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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

#571

Post by auggierose »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #513
dctoedt wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lawyer. Needs walls of text. Lawyer and law professor here: No, no , NO ! Wall-of-words text is a sign of a L.O.A.D. — a Lazy Or Arrogant Drafter. I teach contract drafting to 3Ls and stress The Two Great Rules of Readability: 1. SSSSP: Short, Simple, Single-Subject Paragraphs. https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes-on-Contract-Draftin... 2. BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front. https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/Notes…

"The lawyer" is probably a bad name, but I've definitely worked with this sort of person before. "The novelist" might be a better name. Of of my ex-bosses preferred long, well-written emails to just about any other form of communication. He was a really bright guy with a degree in English Literature that somehow stumbled his way into the software industry. When he wanted to start working with a new technology, he'd i…

I also prefer learning by reading. But there are some things you can only learn by doing. I usually don't like and try to avoid technology that I should be able to learn by reading, but which is so *uck*d up, that you can only learn it by doing.

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

#572

Post by loup-vaillant »

astrange wrote: post #565
felixg3 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re absolutely right. David Graeber’s “Bullshit Jobs” is a good take on this if one wants to start reading into it.

It seems to be that "bullshit jobs" isn't actually a good position for a leftist to take. You're basically saying workers don't do anything useful. Even a more thought out form doesn't do anything class analysis didn't already do.

> You're basically saying workers don't do anything useful.

Not quite: bullshit jobs are when the workers themselves say their own job isn't doing anything useful. And apparently they comprise a sizeable portion of all workforce.

Of course, jobs people say are useless, jobs the workers themselves say are useless, and actually useless jobs, are 3 different sets. But I think we can confidently say something is wrong when so many workers say their own job is useless, even if they aren't: working a job you think is useless just isn't healthy.

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

#573

Post by Aeolun »

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.

Well, you made only one mistake in these 4 sentences you wrote, which is like a 400% improvement over the average messages I see outside HN, and an infinite improvement on some other people.

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

#574

Post by cainxinth »

hnfong wrote: post #556
cainxinth wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before books, everyone had to memorize information they wanted to preserve. Books robbed a hundred generations of that learning. So it goes.

Not really. Many cultural traditions emphasize reciting every single word from classical texts as part of the learning process. (I hated it, but it's still there 2000+ years after books were invented.)

People still ride horses sometimes too, but I would argue that the advent of the car meant most will never become proficient at horseback riding. There are many examples like this.

People aren’t great at writing cursive with fountain pens anymore because we type. Our mental math skills aren’t as strong because we have calculators. Even our sense of direction and ability to navigate is probably weakening due to decades of reliance on GPS.

Are there still people who can memorize whole books, ride horses, write cursive, calculate big numbers in their head, and navigate by the stars? Of course, but they are outliers. Most of us just use our smartphones.

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

#575

Post by jiggywiggy »

nashashmi wrote: post #535
dalbasal wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. You mean that old Judaism was pagan before scripture?

Judaism preceded the pagan Roman kingdom. Judaism is a scriptural religion. Judaism gave rise to law as a study. Non scriptural religions had evolving myths and folklore like Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Those religions did not contribute to law like the prior comment mentions.

Not really get your point. The Roman law system was pretty advanced without the influence of Judaism.

India developed complicated law system before Judaism. Seems like it's part of human societies that grow in complexity, not something special to Judaism.

Protestantism definitely had a big impact on the development of western empirism and probably modern law. In general our current Western individualistic skeptic mindset is the heritage of the reformation.

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

#576

Post by laratied »

jonahx wrote: post #429
d23 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very difficult for me to wrap my head around people that aren’t blown away by both this and generative image AIs, and I tend to be in the skeptical side when it comes to fancy tech adoption.

It is astonishing, even more so that some in this camp are smart people. I chalk it up to "hype aversion" -- an internal heuristic that anything with so much hype around it must be bullshit. For some, there might also be good old resistance to change, to the unknown consequences of all these developments.

[dead]

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

#577

Post by fuzzfactor »

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

OTOH when you don't gain the ability read or write, you might just end up thinking with both sides of the brain in ways that generations of academics may not do very much.

Especially in cultures like some hillbillies who maintained a larger vocabulary without reading or writing compared to their peers in places like Boston where they had schools the entire time since settlement.

Twice is nice.

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

#578

Post by admax88qqq »

joelfried wrote: post #440
admax88qqq wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes a chair more valuable to society than entertainment?

Many of us have the ability to entertain ourselves entirely within our own minds on the regular. None of us can snap our fingers and summon a chair from nothingness. Do you know anybody who owns zero chairs?

Many of us can sit on the ground or in a deep squat. None of us can snap our fingers and summon a book from nothingness.

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

#579

Post by antifa »

AverageDude wrote: post #202
barrkel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tools are at their most useful when they're replacing Stack Overflow searches for common tasks. An example I had last night: how do you split a pdf into separate pages on the command line, and how do you put them back together again (I replaced one of the pages with a scanned signed version). This is a basic task, a beginner's task in the world of pdf munging, but I didn't know the answer off the top of my head.…

For me, they are more miss than hit. I was amazed in the initial days but I have bounced back to searching from google and reading stackoverflow. It’s not just about finding solution for your problem, it’s also looking at what other options are there and comparing them mentally is a really good exercise. You learn a lot by that way. The comments and not accepted solution are also invaluable.

> it’s also looking at what other options are there and comparing them

I think I'm still better off starting with clChatGPT, I can always follow up with "list 5 alternative solutions".

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

#580

Post by astrange »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #572
astrange wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be that "bullshit jobs" isn't actually a good position for a leftist to take. You're basically saying workers don't do anything useful. Even a more thought out form doesn't do anything class analysis didn't already do.

> You're basically saying workers don't do anything useful. Not quite: bullshit jobs are when the workers themselves say their own job isn't doing anything useful. And apparently they comprise a sizeable portion of all workforce. Of course, jobs people say are useless, jobs the workers themselves say are useless, and actually useless jobs, are 3 different sets. But I think we can confidently say something is wrong wh…

This is what is known as "cope", ie, they don't feel emotionally satisfied.

Americans in particular always have pretty narcissistic ideas about what their jobs should be. You can see this from all the examples of hippies trying to start communes, which then fail because everyone appoints themselves official poet instead of farmworker.

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