Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 880 posts

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#691

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

godelski wrote: post #409
soerxpso wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

> I'm there for the degree Would you hire someone without a degree? When you're in a position to hire or influence hiring, will you consider those without degrees? I ask because I hear this sentiment a lot but we still have a system becoming more reliant on degrees. The universities may be the gatekeepers of those degrees but they're not the ones gatekeeping the jobs. They have no influence there. They were not the o…

>Would you hire someone without a degree?

Yes.

A person is a idiot if he/she takes someone's competence at face value because of a degree. ( jobs aside - don't assume your doctor is competent because he has MD, it will cost you your life)

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#692

Post by necovek »

mettamage wrote: post #451
derefr wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one other very useful form of "expansion" that LLMs do. If you aren't aware: (high-parameter-count) LLMs can be used pretty reliably to teach yourself things. LLM base models "know things" to about the same degree that the Internet itself "knows" those things. For well-understood topics — i.e. subjects where the Internet contains all sorts of open-source textbooks and treatments of the subject — LLMs really…

This is how I currently am relearning upper high school math. It’s tremendously helpful as I am a why guy. Why is the angle called m? Why is a combination nPr * (1/r)? What is 1/r doing there? I use mathacademy.com as my source of practice. Usually that’s enough but I tend to fall over if small details aren’t explained and I can’t figure out why those details are there. In high school this was punished. With state of…

The fact that we see lower grades as "punishment" is the root of the problem: grades are an assessment of our understanding level and competence on a topic.

Now, I know psychologically it's not as simple, and both society and ourselves equate academic (and professional, later on) success with personal worth, but that's a deeper, harder topic.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#693

Post by chipsrafferty »

dsego wrote: post #609
concordDance wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, a future where diplomas are just noise and employers stop caring about them and thus young people stop wasting years of their lives "learning" something they don't care about sounds like a huge improvement. LLM cheaters might incidentally be doing society a service.

They will only learn what's needed to "get the job done" for whatever it means at that moment, and we could potentially see more erosion in technical abilities and work quality. You don't know what you don't know, and without learning things that you don't care about, you loose the chance to expand your knowledge outside of your comfort zone.

This, but also learning is like the mental equivalent of lifting weights.

It's not so much what you learn, but that you train it hard.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#694

Post by chipsrafferty »

musicale wrote: post #141
jsheard wrote: post #74

I'm far from the first to make this observation but LLMs are like anti-compression algorithms when used like that, a simple idea gets expanded into a bloated mess by an LLM, then sent to someone else who runs it through another LLM to summarize it back to something approximating the original prompt. Nobody benefits aside from Sam Altman and co, who get to pocket a cool $0.000000001 for enabling this pointless exercis…

> LLMs are like anti-compression algorithms when used like that, a simple idea gets expanded into a bloated mess by an LLM, I think that's the answer: LLMs are primarily useful for data and text translation and reduction, not for expansion. An exception is repetitive or boilerplate text or code where a verbose format is required to express a small amount of information.

IMO the main uses of LLM are guided problem solving and a better Google search that you can ask questions in a natural way.

Producing text as output is not the way

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#695

Post by chipsrafferty »

seattle_spring wrote: post #533
palata wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of "perf review" hacking works ~everywhere I don't have tons of examples, but in my experience: * This worked in toxic environments. They deserve it. * This doesn't work in a functional environment, because they don't have those bullshit metrics. If you have to rely on those tricks, it's time to look for another job.

Which big, well-paying companies do not have "those bullshit metrics"? I know for a fact that Meta, Google, Stripe, Airbnb, and Oracle all lean heavily on performance review cycles based entirely on ridiculous metrics. Getting ahead there requires you to play the stupid games GP is suggesting.

And those are all examples of companies nobody should work for

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#696

Post by unraveller »

You mean to tell me even anti-AI people are glazing my unseen prompts now! The solve for slop is easy for teachers and communicators alike: stop asking sorry questions and you stop getting sorry responses. Or stay the easy course, you will cede the game to discreet cheaters just to make honest people jump through antiquated hoops.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#697

Post by wseqyrku »

I think prompt should be treated just like source code, as in the actual "craft" that you're paid to produce. Source code, if computer generated, feels more like artifacts (as in binaries).

If you use AI all that is important is your ability to specify the problem, of course, as it always has been, you can just reiterate faster.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#698

Post by tayo42 »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #358
jameshart wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve come across this analogy that I think works well: Using an LLM to do schoolwork is like taking a forklift to the gym. If all we were interested in was moving the weights around, you’d be right to use a tool to help you. But we’re doing this work for the effect it will have on you . The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer.

If students went to college only to learn, colleges wouldn't bother giving diplomas. Compare: My piano teacher doesn't give diplomas because none of her students would care, her students actually want to learn. When my piano teacher cancels class, I am disappointed because I wanted to learn. My piano teacher doesn't need to threaten me with bad grades to get me to practice outside of class (analogous to homework), be…

> students went to college only to learn, colleges wouldn't bother giving diplomas.

You have this option with things like mits open courseware. Some colleges are OK with you just wanting to learn

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#699

Post by ajmurmann »

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

This is somewhat reflected in how we value university degrees. You get very little additional salary from having finished all but the last semester of a degree. The big boost all comes from the last semester where you get the degree. You'd expect that the vast majority of the actual knowledge is already there at that point and late dropouts would be seen by employers as some great bargain. It shows that the signaling of the degree trump's the actual knowledge. Good discussion with Bryan Caplan on this: https://www.econtalk.org/bryan-caplan-on-college-signaling-a...

So, unfortunately the student's behavior is somewhat rational given the incentive structure they operate in.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#700

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

nradov wrote: post #454
palata wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 I would argue that if it costs $60,000, both your education system and the recruitment in those companies that require this degree are broken. It's not the case in all countries though. Not that it is your fault, just stating the obvious.

Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative? Employers have a surplus of applicants for entry-level technical positions. They need to filter the applicant pool down to those with some level of competence and discipline. Possession of a college degree is a reasonably accurate proxy for those attributes: lots of false negatives but good enough from the employer's perspective. Ideally maybe employers ought to…

>Sure, the system is broken but what's the alternative?

For a true solution, the entire taxation and monetary system will have to overhauled. It's of course not going to happen.

Transactions outside of the govt monetary system is effectively illegal or taxed so people are forced to participate by applying for jobs for their livelihood.

Post reply on HN