6 ms·

It’s Just Adding One Word at a Time I'm curious how do you write?

goatlover 4y ago
Like the Aliens in Arrival? But seriously I have a general idea of what I’m going to say and then decide the words as I write it, with some edits after the initial draft.
sharemywin 4y ago
Sometimes I copy and paste so maybe that counts as something different
acchow 4y ago
I think in an "idea" space, which then I transcribe into words.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- krackers 4y ago
  If this idea space is linear, it gives a whole new meaning to an idea being orthogonal to another.
  - yen223 4y ago
    I've always thought "orthogonal" as in ideas came from "orthogonal" as in vectors - meaning to be independent of each other.
    - abudabi123 4y ago
      To sort the mess in psychology a statistical technique separates the variables as dependent and independent.
sakex 4y ago
I don't re-read the whole sentence before every word I type, contrary to transformers. Also, I can go back and correct my mistakes.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > I don't re-read the whole sentence before every word I type Maybe you don't do it consciously, but your brain is quite aware of every word you typed before the word you're typing.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    My brain knows where it's going to go by the end of the sentence as well, it's conceptualized the whole sentence and my hands are on the road to completing the sentence, I'm not only aware of what I've written so far.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      > My brain knows where it's going to go by the end of the sentence as well How would you know that? Sincere question, because to me it feels like my brain is improvising word by word when typing out this sentence. I often delete and retype it until it feels right, but in the process of typing a single sentence, I'm just chaining words one after another the way they feel right. In other words, my brain doesn't exactly know the sentence beforehand - it improvises by chaining the words, while applying a fitness function F(sentence) -> feeling that tells it whether it corresponds to what I wanted to say or not.
      - Ensorceled 4y ago
        > I'm just chaining words one after another the way they feel right. I think we know where we are going in a conceptual sense, the words start feeling right because they are taking us to that destination, or not. If I leave a sentence in the middle for some reason, when I return I often have zero idea how to finish the sentence or even what the sentence fragment means.
Swizec 4y ago
I have an idea or concept first, then I translate that into analogies/stories, then I put those down as sentences/paragraphs, then I wordsmith to make it flow better. At no point am I in a mode where I say a word and think "What's most likely to come next?". The concept/idea comes first. Likely I will try different angles until I find what lands with the audience. ChatGPT works more like a stereotypical extrovert: It doesn't think then output, it uses output to think. Which can be a fine mode for humans too. Sometimes, when you don't know what you're trying to say yet or when you need to verbalize what your gut is thinking.
IIAOPSW 4y ago
There's a lot of answers here, but as Feynman said "that which I can't build I don't understand." If you can't make something that writes for you, you don't really understand how you write. That feels impossible, to be able to do something without understanding how you do it. Brain be like that sometimes.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Understanding how ChatGPT writes doesn't translate to understanding how humans write/speak/think. We still don't understand the latter.
  - IIAOPSW 4y ago
    Notice I didn't say anything about chatGPT. chatGPT is at least something that's been built. Disagree with the theory that we are overgrown text prediction all you want, but you can't deny that it is an "understanding" in the sense that knowing it lets you build and test it. Let's call it a "potential understanding". This is different from an "illusory understanding", which feel like explanations but when you go to implement it you realize it was all a word game and your lack of understanding has just been swept under different words or under equally hard to understand concepts. An illusory understanding doesn't even have the potential to be an understanding. You can't use it to build your own version of GPTchat. All these glib answers people here are giving aren't even potential understandings. They are illusory understandings. They sound nice so long as you don't try to use it as a spec to code up your own language model. If you can't build anything out of an "understanding", even a wrong thing, then you don't truly have an understanding. You have a feeling of understanding.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      > Disagree with the theory that we are overgrown text prediction all you want, but you can't deny that it is an "understanding" in the sense that knowing it lets you build and test it. Yeah, and it helps us understand how "overgrown text prediction" works, but not how humans work. In the same way that building a robotic arm won't help you understand how muscles work. > If you can't build anything out of an "understanding", even a wrong thing, then you don't truly have an understanding. Not entirely true. We can't build a star, but we do have a pretty good theory of how stars work. But I do agree that we don't understand the human brain.
bgun 4y ago
Premise, outline, augmentation.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
I was just trying to do some metacognition and observe how I write, but apparently it's really just word by word. I neither form full sentences, nor full words or even just abstract imagination in my head. The words just appear from the "darkness", with some kind of sophistication postprocessor that tries to make some output more verbose or use more appropriate adjectives. Is this how people with aphantasia live? I don't like it. I expected something more sophisticated. Maybe that's why my writing often appears like a barely connected verbal diarrhoea that looks like an "inner monologue" writing task back in school. How do you experience it?
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  There is definitely something else going on ... if I stop writing and come back to it often the sentence fragment I was writing makes no sense at all. If it was word by word, I'd just start writing again. Also, I usually "hear" the next segment fragment in my head before I'm typing it.
- akomtu 4y ago
  That's how it looks like of your mind was below your consciousness level, i.e. if your focus was on higher ideas, and you just commanded the mind to produce specific thoughts. That's similar to how we control our body. However you might be at the ideas level already, but unable to see those ideas, so it looks like darkness to you. I believe you shpuld be able to see thoughts again simply by persistently focusing your attention on them, just like you could (but shouldn't) control low-level body functions by switching attention to them. If your consciousness was focused on thoughts, you'd see something like a very active 3d whiteboard filled with fine shapes, that you can create, change and destroy at will.
anothernewdude 4y ago
Mostly by rewriting and editing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Like the Aliens in Arrival? But seriously I have a general idea of what I’m going to say and then decide the words as I write it, with some edits after the initial draft.

sharemywin 4y ago

Sometimes I copy and paste so maybe that counts as something different

acchow 4y ago

I think in an "idea" space, which then I transcribe into words.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
krackers 4y ago
If this idea space is linear, it gives a whole new meaning to an idea being orthogonal to another.
- yen223 4y ago
  I've always thought "orthogonal" as in ideas came from "orthogonal" as in vectors - meaning to be independent of each other.
  - abudabi123 4y ago
    To sort the mess in psychology a statistical technique separates the variables as dependent and independent.

sakex 4y ago

I don't re-read the whole sentence before every word I type, contrary to transformers. Also, I can go back and correct my mistakes.

bheadmaster 4y ago
> I don't re-read the whole sentence before every word I type Maybe you don't do it consciously, but your brain is quite aware of every word you typed before the word you're typing.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  My brain knows where it's going to go by the end of the sentence as well, it's conceptualized the whole sentence and my hands are on the road to completing the sentence, I'm not only aware of what I've written so far.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > My brain knows where it's going to go by the end of the sentence as well How would you know that? Sincere question, because to me it feels like my brain is improvising word by word when typing out this sentence. I often delete and retype it until it feels right, but in the process of typing a single sentence, I'm just chaining words one after another the way they feel right. In other words, my brain doesn't exactly know the sentence beforehand - it improvises by chaining the words, while applying a fitness function F(sentence) -> feeling that tells it whether it corresponds to what I wanted to say or not.
    - Ensorceled 4y ago
      > I'm just chaining words one after another the way they feel right. I think we know where we are going in a conceptual sense, the words start feeling right because they are taking us to that destination, or not. If I leave a sentence in the middle for some reason, when I return I often have zero idea how to finish the sentence or even what the sentence fragment means.

Swizec 4y ago

I have an idea or concept first, then I translate that into analogies/stories, then I put those down as sentences/paragraphs, then I wordsmith to make it flow better. At no point am I in a mode where I say a word and think "What's most likely to come next?". The concept/idea comes first. Likely I will try different angles until I find what lands with the audience. ChatGPT works more like a stereotypical extrovert: It doesn't think then output, it uses output to think. Which can be a fine mode for humans too. Sometimes, when you don't know what you're trying to say yet or when you need to verbalize what your gut is thinking.

IIAOPSW 4y ago

There's a lot of answers here, but as Feynman said "that which I can't build I don't understand." If you can't make something that writes for you, you don't really understand how you write. That feels impossible, to be able to do something without understanding how you do it. Brain be like that sometimes.

leereeves 4y ago
Understanding how ChatGPT writes doesn't translate to understanding how humans write/speak/think. We still don't understand the latter.
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Notice I didn't say anything about chatGPT. chatGPT is at least something that's been built. Disagree with the theory that we are overgrown text prediction all you want, but you can't deny that it is an "understanding" in the sense that knowing it lets you build and test it. Let's call it a "potential understanding". This is different from an "illusory understanding", which feel like explanations but when you go to implement it you realize it was all a word game and your lack of understanding has just been swept under different words or under equally hard to understand concepts. An illusory understanding doesn't even have the potential to be an understanding. You can't use it to build your own version of GPTchat. All these glib answers people here are giving aren't even potential understandings. They are illusory understandings. They sound nice so long as you don't try to use it as a spec to code up your own language model. If you can't build anything out of an "understanding", even a wrong thing, then you don't truly have an understanding. You have a feeling of understanding.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    > Disagree with the theory that we are overgrown text prediction all you want, but you can't deny that it is an "understanding" in the sense that knowing it lets you build and test it. Yeah, and it helps us understand how "overgrown text prediction" works, but not how humans work. In the same way that building a robotic arm won't help you understand how muscles work. > If you can't build anything out of an "understanding", even a wrong thing, then you don't truly have an understanding. Not entirely true. We can't build a star, but we do have a pretty good theory of how stars work. But I do agree that we don't understand the human brain.

bgun 4y ago

Premise, outline, augmentation.

Traubenfuchs 4y ago

I was just trying to do some metacognition and observe how I write, but apparently it's really just word by word. I neither form full sentences, nor full words or even just abstract imagination in my head. The words just appear from the "darkness", with some kind of sophistication postprocessor that tries to make some output more verbose or use more appropriate adjectives. Is this how people with aphantasia live? I don't like it. I expected something more sophisticated. Maybe that's why my writing often appears like a barely connected verbal diarrhoea that looks like an "inner monologue" writing task back in school. How do you experience it?

Ensorceled 4y ago
There is definitely something else going on ... if I stop writing and come back to it often the sentence fragment I was writing makes no sense at all. If it was word by word, I'd just start writing again. Also, I usually "hear" the next segment fragment in my head before I'm typing it.
akomtu 4y ago
That's how it looks like of your mind was below your consciousness level, i.e. if your focus was on higher ideas, and you just commanded the mind to produce specific thoughts. That's similar to how we control our body. However you might be at the ideas level already, but unable to see those ideas, so it looks like darkness to you. I believe you shpuld be able to see thoughts again simply by persistently focusing your attention on them, just like you could (but shouldn't) control low-level body functions by switching attention to them. If your consciousness was focused on thoughts, you'd see something like a very active 3d whiteboard filled with fine shapes, that you can create, change and destroy at will.

anothernewdude 4y ago

Mostly by rewriting and editing.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]