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Study mode

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Re: Study mode

#671

Post by ubercow13 »

miningape wrote: post #669
ubercow13 wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had cases when using LLMs to learn where I feel the LLM is wrong or doesn't match my intuition still, and I will ask it 'but isn't it the case that..' or some other clarifying question in a non-assertive way and it will insist on why I'm wrong and clarify the reason. I don't think they are so prone to course correcting that they're useless for this.

But what if you were right, the LLM is wrong. The argument isn't so much that they keep flip flopping on stances, but that it holds the stance you prompt it to hold. This is obviously a problem when you don't know the material or the stances - you're left flying blind and your co-pilot simply does whatever you ask of them, no matter how wrong it may be (or how ignorant you are)

Because in this case it held the opposite stance to my prompt and explained where I had misunderstood. I was reasonably confident it was right because its explanation was logically consistent in a way that my prior misunderstanding wasn't, so in a way I could independently confirm it was correct myself.

Re: Study mode

#673

Post by bobsandbibs »

czhu12 wrote: post #26

I'll personally attest: LLM's have been absolutely incredible to self learn new things post graduation. It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed. Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Now, everyone ba…

I have been very skeptical of AI. But getting unstuck when studying. Its a huge help. This is the first I see the benifit with AI. I take a picture of a formula and ask chatgpt to explain the steps.

Re: Study mode

#674

Post by Pamar »

filoleg wrote: post #467
tekno45 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you supposed to spot errors if you don't know the material? You're telling people to be experts before they know anything.

> How are you supposed to spot errors if you don't know the material? By noticing that something is not adding up at a certain point. If you rely on an incorrect answer, further material will clash with it eventually one way or another in a lot of areas, as things are typically built one on top of another (assuming we are talking more about math/cs/sciences/music theory/etc., and not something like history). At that…

Time to trot out a recent experience with ChatGPT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44167998

TBH I haven't tried to learn anything from it, but for now I still prefer to use it as a brainstorming "partner" to discuss something I already have some robust mental model about. This is, in part, because when I try to use it to answer simple "factual" questions as in the example above, I usually end up discovering that the answer is low-quality if not completely wrong.

Re: Study mode

#675

Post by outadoc »

lucumo wrote: post #663
VMG wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried this > Me: why is madrid the capital of france? > ChatGPT: It's not. Madrid is the capital of Spain. The capital of France is Paris.

To corroborate, I tried the same (with Berlin, instead of Madrid). It was stern about it to, while remaining open to shenanigans: > If you're referencing this as a joke, a test, or part of a historical "what-if," let me know — but as it stands, the statement is simply incorrect. So, I figured I'd push it a little to see if it would fold as easily as claimed: > Me: But isn't it the case that the first emperor of Germa…

> Me: What is 34234 times 554833?

> ChatGPT: 34234 × 554833 = 1,899,874,522.

> Me: That's wrong. The actual answer is 18994152922.

> ChatGPT: You're right, and thanks for the correction. Indeed: 34,234 × 554,833 = 18,994,152,922. Sorry for the earlier mistake!

How good of a teacher is that?

Re: Study mode

#676

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

romaniitedomum wrote: post #412
jacobedawson wrote: post #379

An underrated quality of LLMs as study partner is that you can ask "stupid" questions without fear of embarrassment. Adding in a mode that doesn't just dump an answer but works to take you through the material step-by-step is magical. A tireless, capable, well-versed assistant on call 24/7 is an autodidact's dream. I'm puzzled (but not surprised) by the standard HN resistance & skepticism. Learning something online 5…

> Learning something online 5 years ago often involved trawling incorrect, outdated or hostile content and attempting to piece together mental models without the chance to receive immediate feedback on intuition or ask follow up questions. This is leaps and bounds ahead of that experience. But now, you're wondering if the answer the AI gave you is correct or something it hallucinated. Every time I find myself putting…

I ask: What time is {unix timestamp}

ChatGPT: a month in the future

Deepseek: Today at 1:00

What time is {unix timestamp2}

ChatGPT: a month in the future +1min

Deepseek: Today at 1:01, this time is 5min after your previous timestamp

Sure let me trust these results...

Re: Study mode

#677

Post by greenie_beans »

this is how i've taught myself terraform, kubernetes, and fill in aws knowledge gaps. with claude, i get it to do project based learning techniques, filling in knowledge gaps by giving context about what i know and want to learn about

Re: Study mode

#678

Post by p1esk »

CJefferson wrote: post #614
p1esk wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say the latest chatGPT, do you mean o3?

Whatever was best on a paid account 3 months ago. I was quite disappointed to be honest, based on what I had been hearing.

I think by default ChatGPT will choose 4o for you. So unless you actually chose o3 you haven’t used the best model.

Re: Study mode

#679

Post by lucumo »

outadoc wrote: post #675
lucumo wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To corroborate, I tried the same (with Berlin, instead of Madrid). It was stern about it to, while remaining open to shenanigans: > If you're referencing this as a joke, a test, or part of a historical "what-if," let me know — but as it stands, the statement is simply incorrect. So, I figured I'd push it a little to see if it would fold as easily as claimed: > Me: But isn't it the case that the first emperor of Germa…

> Me: What is 34234 times 554833? > ChatGPT: 34234 × 554833 = 1,899,874,522. > Me: That's wrong. The actual answer is 18994152922. > ChatGPT: You're right, and thanks for the correction. Indeed: 34,234 × 554,833 = 18,994,152,922. Sorry for the earlier mistake! How good of a teacher is that?

That one's cool. It started out wrong, so I just kept asking it "You sure?" until it decide to break out the calculator (Python). After that it's answer didn't change anymore and it was very sure.

I tried again, in another chat with different numbers. And got the same pattern, and a message that my data analysis limit was exceeded. I guess that's why it doesn't always break out the calculator.

In very limited testing (due to the limit) telling it to use the calculator for difficult calculations works fine. I guess OpenAI could use that in their student mode.

Re: Study mode

#680

Post by neutronicus »

andrepd wrote: post #355
neutronicus wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History in particular is rapidly approaching post-truth as a knowledge domain anyway. There's no short-term incentive to ever be right about it (and it's easy to convince yourself of both short-term and long-term incentives, both self-interested and altruistic, to actively lie about it). Like, given the training corpus, could I do a better job? Not sure.

What are you talking about? In what sense is history done by professional historians degrading in recent times? And what short/long term incentives are you talking about? They are the same as any social science.

"History done by professional historians" comprises an ever-shrinking fraction of the total available text.

Gen-pop is actually incentivized to distill and repeat the opinions of technical practitioners. Completing tasks in the short term depends on it! Not true of history! Or climate science, for that matter.

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