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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

#581

Post by tlb »

passion__desire wrote: post #112
tlb wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pop music contains 10^5 or so versions of “I love you”. I think there could be a similar number for writing.

On what metrics are you judging them to be different?

For pop songs, the fact that rights holders haven't been able to sue for copyright infringement (except occasionally). Owners of song rights are pretty effective at noticing if your song has too many words or notes in common with an existing song.

You might prefer a different definition of "different", but it'd take a lot of work to figure out how many there are by any other definition.

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

#582

Post by nashashmi »

jiggywiggy wrote: post #575
nashashmi wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 min…

> The Roman law system was pretty advanced without the influence of Judaism.

Roman law development is thought to be put together by judaic influence. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1452148

Indian development is beyond my understanding.

Protestantism led to direct literacy and scholarship in Bible studies. Again, this is influenced by religion. The adoption of literacy is what led to Northern Europe's success.

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

#583

Post by AverageDude »

antifa wrote: post #579
AverageDude wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Chatgpt is fastfood of programming. We all know how healthy that is

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

#584

Post by loup-vaillant »

astrange wrote: post #580
loup-vaillant wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Yeah, I'm gonna need a citation for that one.

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

#585

Post by nspattak »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #388

I'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…

a manual transmission car does not require more focus and thought as very soon changing gears becomes a reflex, ie it doesn't require the driver's prefrontal cortex. The same can not be said for repetitive work in programming (eg as in programming in assembly or C)

IMO, this opinion deserves some thought even though it is not as bad as it sounds

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

#586

Post by pnt12 »

dctoedt wrote: post #494
shadowtree wrote: post #443

Just for one persona. Good old Peter Drucker formalized the personas in his advice to new employees to figure out how their bosses consumed information: 1 - The lawyer. Needs walls of text. 2 - The architect. Needs diagrams, visuals. 3 - The accountant. Needs numbers, spreadsheets. 4 - The actor. Needs a conversation, verbal. It's a generalization, of course, but I have applied this pattern successfully. The core bit…

> 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…

I hate when a long technical document doesn't use BLUF, ie omits a summary at the start with the main topics.

There's too much info on the internet, and even in internal documentation: if I have to read half the thing to understand if it's relevant, I'm gonna spend most of my time on irrelevant stuff.

This is a problem with asking engineers to document without having a writing culture. I've seen it happen: once it's written down, that's it: it's documented, great work! But we should treat it more like code, with clear divisions of concern s, scopes and even refactors when needed!

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

#587

Post by roguas »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #531
DiffEq wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your viewpoint stems in a belief that there is only so much money to go around. Your view about a landlord taking money is kind of a micro view. I am a landlord…the house I rent I actually built. It is an asset that people are willing to give me money to use for a while…they get a place to live…IF I could not have ever rented it out I would have never built it…it would be a worthless piece of ground that nobo…

Assuming you paid your house-for-rent with your own money: that you worked for, as opposed to won at the lottery or from previous investments. In a sense, the family that is giving you rent money is only paying your work back… until that point where you get your full ROI (cost of the house + your own work + interest). Beyond that, the only reason they give you more rent money is because you own the house. But you got…

> people who own stuff have the power to take money from people who don't.

People who have invested capital, hedged risks, setup maintenance, did marketing etc.

Now we can agree that housing is very specific branch of economy where if you have upper hand(capital) you can be dealing cards to those who don't. There are ways to address that without the canvas of grand narratives(extracting labour etc).

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

#588

Post by roguas »

admax88qqq wrote: post #578
joelfried wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

sure, you can, many did, they are called authors

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

#589

Post by CatWChainsaw »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #178
RugnirViking wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

baffling. I am a huge fan of AI & chatgpt but that would be a giant red flag for me.

Someone AI'ing part of a human process is basically saying "this is BS and not worth my time". They may or may not be right. I think questions about the company should be genuine (it is a good chance to find out what you need to make the decision). But many people think questions about the company are another hoop, i.e. the interviewer is using their questions as another measure, so they need to ask the correct quest…

>Someone AI'ing part of a human process is basically saying "this is BS and not worth my time".

This encapsulates the backlash artists and many others have. But it's a pipe dream of many in business to automate as much business as possible... what's that tell you about what they think? :)

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

#590

Post by CatWChainsaw »

idlewords wrote: post #416

Paul Graham on the benefits of good writing is like Helen Keller offering her reflections on what makes a great Broadway show.

Helen Keller claimed to be able to enjoy the orchestra because she could feel vibrations in the air from the sounds the instruments made.
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