using the audio recorder works as well.
wish I had discovered that trick sooner.
Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
71–80 of 169 posts
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Created a throwaway for this, but is this not what people do? Not so much imagining a conversation in your head, but playing through a conversation with "the other side" of the coin (be it an idea, plan, problem, solution etc) which are both yourself if that makes sense. Is this not what the inner monologue to yourself is? Your inner is conversing with your outer monologue. Hard to explain. Would consider myself to b…
I can only speak for myself... but my inner monologue is just a runaway train of thoughts that I vocalize in my head as I work through them. There is no other person in there, abstract or otherwise. Have you ever seen the Death Note anime? Similar to that.
I do what the person you're replying to and for me its just one voice or a faint imagination of them speaking. Its me roleplaying as the other person, not like there is a different entity in my brain.
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#73Tangentially, Regarding pair programming (as a special case of thinking together):
Programming is serializing ideas into the computer language. Communicating them with someone else first serializes them into human language, which is already much less abstract compared to the thought cloud in your head.
In the case of an effective pair programming collaboration, you also get to debate approaches, discuss details, alternate between coding and watching.
It also helps that the presence of someone else helps avoid many common distractions. Reading non-urgent private messages and checking out HN (I'm no longer so addicted to any other platform to check it out at work).
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#74Speaking out loud makes you translate your weird personal brain logic into structured instruction meant to inform others. And taking that other person's view, in order to explain what they don't know, gives you an alternative perspective.
I feel like trying to explain it to yourself as if you were ignorant of the problem may give similar insights.
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#75Everyone inherently knows this, that's why they reach out to others when stuck on a bug (see also rubber-ducking). But why is it so hard to convince individuals and organizations of the benefits of pair programming?
Doing pair programming well is a skill you have to learn from someone.
Putting two regular programmers together in front of a computer will typically annoy both and not accomplish much.
I was fortunate to learn from experienced people, and I've had very good experiences with it.
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#76[dead]
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#77Tangentially, Regarding pair programming (as a special case of thinking together): Programming is serializing ideas into the computer language. Communicating them with someone else first serializes them into human language, which is already much less abstract compared to the thought cloud in your head. In the case of an effective pair programming collaboration, you also get to debate approaches, discuss details, alte…
Yes, and, this is how experts should be using e.g. Claude Code.
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is nice that there are more ways that are taught now. It can turn into too much, however. Some parents I know dislike that their kid is taught 8 different ways to do long division, at the expense of having sufficient time to practice any of the methods. They end up taking the kids to math tutoring so that they can actually learn how to do the mechanical steps. But it is for sure good that there are multiple w…
In computer science, we have classes on memorizing/implementing various algorithms so that we may understand their behavior. Could anyone name the reason why grade school students memorize and execute the long division algorithm? I certainly hadn't used long division since grade school.
Grade school is years long, so a skill you're supposed to know in 3rd grade is one that you need to be able to faithfully execute for the next 3 years. The fact that you'll get a calculator in middle school doesn't help you if you're struggling through 4th and 5th grade.
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#79This makes sense when you think about the divided state of the USA today. People were isolated during COVID and had no feedback on opinions formed then. When they started creating bubbles after lockdown, they wanted validation for the opinions they formed without that feedback. Now, people constantly argue online because that feedback they needed while cementing those ideas wasn't there and we aren't willing to take…
> Now, people constantly argue…
Ah yes, the newfound pastime of arguing online – sure miss those pre-COVID days of online's universal consensus…
Re: Why thinking out loud with someone beats thinking alone
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Duckly deserved to actually work. There’s a small irony here: the closest study I found to this, robots specifically built to simulate attentive listening, found they performed no better than an actual inanimate rubber duck for adult engineers. The mechanical signal of listening doesn’t seem to be the active ingredient. Makes me wonder if Duckly would have needed real disagreement to close a gap a duck can’t, not jus…
You're probably on to something with the value of disagreement. I think it's one reason why chatting with current models doesn't create the same stimulation as rubber-ducking used to bring. The models are typically too quick to agree and amplify what you think rather than truly break it down and push back. And thanks for saying it should have worked, I agree. My chagrin has increased over the years as I have realized…
Has anyone seen a good set of prompts for that disagreement? For the "skeptical eyebrow-raise" or "confused/doubtful head tilt" aspect of rubber ducks?
Agentic uses adversarial expert, steel-man opponent, risk-mitigation and failure-mode analysis. But what about almost brainstorming, but with thought-provoking nudge questions? Or on the other hand, arm-waving fight-club style discussion? Or... It's a big design space. I used to go to lots of research talks at MIT, in assorted departments. The post-talk Q&A question cultures varied a lot. Like encompassing both "leaves the speaker in tears", and "nudge so subtle, you won't quickly get it if you've not already spotted the fatal flaw in the work".
So aside from dialing down the "transformative insight!" silliness, there seems a rich multi-agent multi-persona space to explore.