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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

#91

Post by carlmr »

hammyhavoc wrote: post #67
tspike wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it fair to say that you define thinking as operating in a nearly identical manner as the human brain?

Well, herein lies the interesting thing: my experience of "normal" thinking won't be like the average human being due to autism. Thus I acknowledge variance of how brains function even amidst human beings. It isn't an impossibility to consider that this could extend to artificial intelligence, but it's an LLM . It's intelligence-like (artificial), but it isn't intelligence by the traditional measure.

>It's intelligence-like (artificial), but it isn't intelligence by the traditional measure.

If it being artificial makes it intelligence like, isn't that putting the conclusion first?

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#92

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

bombolo wrote: post #58
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This 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…

Well he was right. Do you know anyone that knows a book by memory?

The point was that with Plato (but also ~2,000 years before his time, with the Sumerians, who probably invented writing) we were already discovering that we don't have to bring the exterior into an inside which we call "self", memory, we can actually leverage stigmergically [1] the environment to enhance and extend the "self", i.e. by writing, leaving a mark; the Greek word grapho γράφω [2] meaning literally to carve.

Not sure if LLMs will enhance our current "self" by themselves, but once we get a chip or two inside our brains, once we start controlling the cells to regenerate or grow specific limbs [3], we will surely consider our present "selves" as tiny as we consider the "self" of one of our cousins, the chimpanzee, in a zoo today. The journey and expansion of the "self" is merely starting.

[1] "the trace left in the environment by an individual action stimulates the performance of a succeeding action by the same or different agent", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B3%CF%81%CE%AC%CF%86%CF%8...

[2] "HCN2 Rescues brain defects by enforcing endogenous voltage pre-patterns", https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03334-5

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#93

Post by marginalia_nu »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This 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…

Plato's criticism is very true on an individual basis. What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to exchange ideas over physical and temporal distances.

It turns out that was a greater benefit that to some extent makes up for losing the exceptionally well trained memory of scholars from a verbal tradition. Not that that last part isn't a loss though, and his warning against false wisdom is more relevant than ever today when it feels like half the people you talk to online are just googling up wikipedia articles to base their world view upon on the fly.

--edit-- sometimes me not grammar good

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#94

Post by [deleted] »

bombolo wrote: post #58
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This 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…

Well he was right. Do you know anyone that knows a book by memory?

[deleted]

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#95

Post by orbital-decay »

bayindirh wrote: post #74
anon-3988 wrote: post #70

Earlier 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…

> Currently, we simply ignore or don't understand the fact that the meaning of a sentence is not solely built with word order

Many people argue convincingly that it's exactly how the meaning is built, though.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#96

Post by Arisaka1 »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This 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…

I can only begin to wonder what would his opinion on Google search would be since we (developers) always practice the "don't memorize what you can easily search", and there's a sizeable amount of people claiming that memorization shouldn't even be a concern most of the time, and that's an advice given to people who are new in the field (like myself).

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#98

Post by marginalia_nu »

Arisaka1 wrote: post #96
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This 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…

I can only begin to wonder what would his opinion on Google search would be since we (developers) always practice the "don't memorize what you can easily search", and there's a sizeable amount of people claiming that memorization shouldn't even be a concern most of the time, and that's an advice given to people who are new in the field (like myself).

Do people really practice this? Like I usually physically unplug my computer from the network as I develop as it's such a distraction to have emails and stuff popping up. Doesn't really feel like a limitation to not be able to look stuff up.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#99

Post by maxbond »

andy_ppp wrote: post #65
bombolo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well he was right. Do you know anyone that knows a book by memory?

We just use our brains differently now, mostly to find ways that support our default positions, that leave our minds unchallenged and certain.

As I recall Socrates was put to death by the ancient Athenians for "corrupting the youth" by encouraging them to be critical of dogma.

Re: When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think

#100

Post by largepeepee »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #93
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #50

This 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…

Plato's criticism is very true on an individual basis. What he didn't consider was the effect the written word had on a social scale in terms of being able to exchange ideas over physical and temporal distances. It turns out that was a greater benefit that to some extent makes up for losing the exceptionally well trained memory of scholars from a verbal tradition. Not that that last part isn't a loss though, and his…

It's also useful to point out that historical verbal tradition trained a very specific type of memory recall but that doesn't automatically make anyone wise.

Just because you memorized 10000 random articles on Wikipedia, doesn't mean you now have the wisdom to apply that in a particular circumstance.

Very much like early AI models.

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