution from an LLM and then reason about it myself. Now even that is too much work and I instead ask the same question to multiple LLMs and draw consensus from their results, skipping/easing even that second step of thinking.

Energy takes the path of least resistance. Thinking requires energy. So are our brains learning to off-load thinking/reasoning to LLMs whenever possible?

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#314

Post by Madmallard »

abathologist wrote: post #140
jstummbillig wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What kind of problems are you solving day-to-day where the LLMs are doing heavy lifting?

Agree

They can't do anything elaborate or interesting for me beyond literal tiny pet project proof of concepts. They could potentially help me uncover a bug, explain some code, or implement a small feature.

As soon as the complexity of the feature goes up either in its side-effects, dependencies, or the customization of the details of the feature, they are quite unhelpful. I doubt even one senior engineer at a large company is using LLMs for major feature updates in codebases that have a lot of moving parts and significant complexity and many LOC.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#315

Post by vidar »

boppo1 wrote: post #306
cameldrv wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally noticed this as a big trend. For example, I had become more and more reliant on my GPS in the car. I've not really been the outer control loop of the vehicle. An automated system tells me what to do. I recently got a running watch. It suggests workouts that will help me improve my speed (which honestly I don't even care about!). If you turn it on it will blare at you if you're going too fast or too sl…

>When you use any social media, you're not really choosing what you're looking at. You just scroll and the site decides what you're going to look at next. Not necessarily. I'm into a very particular sort of painting and I have been totalitarian with Instagram about showing me that content and not other stuff. It works splendidly as long as I'm consistent. Thanks to Instagram, I have been introduced to tons of painter…

I applaud your consistency and effort to curatr your feed which is certainly technibally possible but i am quite sure you are the exception to the rule.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#316

Post by BlueTemplar »

Using LLMs is a bit like smoking : better to never have started (or at least quit ASAP).

And perhaps even more fitting now that not doing it comes with short term career limitations :

Friends: Rachel Gets Peer Pressured Into Smoking (Season 5 Clip) | TBS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzDJdZLPeGE

(Though an even better parallel is using platforms.)

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#317

Post by BlueTemplar »

flysand7 wrote: post #120
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…

Another case in point is that memorizing vocabularies and grammar, although could seem like an efficient way to learn a language, is incredibly unrewarding. I've been learning japanese from scratch, using only real speech to absorb new words, without using dictionaries and anything else much. The first feeling of reward came immediately when I learned that "arigatou" means thanks (although I terribly misheard how the…

If you used subtitles over audio then why would you avoid dictionaries too ? Purely for the reward of treating it as a puzzle ? (Since you would have to figure out which word corresponds to a which concept in a phrase.)

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#318

Post by throwaway2037 »

boppo1 wrote: post #306
cameldrv wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've personally noticed this as a big trend. For example, I had become more and more reliant on my GPS in the car. I've not really been the outer control loop of the vehicle. An automated system tells me what to do. I recently got a running watch. It suggests workouts that will help me improve my speed (which honestly I don't even care about!). If you turn it on it will blare at you if you're going too fast or too sl…

>When you use any social media, you're not really choosing what you're looking at. You just scroll and the site decides what you're going to look at next. Not necessarily. I'm into a very particular sort of painting and I have been totalitarian with Instagram about showing me that content and not other stuff. It works splendidly as long as I'm consistent. Thanks to Instagram, I have been introduced to tons of painter…

    > I'm into a very particular sort of painting
Can you share some of your favourites that you follow? This sounds interesting.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#319

Post by treebirg »

bccdee wrote: post #233
fennecbutt wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, that's not true. Quick, what's 51 plus 92? Now: Did you think back to a time someone else added these numbers together, or are you doing it yourself, right now, in your head? I'm sure it's not the first time these numbers have ever been summed, but that doesn't matter. You're doing it now, independently. Just because something isn't unique, doesn't make it derivative. We rediscover things every day.

But I do know what numbers are. I've also done addition before, so I know what the steps are. The result of 51 + 92 is derivative from (at least) these two concepts, which derive from others and so on. Maybe I'm stretching the meaning of derivative here, but to me derivative doesn't mean strictly recalling something verbatim.

Re: Thoughts on thinking

#320

Post by throwaway2037 »

bonoboTP wrote: post #311
boppo1 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When you use any social media, you're not really choosing what you're looking at. You just scroll and the site decides what you're going to look at next. Not necessarily. I'm into a very particular sort of painting and I have been totalitarian with Instagram about showing me that content and not other stuff. It works splendidly as long as I'm consistent. Thanks to Instagram, I have been introduced to tons of painter…

Is it better to be introduced to tons of painters vs fewer but in more detail? Or being told about a painter by someone in person vs by an algorithm? In the 90s you only had certain songs if you knew someone who had it on cassette and you borrowed it and put it on your mixtape. Throughout the interaction, you also got initiated deeper into the culture of that thing in person. I also notice that families rarely sit to…

    > In the 90s you only had certain songs if you knew someone who had it on cassette and you borrowed it and put it on your mixtape.
I knew lots of people who recorded 120 Minutes on MTV and listened to college radio.
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