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I miss thinking hard

jernesto.com

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Re: I miss thinking hard

#41

Post by CuriouslyC »

donatj wrote: post #22
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #7

Dude, I know you touched on this but seriously. Just don't use AI then. It's not hard, it's your choice to use it or not. It's not even making you faster, so the pragmatism argument doesn't really work well! This is a totally self inflicted problem that you can undo any time you want.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have their company measuring their AI usage and regularly laying people off.

It's not hard to burn tokens on random bullshit (see moltbook). If you really can deliver results at full speed without AI, it shouldn't be hard to keep cover.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#42

Post by tbmtbmtbmtbmtbm »

Dr_Birdbrain wrote: post #27

I think this problem existed before AI. At least in my current job, there is constant, unrelenting demand for fast results. “Multi-day deep thinking” sounds like an outrageous luxury, at least in my current job.

this is why productivity is a word that should really just be reserved for work contexts, and personal time is better used for feeding "The Thinker"

Re: I miss thinking hard

#43

Post by Aeglaecia »

topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

there's no such thing as right or wrong , so the following isn't intended as any form of judgement or admonition , merely an observation that you are starting to sound like an llm

Re: I miss thinking hard

#44

Post by llmthrow0827 »

donatj wrote: post #22
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #7

Dude, I know you touched on this but seriously. Just don't use AI then. It's not hard, it's your choice to use it or not. It's not even making you faster, so the pragmatism argument doesn't really work well! This is a totally self inflicted problem that you can undo any time you want.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have their company measuring their AI usage and regularly laying people off.

If you can't figure out how to game this, you're both not thinking hard and not using AI effectively.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#45

Post by josephg »

9rx wrote: post #34
gkoberger wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go as far as to say I think harder now – or at least quicker. I'm not wasting cycles on chores; I can focus on the bigger picture.

I've never felt more mental exhaustion than after a LLM coding session. I assume that is a result of it requiring me to think harder too.

I feel this too. I suspect its a byproduct of all the context switching I find myself doing when I'm using an LLM to help write software. Within a 10 minute window, I'll read code, debug a problem, prompt, discuss the design, test something, do some design work myself and so on.

When I'm just programming, I spend a lot more time working through a single idea, or a single function. Its much less tiring.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#46

Post by johnfn »

topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

It's certainly a different style of thinking hard. I used to really stress myself over coding - i.e. I would get frustrated that solving an issue would cause me to introduce some sort of hack or otherwise snowball into a huge refactor. Now I spend most of my time thinking about what cool new features I am going to build and not really stressing myself out too much.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#47

Post by sho_hn »

topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

I think OP's post is an attempt to move us past this stage of the discussion, which is frankly an old hat.

The point they are making is that using AI tools makes it a lot harder for them to keep up the discipline to think hard.

This may or may not be true for everyone.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#48

Post by topspin »

Aeglaecia wrote: post #43
topspin wrote: post #8

I'm using LLMs to code and I'm still thinking hard. I'm not doing it wrong: I think about design choices: risks, constraints, technical debt, alternatives, possibilities... I'm thinking as hard as I've ever done.

there's no such thing as right or wrong , so the following isn't intended as any form of judgement or admonition , merely an observation that you are starting to sound like an llm

> you are starting to sound like an llm

My observation: I've always had that "sound." I don't know or care much about what that implies. I will admit I'm now deliberately avoiding em dashs, whereas I was once an enthusiastic user of them.

Re: I miss thinking hard

#49

Post by sodapopcan »

MarcelOlsz wrote: post #36
Aeolun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thinking of how to convey all of that to Claude without having to write whole books :)

tfw you start expressing your thoughts as code because its shorter instead

Ya, they are programming languages after all. Language is really powerful when you really how to use it. Some of us are more comfortable with the natural variety, some of us are more comfy with code ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: I miss thinking hard

#50

Post by bariswheel »

Good highlight of the struggle between Builder and Thinker, I enjoyed the writing. So why not work on PQC? Surely you've thought about other avenues here as well.

If you're looking for a domain where the 70% AI solution is a total failure, that's the field. You can't rely on vibe coding because the underlying math, like Learning With Errors (LWE) or supersingular isogeny graphs, is conceptually dense and hasn't been commoditized into AI training data yet. It requires that same 'several-day-soak' thinking you loved in physics, specifically because we're trying to build systems that remain secure even against an adversary with a quantum computer. It’s one of the few areas left where the Thinker isn't just a luxury, but a hard requirement for the Builder to even begin.

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