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AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

koshyjohn.com

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#631

Post by da_chicken »

coldtea wrote: post #411
da_chicken wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only word doing any work at all in that definition is "artifacts", and the problem is that the methodology that is actually foundational to engineering need not be applied to physical objects. Further, it's not clear that this methodology shouldn't be rigorously applied to non-"artifacts" which that can cause equal or greater harms when created negligently. The definition I always saw used was this one, I think:…

> The only word doing any work at all in that definition is "artifacts" That's the subject, the only word that is NOT doing any work there (since both regular and software engineering produce artifacts). Words that do the heavy work in that phrase are: structured, mature, legally enforced, standards-based approach - for repeatable, reliable, verifiable, - artifacts - under stable external constraints Software can som…

> In that case, following specific constraits to solve a math problem, or to draw an artwork (e.g. using perspective) is also "engineering". That's too loose a term to be of any use.

You're being deliberately obtuse and consistently choosing semantic equivocation, so I'm not really going to engage with you any further, but the point is that there is a specific methodology that is unique to engineering. You've heard of the Scientific Method. There is also the Engineering Method.

Ultimately, though, the problem is you're arguing that the map is the territory. The the arbitrary linguistics we have chosen in the past must always and forever be the same. And that's just not a useful model of reality.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#632

Post by sayYayToLife »

kolja005 wrote: post #567
sayYayToLife wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in the US? Because there is a military reason for chasing success for success sake. The US doesnt really have a choice here. We live in a unipolar(or bipolar world) and the US must be number 1, or the international system breaks down and we can expect incredible amounts of war. (Its generally agreed that historically multipolar worlds are the worst to live in). If you don't live in the US and you are taki…

This is an interesting perspective I haven't heard before. Do you have links to anyone who has articulated this further?

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#633

Post by sayYayToLife »

throw4847285 wrote: post #587
sayYayToLife wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in the US? Because there is a military reason for chasing success for success sake. The US doesnt really have a choice here. We live in a unipolar(or bipolar world) and the US must be number 1, or the international system breaks down and we can expect incredible amounts of war. (Its generally agreed that historically multipolar worlds are the worst to live in). If you don't live in the US and you are taki…

I guess I appreciate the explicit realpolitik of it all, but I'm not sure I buy your argument. The US is the world's current dominant global empire, and unlike other leftists, I don't believe this is inherently a bad thing. But I don't think it's necessarily a good thing either. It's just the reality. I also think your whole unipolar vs. multipolar framework is ahistorical. It's always been more secure living within…

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Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#634

Post by an5ragchoudhary »

bartread wrote: post #588
nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

Does AI remove all struggle? I would credit my relative success (compared with many complaints I’ve read) at building software using AI as a helper to the fact that I’ve already solved the problem in my mind before I prompt the AI, and I tell it how I want the problem to be solved. Generally it’s possible to do that in English much more tersely than it is in code. So what I’ve done is the hard (in the sense of proble…

The tool can only really help you already have something close to the answer you're looking for.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#635

Post by davemp »

jmalicki wrote: post #442
nunez wrote: post #303

> If the job were mainly about producing syntactically valid code, then of course A.I. would be on a direct path to replacing large parts of the profession. But that was never the highest-value part of the work. The value was always in judgment. > The valuable engineer is the one who sees the hidden constraint before it causes an outage. The one who notices that the team is solving the wrong problem. The one who redu…

> How do you think engineers in the second half got there? By writing tons and tons of code to "build those reps" and gain that experience. It's not by writing syntax that you get there. It's by creating software and gaining the experience of seeing it go wrong. "Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." AI just shortens the cycle without needing to type out syntax, so you get even m…

> It's not by writing syntax that you get there. It's by creating software and gaining the experience of seeing it go wrong.

I’m not sure there’s any data to support this statement. Maybe if you hedge with “not by syntax alone”.

I am aware of studies that showed the act of physical writing letters improves retention.

I would not be surprised if this extended to physically typing out your curly braces, naming functions, etc.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#636

Post by kostarelo »

In "Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender" [1], a third level of the human thinking process was introduced where argues that besides internal intuition (level 1) and deliberation (level 2), there's a third one which is external and is the well-known to everyone, AI.

Humans now can choose to either completely surrender to that external intelligence, called cognitive surrender or choose to just offload tasks and use it alongside their own reasoning.

It's up to us how to use it. I've recently joined a new company and I had to explore their massive codebase. Even my manager suggested that I should use an agent to help me with the onboarding but I went straight to the code and whenever I had a new task, I would explore the code to understand what is happening and then instruct the agent to do any tasks I thought should be done.

There are moments when I completely hand off to the agent without looking any diffs, but my main focus is understanding first and then handing off.

1: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399711077_Thinking-...

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#637

Post by mauzybwy »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #472
netcan wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myopic is inevitable, to some extent. It's very hard to project this stuff. Socrates wrote about what was being lost as philosophy was becoming written rather than oral...and he was right. We can't even understand what was lost. Many methods of learning and thinking became entirely lost. You could say they were redundant, and they were. But... writing largely replaced oral traditions. It didn't just augment them. He…

Socrates was histories first Luddite. He opened Pandora’s box. I wish him and Plato would be radically rejected as the garbage trash they are (basically just a defense of hierarchy and dialects) Quoting my boy Max Stirner who also fking hated these guys “This war is opened by Socrates, and not until the dying day of the old world does it end in peace.“ - The Ego and its Own, Max Stirner

Probably not your point but ultimately the Luddites were acting as a “Verein von Egoisten”, no?

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#638

Post by threethirtytwo »

cyclopeanutopia wrote: post #96
threethirtytwo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people communicate they speak in terms of the overwhelming generality of reality. There's always at least one guy that is an extreme exception. I can tell you this, the person you're replying to comes from the overwhelming majority/generality. You, on the other hand, are that one guy. Of course even my comment is a bit general. You're not "one" guy literally. But you are an extreme minority that is small enough…

Thank you.

Not a compliment. I’m saying you’re speaking from an incredibly obscure perspective because you took what the other person said way to literally and pedantically.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#639

Post by akomtu »

luckystarr wrote: post #133

The way I use AI now feels more exhausting than the programming I did for the last 20 years. I pose a problem, then evaluate proposals, then pick the one I think is the "right one"(tm), then see the AI propose a bunch of weird shit, then call it out, refine the proposal until it feels just about right (this is the exhausting part), then let it code the proposal. The coding will then run for 1-5 hours and produce some…

AI is making you more like a machine, IMO.

Re: AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it

#640

Post by akomtu »

freetime2 wrote: post #400

The scary thing is I have seen high level directors and executives say “I asked ChatGPT and it agreed with me” as a way to try to settle a debate. People seem all too willing to delegate even matters of judgement to AI. On the other hand I have been in debates where someone asks ChatGPT to draft a list of possible approaches and pros and cons - and after reading through the list we were all in alignment on the best a…

Then think about all sorts of rulers and dictators who will ask AI "I've got this problem with the populace. I'd like to see it gone. What do I do?"
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