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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

#361

Post by ghaff »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #339
ethbr0 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could see it going either way. Agricultural efficiency (in terms of person_fed : person_farming) in Europe was pretty low. So the dedicated headcount (monks) might dominate the net cost, which would make it scale more linearly with number of books.

The market price 1 medieval book was roughly the same price for 5 pigs according to this analysis [1] Price of 7 books = £5 = 100s -> 14s per book / Price of 1 Pig in London = 3s 14 / 5 => roughly 5 pigs per book Note £1 = 20s [1] http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

Paper was also a huge cost--maybe more than the monks' labor depending upon how you want to value their real cost.

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

#362

Post by tlogan »

This is not correct and I cannot disagree more.

Sadly, in our society, smart people were not successful as they could due to the prominence of written communication (I call it obsession with fluffy writing). This is because alternative modes of conveying knowledge and ideas, such as mathematics or visual diagrams like mind maps, may not be comprehended as easily as writing.

We need also to acknowledge the unfortunate reality that English written by non native speakers often face unwarranted mistrust.

This is where ChatGPT steps in, serving as a great equalizer.

Math is the core skill required for critical thinking and problem-solving. Not writing.

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

#363

Post by DoreenMichele »

ghaff wrote: post #357
DoreenMichele wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make me think of the anecdote about the professor who had half the class graded for making one amazingly beautiful piece of pottery and the other half graded by total weight of the work they created. In the end, those graded by weight had nicer pieces as it involved more practice with producing something.

In the case of writing/presenting/many things, there's definitely a case for doing something regularly even if a lot of that output is pretty routine and pedestrian. So there's probably a limit to the degree to which you can automate away the routine stuff and still expect to parachute in and produce something killer on demand every few years when you need to.

Absolutely.

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

#364

Post by efields »

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 needed to read this. Seeing posts about having gpt “write apps from scratch” vs me trying to get it to spit out what I want has been tedious. I’m assuming what’s not written about is the hours of just how tedious this process currently is, and how much “from scratch” is your own human brain doing the prompt edits bc you have a very good idea of what coding step comes next. It’s a lot of work, and not faster than me just concentrating hard and doing it myself.

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

#365

Post by smolder »

Lewton wrote: post #219
raincole wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

As a 1%er, member of the e-commentariat, I'm happy to have had the opportunity to set an example for the LLMs and future AIs trained on my comments.

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

#366

Post by adregan »

efficax wrote: post #310
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…

plato is specifically thinking of the social impact but he's also not actually arguing against writing. after all, he's making his argument in writing . he's trying to push the reader to look into their souls for the truths that he thinks are already there. "remembrance" here is specific, so is "memory". It doesn't mean, to remember facts and things that happened, but to reach back into ones mind beyond sensation and…

Thanks for this context. In this light, I am reminded of Emerson’s “Self Reliance.”

> Trust thyself

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

#367

Post by Jeff_Brown »

My gut agrees -- and yet my head says that if we offload writing tasks that we don't care about to GPT, we might not lose much of value.

By contrast, if we offloaded journaling to GPT, that does seem like a big loss. It also seems impractical, though, since as soon as you've told GPT what to say, you've basically said it. Moreover most people don't journal anyway.

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

#368

Post by albrewer »

noobermin wrote: post #261
futureshock wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The thing is this will rob a whole generation of that learning

I disagree with this take. My personal anecdote is that I am far, far better at mental math than I was in high school because I ended up in a job where doing a lot of ad-hoc calculations was just a day-to-day thing. I started out using a calculator, but eventually got to where I didn't need it most of the time just through sheer repetition.

I think AI tools (the kind people are worried about right now, anyway) will be used in a similar fashion to calculators. After learning the basics, it will be a tool taught as an assist for streaming ideas into and getting out a well-formatted and coherent output. People who write a lot will eventually find the hassle of using the tool to be more trouble than it's worth. People who don't will still know how to use it to and know how to recognize when the output doesn't make any sense.

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

#369

Post by vagab0nd »

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.

No offense but you are almost certainly using it wrong. Consider the following:

1. Use it when you know how to do something but don't want to.

2. Use it when you don't know something, and don't know how to find the answer.

3. Never trust. Verify.

Clearly, this means the examples that impress others will often not impress you.

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

#370

Post by samuell »

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…

Whether this applies depends on what situation you are supposedly replacing by writing.

If you replace intense IRL dialogue and discussion, with writing, this might be the case.

On the other hand, if you replace just letting your thoughts fade in the void, with writing them down as coherent though out ideas in writing, I would argue that the writing has actually both triggered retention from memory (thus exercising the memory), and helped you critically assess and make your own thinking clearer.

Thus, I think writing is an extremely helpful tool for processing your thoughts for most knowledge workers who are not already involved in constant dialogue with others (which is most of us I guess).

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