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How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

laurentiugabriel.github.io

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Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#511

Post by rootlocus »

wxw wrote: post #31

> What you get is a beautiful animation that is 100% accurate and free of hallucinations. I'm not sure I follow how this is actually guaranteed? The fact-checking process mentioned just seems to involve asking AI to review its own work.

OP posted his rollercoaster tycoon inspired simulator that explained how chips are fabricated. Comments were full of people pointing out inaccuracies and hallucinations.

The problem with LLM explanations of unknown topics is that you literally cannot determine how right or wrong it is. I usually ask LLMs to bring references and they almost always admit they pulled random shit out of their ass and quickly appologize when evidence to the contrary surfaces.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#513

Post by batshit_beaver »

refactor_master wrote: post #490
tcp_handshaker wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the error rate of frontier LLMs on textbook highschool/college level mathematics is going to be extremely low. The scientific basis for this statement is unclear.

AIME and HMMT are high school math olympiad competitions now used to benchmark AI. Frontier models score 95-99% https://benchlm.ai/blog/posts/aime-hmmt-competition-math

They score 99% but then can’t explain _why_ their solution works with any accuracy. Not as useful for learning as one might think.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#514

Post by bryzaguy »

hackrmn wrote: post #509
manfromchina1 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't get this attitude. For one thing, nobody on earth can give you a 500-word summary of quantum physics in a way that lets you internalize even a tiny bit of it. That's not how you learn anything. Here's how I do it: I open Baby Rudin (3rd ed.), second chapter, and read the main text - absolute brutality. I unpack almost every sentence with Claude/GPT until I finally get what's going on. No ELI5 nonse…

There's been research done (I know, big words -- don't have any links readily available), where it was pointing to the fact that what goes easily in (into the brain) also goes easily out, and conversely, what the brain requires effort and literal calories and energy to understand, stays there longer (investment must be rewarded / recouped somehow). So while there's no doubt that facilitating learning is a net-positiv…

Spaced repetition could address this, no? Also, the right example or metaphor can make a difficult concept both easier to understand and stickier in my mind which I think is different than something easy to learn.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#515

Post by subhobroto »

matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

> If you ask an LLM to give you a 500-word summary of quantum physics, it'll give you an oversimplification that probably leans on a hodgepodge of pop-sci metaphors

What would a double PhD in quantum physics provide differently if you asked them for a 500-word summary of such a complex field? What would the human do very differently? I have an Associate Professor from CalTech who teaches quantum physics there and I will have them review your suggestions, so don't hesitate out of concern.

> I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before.

I don't get why there's this overwhelming dislike for LLMs on HN. Everytime I make a comment on how insanely productive it has made me, I get downvoted to hell that leads me to be throttled by HN for hours at which point I can't engage in the discussion anymore. I say this in advance because if you post a comment and don't see a response from me until the next day, that's what's going on.

So here's one of a dozen ways LLMs have helped me to learn, execute and deploy ideas rapidly.

MiniPCs that used to cost no more than a burrito, Raspberry Pis, and useful hardware like that are extremely expensive right now: so I have to be creative in finding replacements. I have been able to use GPT5.5/GPT5.6 Sol/Gemini 3.5 Pro/Opus 4.8 to locate cheap ($5) routers and very cheap repeaters that can be reprogrammed to run Linux on them.

This is an extremely intensive, laborious process that requires:

1. Flashing the device over Qualcomm EBL.

2. Validating that I didn't corrupt the 4GB eMMC, then partitioning it.

3. Doing multiple gated commands that verify step by step that the previous command worked correctly and had the desired effect.

4. If not, take remediation steps, failing which alert me so we can do a spike.

5. Remapping certain hardware and Flashing over a working Debian.

6. Install DropSSH + keys and validating that.

7. Installing the scripts, etc.

Since these are not meant to be used this way, and I'm repurposing them, ordering these cheap Wi-Fi routers and flashing them is not a repeatable process. Each one is slightly different from each other. You really can't script it, not reasonably.

OpenCode using the above models has cost me $5 worth of tokens so far to reflash 10 of these repeaters, at $5 each, into Microservers that do my bidding. They have 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of eMMC, can do USB OTG and being routers have WiFi and BT. A compatible hardware today would cost me ATLEAST $50+ each.

Thanks to the LLMs for walking me through discovering this detail, holding my hands through the process and handing me over these working microservers.

What else do you want to know?

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#516

Post by ma2kx »

matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

I started learning Terraform. At the beginning i let the llm convert some of my homelab infrastructure into a tf project, because thats always the annoying part. Now I play arround with it and whenever I don't understand something or an error message appears, I ask the LLM politely e.g. why this error happened because I thought it should work this way and than it happily explains to me what wen't wrong and if my understanding was wrong or something else was the error cause.

Essentially as I did learn before LLMs appeared but now I dont have to search for some stackoverflow threads, github issues etc. to find something vaguely similar to my problem and how I exactly implement this to my project.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#517

Post by gb2d_hn »

Hardwired8976 wrote: post #93
gb2d_hn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came across the socratic method recently, and have used it to learn a couple of topics that I was having trouble getting to stick. There are some SKILL.md's available for it. It works for concepts as opposed to facts, and causes the model to guide you to answers through your own reasoning, which is both much more engaging than reading a wall of LLM text and helps the information stick.

Can you link the Skills.md?

This is the one I used https://github.com/bevibing/socrates-skill - in the scenarios where I have used it, I have found it useful

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#518

Post by bryzaguy »

matherial wrote: post #306

This is, without exaggeration, probably the fiftieth blog post or long-form comment about how someone is using an LLM for "complex learning", and I'd just really like to see at least one of these to be accompanied by a statement saying what are the kinds of problems the author can now confidently solve that they couldn't before. In my experience, LLMs are really good for taking up your time and making you feel like y…

Not sure how relevant my example will be but I built a spaced repetition language learning LLM wrapper app to learn Japanese and it worked really well. I went to great lengths, however, to craft prompts which resulted in more predictable and useful results. ChatGPT on its own couldn’t do this.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#519

Post by steveklabnik »

cube00 wrote: post #479
tcp_handshaker wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus they will take one hour to explain what could take 2 min, just to keep you on the platform....

The algorithm wanted these "educational" videos to be 10 minutes at first and now it seems to want them to be 20 minutes. Once I saw that I realised just how padded the content really was and started looking elsewhere. Other good tells the content is low quality or a bad fit for video are excessive amounts of talking head (should have been a podcast) or stock video clips (it's video, show me something).

Ten minutes used to be the cutoff where you could provide an interstitial advertisement. This sort of turned into a sort of wive's tale, where people thought the algorithm would push such videos. It's not the case today.

The reason that 20 minute videos are more popular these days is that more people are watching youtube on larger screens, like on their TV on the couch, and so more reliably watch longer videos than in the past.

Re: How I use LLMs to learn complex topics

#520

Post by runarberg »

hackrmn wrote: post #509
manfromchina1 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally don't get this attitude. For one thing, nobody on earth can give you a 500-word summary of quantum physics in a way that lets you internalize even a tiny bit of it. That's not how you learn anything. Here's how I do it: I open Baby Rudin (3rd ed.), second chapter, and read the main text - absolute brutality. I unpack almost every sentence with Claude/GPT until I finally get what's going on. No ELI5 nonse…

There's been research done (I know, big words -- don't have any links readily available), where it was pointing to the fact that what goes easily in (into the brain) also goes easily out, and conversely, what the brain requires effort and literal calories and energy to understand, stays there longer (investment must be rewarded / recouped somehow). So while there's no doubt that facilitating learning is a net-positiv…

I also think that this broad claim (LLMs are good for learning) is also a testable hypothesis, and given the size of the AI industry I think it is reasonable to assume that AI companies would be eager to proof that LLMs are good for learning (and then pushing their own proprietary implementations into school systems and make more money).

The absence of evidence here feels very much like evidence of absence. At least my cynical view of capitalism tells me that if there was a good way to use LLMs to learn stuff, we would have research showing it, and AI companies would be waving that research all over our faces.

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