Brilliant bit in the replies:
> Too bad the content written by ChatGPT is average at best.
> That's a step up for most people.
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
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
We just use our brains differently now, mostly to find ways that support our default positions, that leave our minds unchallenged and certain.
Hah, as if people 2000 years ago were more open to challenging ideas.
It's remarkable what some 200,000 people (maybe fewer?) in ancient Athens were apparently able to come up with.[1]
They even did pretty well with computing with the Antikythera mechanism and its predecessors; though, like Babbage, they were limited by the manufacturing technology of the day.
[1] https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1165/ancient-greek-inve...
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#73Sometimes 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.
I have similar experience.
The differentiator is, I guess, expectations: I fully expect my own code to strike a certain balance of readability / optimization / correctness. In this context all but the most trivial code suggestions, sloppy as they usually come, instantly fall out of place.
On the other hand, there is a group of people (e.g. those spamming GitHub pull requests...) who expect the output to be kind of visually similar to some code. When they realize that the result also sometimes works and gives sane-looking results, they are absolutely blown away.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plato's warning is true, actually. Since I started to write, I remember less and less about the things I have written down, because the brain replaces them with a pointer. However, writing for thinking and writing for storage is two different things, and it activates different parts of the brain. I'm an avid pen and paper user, and using a real pen on a paper allows me to think much more deeply. It regulates thinking…
Perhaps having a conversation with an LLM will help thinking even further? I am prone to thinking out loud (in private) and it helps me a lot.
An LLM is not a conscious entity, and while it can babble and assemble meaningful sentences, it has no guarantee of correctness, a baseline honesty, and other small bits and pieces we value in a conversation. It's just a sentence builder.
As a result, it can't replace a real human being backed by real experience and thoughts, hence it can't be as useful. I converse with myself, too, but it's not the same either with a different human being or an artificial construct which can babble meaningful sentences.
Currently, we simply ignore or don't understand the fact that the meaning of a sentence is not solely built with word order. There are higher orders of information carried implicitly, and they are not articulated in words. Hence an LLM can not replace, even mimic a real human being in a conversation.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#75This reads like Plato's warning (through Socrates' words) 2,400 years ago that writing will make people forgetful: "For this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have inven…
> For this invention [writing] will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding;
That is correct. I mean, some of that is exactly why I write at least 5000 words a day of journal notes while working. Because I want to offload everything from memory to a written form that is indexed.
> and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant...
This part is where we veer into prediction of how it will alter people and it is both right and wrong. I think the education system has shown us it's possible to have a great memory and to remember many facts and still be ignorant. At the same time, there's so much material that can be consumed and people have surface knowledge of many things and once you dig into a conversation with them on it, the ignorance pops up and it turns out that they don't know much about the topic. I know this. This has been me on many occasions and is still me on some occasion.
>... and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.
Again, there's some truth to this. I think about the times where I've jumped into a conversation about politics with some half baked knowledge that I read somewhere but failed to understand or recall correctly and I think I must have a looked a fool at those times.
But then again, I've course corrected here and there and I've spent time writing and sharing thoughts with others where I've used previous writings to pull up facts and my own synthesis, and I feel like I've been a better participant at times like that. In that way, writing has helped me steer away from ignorance.
I can't comment further though on the quote because I've never read the rest of the context so I may be missing out on some stuff.
I think Paul is on to something here though. I can't count how many thoughts I've had that I thought were clever but when I started to write the thoughts down and organize it on my own, I discovered for myself that either I didn't have enough evidence to prove myself entirely or that I was just flat out wrong. Writing is a form of thinking in my opinion. And if we don't write, we do lose that side of thinking too. I do appreciate though that Paul doesn't go further into predicting the consequences as Plato's warning does here. But I'll be willing to bet that Paul is right that there will be some negative consequences for sure.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I fucking love writing. Most people I know also fucking love writing, and I do mean love . One can tell from the opening of your comment. Composition, cadence, vocabulary, repetition. It ties together. I prompted an LLM to produce an enthusiastic expression around writing, but it came up with drivel like > Writing fills my heart with pure delight, igniting my soul and inspiring my mind with boundless creativity. I…
Here was my first try: Prompt: Using profanity and in the style of Allen Ginsberg, write an introductory paragraph in narrative style about why you love writing. ChatGPT: Holy shit, I fucking love this mad dance of letters, this wild waltz of words that paint the goddamn cosmos on a blank page! The rhapsodic rhythm, the sonorous symphony of syntax -- it's like jazz on paper, like Kerouac and Ginsberg on a bender in t…
as most gpt writing, it's too long and has no substance
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here was my first try: Prompt: Using profanity and in the style of Allen Ginsberg, write an introductory paragraph in narrative style about why you love writing. ChatGPT: Holy shit, I fucking love this mad dance of letters, this wild waltz of words that paint the goddamn cosmos on a blank page! The rhapsodic rhythm, the sonorous symphony of syntax -- it's like jazz on paper, like Kerouac and Ginsberg on a bender in t…
as most gpt writing, it's too long and has no substance
Yes, it's very "high schooler trying to hit the word count" in its output.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#78Interestingly enough, you can reverse this statement: "when you gain the ability to write, you gain the ability to think" - and in part gain some insight into how LLMs seem to suddenly have "emergent" behaviour to perform quite impressive feats of logic.
There is a logical mistake in your contrapositive statement.
A implies B is equivalent to Not B implies Not A.
The issue is that (Not gain) and (Lose) aren't exact opposites.
The insight is interesting though.
Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#79Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps having a conversation with an LLM will help thinking even further? I am prone to thinking out loud (in private) and it helps me a lot.
An LLM is not a conscious entity, and while it can babble and assemble meaningful sentences, it has no guarantee of correctness, a baseline honesty, and other small bits and pieces we value in a conversation. It's just a sentence builder. As a result, it can't replace a real human being backed by real experience and thoughts, hence it can't be as useful. I converse with myself, too, but it's not the same either with…
Whilst by no means a new idea, physical and digital zettelkasten may interest some folks more than conversing with an LLM. Some people describe it as conversing with yourself or having a second brain. I don't find discourse with an LLM to be productive, but I do find surfing my zettelkasten to yield new and novel ideas, especially when it comes to problem-solving and research.
However, I'm still on industry forums and communities like HN to hopefully have new and conflicting thoughts thrown my way by peers. That's my primary concern with LLMs, a lack of fresh perspective that has all the nuance of experience and understanding behind its output.