4 ms·
> Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person. The main advantage of LLMs is that you c
by jonahx 2y ago
> Seems more efficient to have one reference book rather than generating entire new 20 chapter books for every person.
The main advantage of LLMs is that you can ask specific questions about things that confuse you, which makes iterating to a correct mental model much faster. It's like having your own personal tutor at your beck and call. Good guidebooks attempt to do this statically... anticipate questions and confusions at the right points, and it's a great skill to do this well. But it's still not the same as full interactivity.
- rco8786 2y agoWow this is really well stated, thanks.
- yoyohello13 2y agoI think a mix is the right approach. I’ve used LLMs to learn a variety of topics. I like having a good book to provide structure and a foundation to anchor my learning. Then use LLMs to explore the topics I need more help with. When it’s just a book. I find myself having questions like you mentioned. When it’s just LLMs I feel like I don’t have any structure for my mind to hold on to. I also feel like there is an art to picking the right order to approach learning a topic, which authors are better at than LLMs.
- jonahx 2y agoAgree and didn't mean to imply otherwise. A good book by an expert is still better than LLMs at providing high-level priorities, a roadmap for new territory, and an introduction to the way practitioners think about their subject (though for many subjects LLMs are pretty good at this too). But the LLMs boost a book's effectiveness by being your individualized tutor.
- nealabq 2y agoThis is a bit of a stretch, but it's a little like distillation, where you are extracting from the vast knowledge of the LLM and inserting those patterns into your brain. Where you have an incomplete or uncertain mental model and you ask a tutor to fill in the blanks. Altho maybe I'm stretching the analogy too far.