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Awesome. Serves as a counter-example - would HN consider literacy to be damaging to the mind, or are we similarly mistaken by thinking that LLMs necessarily deg
by courseofaction 2y ago
Awesome. Serves as a counter-example - would HN consider literacy to be damaging to the mind, or are we similarly mistaken by thinking that LLMs necessarily degrade the abilities of their users?
Pre-writing 'texts' (such as the Iliad) were memorized by poets, which is reflected in their forms which made more use of memory-friendly forms like rhyming, consistent meter, and close repetition.
Writing allowed greater complexity and more complex/information dense literary forms.
I feel that intelligent, critical LLM usage is just writing with less laboriousnes, which opens up the writer's ability to explore ideas more widely rather than spend their time on the technical aspects of knowledge production.
- klyrs 2y agoDoes it serve as a counterexample? Or did the predicted loss of memory function come to pass? Worth noting that people were smoking plain old opium back in those times; I'd be reluctant to apply their reasoning to fentanyl.
- satvikpendem 2y agoWhat are you talking about with your second paragraph? I can't tell if it's supposed to be an analogy or whether you actually think everyone was smoking opium back then.
- klyrs 2y agoYes, the ancient Greeks were smoking opium. Nobody said that "everyone" was doing it, but its use was pretty widespread in neolithic Europe even before Sumerians were cultivating poppies Mesopotamia, back in 3400BCE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium
- satvikpendem 2y agoI see, thanks for the clarification.