5 ms·

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

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 speed, so things doesn't escape or my focus doesn't get derailed. Also it changes how brain works so it can think better. Also, blogging and writing documentation at work made me a much better thinker, because converting these abstract concepts to meaningful sentences with a context and easy to understand structure affects also how clearly you communicate in other parts of your life. Offloading this really robs you of the joys and power of meaningful communication on many mediums.

anon-3988 4y ago
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.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  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.
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    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.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    > no guarantee of correctness, a baseline honesty, and other small bits and pieces Humans for sure do not guarantee this either. I think of LLMs as an amazing rubber duck. It's heard of everything, and it always responds with something that sounds like it came from the same sphere. You have to use your own mind to figure out if it's meaningful, but this is not so different from conversing with a person. People can babble too. > There are higher orders of information carried implicitly You're not always looking for those in a conversation. Sometimes you really are just checking that you've thought things through. Like if someone asks you what the arguments in favor of democracy are, you want a list of points so you can check you haven't forgotten something.
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      > I think of LLMs as an amazing rubber duck. That was my first thought too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging But it's a pretty amazing rubber duck that has read the entire internet and thus can correlate your ideas with the ideas of all of humanity in a split second on the spot.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      > Humans for sure do not guarantee this either. However, humans are more nuanced than that. One might remember wrongly, or act in bad-faith. This is why I said "baseline honesty". One people's traits definitely affects how their words are perceived, and this is not carried in the sentence itself. > I think of LLMs as an amazing rubber duck. ... People can babble too. (Snipped for brevity) Humans are not as random as an LLM. > You're not always looking for those in a conversation. Sometimes you really are just checking that you've thought things through. Again the person you're asking or answering has their own character and their or your words are affected by that implicit knowledge. This is a background process we're not aware of unless you dig into yourself and look for it.
      - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
        >Humans are not as random as an LLM. // Humans you know and trust, sure. Humans you think you're conversing with online, not so much.
  - orbital-decay 4y ago
    > 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.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      If convincingly arguing about something was the only thing we needed for proving correctness, we wouldn't have the scientific method. Or, if word order built the meaning and it's devoid of the character itself, we wouldn't be praising authors for their character building skills and embedding things not written or spoken into their stories, regardless of the medium it's presented.
      - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
        And your proof?
      - orbital-decay 4y ago
        To apply the scientific method and prove correctness, you need to define the subject first. Meaning is ill-defined, just like consciousness, intelligence, and others. LLMs can clearly grasp higher order abstractions and concepts just by reordering the words. In fact, embeddings (developed much earlier) are specifically intended to represent the semantical meaning extracted from text using just statistical methods; until the introduction of transformers they lacked a good architecture to demonstrate the usefulness of that. This makes many people argue that being a sentence builder is enough to be intelligent, as they also received most of their intelligence from the same source (concentrated experience of someone else - social intelligence). "Honesty" and other forms of self-introspection is just a high level construct which current models aren't trained for, and likely not a fundamental issue with being a stochastic parrot.
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  I agree. Instance from today; I have a very novel task at work that nobody seems to know how to approach, I had a hunch that metaheuristics could play a role; I used ChatGPT to help me better formulate the problem and at least now there is a way to tackle the problem. It made a few errors in at least presenting my ideas, but these errors were a consequence of my misunderstanding and lack of clarity. The errors themselves, in my opinion, are invaluable because they force you to think, to be clear, and to guide the model into giving me useful ideas to look into. For all intents and purposes, it was an example of the Socratic method, albeit inverted, where the student is asking questions to an all knowing teacher, and the teacher / LLM responds with ideas and hints. Ultimately, it's up to the student to synthesize the solution, be critical of the data, and tie everything together.
Last5Digits 4y ago
I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain? No, the brain does not "replace written information with a pointer". I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it, but I can tell you that you can construct computer analogies in support of either case. I could posit that writing actually improves your memory, because the minute movements of your arm require more of your brain to compute, therefore creating more neural connections and possibilities of recall. This is likely just as wrong, but demonstrates that thinking up some vague explanation is insufficient to make a point about a system as complex as the human brain.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  > I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain? No, because I literally don't remember my to do list after writing to my EDC notebook. The only thing I know is, it's in the notebook. So I only know the address of my to do list. I'm a literal sitting duck if I leave my notebook at home. > I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it ... I can tell you because I observe myself over 5+ years since I started to write my daily plans consistently to my notebook. > I could posit that writing actually improves your memory, because the minute movements of your arm require more of your brain to compute, therefore creating more neural connections and possibilities of recall. What it improves is not the "verbatim memory", but the concepts you work on. Working on something slowly, and with a reflection medium (i.e. pen & paper) allows your brain to refine the thing you're working on better and store it as a concept, rather than memorized string. > This is likely just as wrong, but demonstrates that thinking up some vague explanation is insufficient to make a point about a system as complex as the human brain. I have read a paper about supporting the claims I did in this comment, but I failed to find it in a whim. Will update/reply this comment if I find it. I use these analogies because of that paper.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  A librarian might say they create a reference card, a web person might say they're creating a hyperlink. In all cases I think parent post is trying to communicate that they are putting the large mass of information elsewhere, and only retain a reference locally. (implementation details notwithstanding)
EugeneOZ 4y ago
I remember MUCH, much better things that I once had written, not just read.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  I remember better when I hand-write things rather than typing them, too.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> the brain replaces them with a pointer. And, unfortunately, as you get older and memory starts to fill up, the pointers get overwritten.
- passterby 4y ago
  [dead]

anon-3988 4y ago

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.

bayindirh 4y ago
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.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  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.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  > no guarantee of correctness, a baseline honesty, and other small bits and pieces Humans for sure do not guarantee this either. I think of LLMs as an amazing rubber duck. It's heard of everything, and it always responds with something that sounds like it came from the same sphere. You have to use your own mind to figure out if it's meaningful, but this is not so different from conversing with a person. People can babble too. > There are higher orders of information carried implicitly You're not always looking for those in a conversation. Sometimes you really are just checking that you've thought things through. Like if someone asks you what the arguments in favor of democracy are, you want a list of points so you can check you haven't forgotten something.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    > I think of LLMs as an amazing rubber duck. That was my first thought too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging But it's a pretty amazing rubber duck that has read the entire internet and thus can correlate your ideas with the ideas of all of humanity in a split second on the spot.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    > Humans for sure do not guarantee this either. However, humans are more nuanced than that. One might remember wrongly, or act in bad-faith. This is why I said "baseline honesty". One people's traits definitely affects how their words are perceived, and this is not carried in the sentence itself. > I think of LLMs as an amazing rubber duck. ... People can babble too. (Snipped for brevity) Humans are not as random as an LLM. > You're not always looking for those in a conversation. Sometimes you really are just checking that you've thought things through. Again the person you're asking or answering has their own character and their or your words are affected by that implicit knowledge. This is a background process we're not aware of unless you dig into yourself and look for it.
    - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
      >Humans are not as random as an LLM. // Humans you know and trust, sure. Humans you think you're conversing with online, not so much.
- orbital-decay 4y ago
  > 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.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    If convincingly arguing about something was the only thing we needed for proving correctness, we wouldn't have the scientific method. Or, if word order built the meaning and it's devoid of the character itself, we wouldn't be praising authors for their character building skills and embedding things not written or spoken into their stories, regardless of the medium it's presented.
    - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
      And your proof?
    - orbital-decay 4y ago
      To apply the scientific method and prove correctness, you need to define the subject first. Meaning is ill-defined, just like consciousness, intelligence, and others. LLMs can clearly grasp higher order abstractions and concepts just by reordering the words. In fact, embeddings (developed much earlier) are specifically intended to represent the semantical meaning extracted from text using just statistical methods; until the introduction of transformers they lacked a good architecture to demonstrate the usefulness of that. This makes many people argue that being a sentence builder is enough to be intelligent, as they also received most of their intelligence from the same source (concentrated experience of someone else - social intelligence). "Honesty" and other forms of self-introspection is just a high level construct which current models aren't trained for, and likely not a fundamental issue with being a stochastic parrot.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
I agree. Instance from today; I have a very novel task at work that nobody seems to know how to approach, I had a hunch that metaheuristics could play a role; I used ChatGPT to help me better formulate the problem and at least now there is a way to tackle the problem. It made a few errors in at least presenting my ideas, but these errors were a consequence of my misunderstanding and lack of clarity. The errors themselves, in my opinion, are invaluable because they force you to think, to be clear, and to guide the model into giving me useful ideas to look into. For all intents and purposes, it was an example of the Socratic method, albeit inverted, where the student is asking questions to an all knowing teacher, and the teacher / LLM responds with ideas and hints. Ultimately, it's up to the student to synthesize the solution, be critical of the data, and tie everything together.

Last5Digits 4y ago

I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain? No, the brain does not "replace written information with a pointer". I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it, but I can tell you that you can construct computer analogies in support of either case. I could posit that writing actually improves your memory, because the minute movements of your arm require more of your brain to compute, therefore creating more neural connections and possibilities of recall. This is likely just as wrong, but demonstrates that thinking up some vague explanation is insufficient to make a point about a system as complex as the human brain.

bayindirh 4y ago
> I know this is HN, but can we please stop drawing these vague parallels between basic programming concepts and the functioning of the human brain? No, because I literally don't remember my to do list after writing to my EDC notebook. The only thing I know is, it's in the notebook. So I only know the address of my to do list. I'm a literal sitting duck if I leave my notebook at home. > I cannot tell you with complete confidence whether writing stuff down improves recall or diminishes it ... I can tell you because I observe myself over 5+ years since I started to write my daily plans consistently to my notebook. > I could posit that writing actually improves your memory, because the minute movements of your arm require more of your brain to compute, therefore creating more neural connections and possibilities of recall. What it improves is not the "verbatim memory", but the concepts you work on. Working on something slowly, and with a reflection medium (i.e. pen & paper) allows your brain to refine the thing you're working on better and store it as a concept, rather than memorized string. > This is likely just as wrong, but demonstrates that thinking up some vague explanation is insufficient to make a point about a system as complex as the human brain. I have read a paper about supporting the claims I did in this comment, but I failed to find it in a whim. Will update/reply this comment if I find it. I use these analogies because of that paper.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
A librarian might say they create a reference card, a web person might say they're creating a hyperlink. In all cases I think parent post is trying to communicate that they are putting the large mass of information elsewhere, and only retain a reference locally. (implementation details notwithstanding)

EugeneOZ 4y ago

I remember MUCH, much better things that I once had written, not just read.

commandlinefan 4y ago
I remember better when I hand-write things rather than typing them, too.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> the brain replaces them with a pointer. And, unfortunately, as you get older and memory starts to fill up, the pointers get overwritten.

passterby 4y ago
[dead]