You won’t lose the ability to write when you get a fountain pen
When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
391–400 of 593 posts
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#392This 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…
I'm sorry, Plato wasn't thinking about the effects of the written word on social issues over time and space?!
The whole point of his writing all it down, the very literal foundations of ~2500 years of philosophy and the bedrock of Western (and others) civilization, was so that he could have an effect on social issues over time. That was the whole point! He is super clear about this in his writings and throughout his life and travels.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#393I'm not really a fan of ChatGPT, I think it's overhyped and oversold, and very fundamentally limited. But I also completely disagree with his take, it's too broad and sweeping. Offloading some cognitive load does not suddenly make people stupider. It just means that their focus can go elsewhere. Nor do tools that abstract away some processes. A good example is driving. Does a manual transmission require more focus an…
"But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and [ignore ChatGPT]. The purpose of this article is not to change anyone's mind, but to reassure people already interested in [unassisted writing] -- people who know that [writing in isolation] is powerful, but worry because it isn't widely used. In a competitive situation, that's an advantage." -- slightly modified PG drivel on Lisp
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#394I'm not really a fan of ChatGPT, I think it's overhyped and oversold, and very fundamentally limited. But I also completely disagree with his take, it's too broad and sweeping. Offloading some cognitive load does not suddenly make people stupider. It just means that their focus can go elsewhere. Nor do tools that abstract away some processes. A good example is driving. Does a manual transmission require more focus an…
I don’t think pg is talking about the short-term, cognitive deficiencies of using AIs during execution of a specific task. I read it as the long-term decline in capabilities because you don’t regularly exercise certain things:
- being able to organize and compose your thoughts
- being able to synthesize disparate ideas into a cohesive whole
- tuning word choice, diction, and flow for a particular audience
- choosing the narrative frame in which you present your idea (this one is huge)
More concerning than long-term decline is that the next generation never develop these at all.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#395For writing yes, the more we offload the lazier we will get.
But for reading, I can’t stand most text as it’s way too long and convoluted. I would gladly take a short version most of the time or one that is created just for my level of understanding.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#396I'm not really a fan of ChatGPT, I think it's overhyped and oversold, and very fundamentally limited. But I also completely disagree with his take, it's too broad and sweeping. Offloading some cognitive load does not suddenly make people stupider. It just means that their focus can go elsewhere. Nor do tools that abstract away some processes. A good example is driving. Does a manual transmission require more focus an…
"But I don't expect to convince anyone (over 25) to go out and [ignore ChatGPT]. The purpose of this article is not to change anyone's mind, but to reassure people already interested in [unassisted writing] -- people who know that [writing in isolation] is powerful, but worry because it isn't widely used. In a competitive situation, that's an advantage." -- slightly modified PG drivel on Lisp http://www.paulgraham.co…
The scope is much broader than choice of computing language, since it affects the discourse of our whole civilization, and how we think about and discuss societal issues, and where we want to go as humanity.
On the other hand, if you want to be a thought leader, you’ll have less competition.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#397Maybe most people will write more now that they have GPT available.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
After five years of not being forced to write while learning grammar etc some other way, he discovered fan fiction and began writing thousands of words per day. But he didn't learn to write by writing because he had dysgraphia and emotional baggage about writing from public school when I pulled him out. His blog writing gets more traffic than mine. He's a writer by trade, though he doesn't yet make much money at it.
I misunderstood the situation. Apologies.
The level of mature, respectful, civil discourse on HN never ceases to impress me. I see this less and less on other discussion boards.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#399I think pg underestimates the amount of trivial and mundane copy most people write day in day out. Be it stupid Jira tickets, spec documents, school essays with standardized expectations or formulaic messages and emails. Not much ability to lose there, but AI is a tremendous timesaver. A pg quality essay is a whole other story but I doubt AI is much useful there in its current state.
Why should anyone bother to read this crap especially if it's autogenerated?
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#400I'm not really a fan of ChatGPT, I think it's overhyped and oversold, and very fundamentally limited. But I also completely disagree with his take, it's too broad and sweeping. Offloading some cognitive load does not suddenly make people stupider. It just means that their focus can go elsewhere. Nor do tools that abstract away some processes. A good example is driving. Does a manual transmission require more focus an…
For me it’s extremely useful for revealing information I know I need to know, but I’m not yet sure how to query it.
That’s a skill I’ve developed over the years, and I’ll still need to use it, but it’s often a major time sink. Skipping it lets me focus far more on learning and applying rather than grasping in the dark for a while, digging, sorting through sources, verifying and validating, etc.
GPT will even surface studies pertaining to very specific topics by linking regular language to more sophisticated, field-specific jargon. I wouldn’t use it to learn what’s in the papers, but it’s extremely useful for simply finding what I need to know.