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> four key cognitive behaviors -- verification, backtracking, subgoal setting, and backward chaining -- that both expert human problem solvers and successful la

> four key cognitive behaviors -- verification, backtracking, subgoal setting, and backward chaining -- that both expert human problem solvers and successful language models employ. As we make AI better, perhaps we'll inadvertently find ways to make HI (human intelligence) better too. I had a personal experience with this when I was studying for an exam recently. As I read over practice questions, I spoke aloud, replicating the reasoning methods/personality of Deepseek R1. By spending a lot of time reading long verbose R1 outputs, I've essentially fine-tuned my brain for reasoning tasks. I believe this method contributed to my excellent score on that exam.

jdpage 2y ago
This is a well-known approach: verbalizing your thought process (either by speaking aloud, or by writing) is something that's long established as a good tactic for making sure that you're actually thinking through something, rather than glossing over it. Ironically, I've seen people bemoaning that use of AI will rob people of that. I agree that there's potential here, though, and do genuinely hope that we find ways to make human intelligence better as we're going about AI research. Even pessimistically, I think we'll at least surface approaches that people use without thinking about, which is on its own a good thing, because once you know you're doing something, it becomes a lot easier to train yourself to do it better.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  This is one of the secrets of the top British universities. They do a lot of debating in small groups. Even their papers are read out loud
- crooked-v 2y ago
  > Ironically, I've seen people bemoaning that use of AI will rob people of that. There's that quote from Socrates, recorded by Plato: > For this invention 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.
  - neom 2y ago
    Pretty much every single spiritual philosopher has said some version of that (I'm writing a book on this subject right now, heh): The Buddha (from the Pali Canon, Vinaya Pitaka, Cullavagga 10:4): “Writing is like a drug that weakens memory.” and: “Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor... But when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blameable; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.” Confucius (Analects 2:15): “Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.” Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48): “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.” Jesus (Matthew 16:26): “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Muhammad (Hadith, Sahih Muslim): “The worst vessel to fill is the stomach; sufficient for the child of Adam are a few morsels to keep his back straight. If he must fill it, then one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air.” (This Hadith symbolically warns against excessive reliance on external consumption diminishing spiritual clarity and internal balance.) Rumi (Masnavi): “These outward forms are but dust and air; Seek the reality beyond appearance and form.” Krishna (Bhagavad Gita, 2:42-43): “Those who are attached to pleasure and power, whose minds are drawn away by such things, have no capacity for absorption into higher states of awareness.”
    - HPsquared 2y ago
      Sometimes it's good to forget something, commit to written record and let it go. People can carry too much old stuff around in their heads, and it can become burdensome. Even things like confession, or therapy, leverage this - people letting go of bad things that are hanging around in their memory.
      - neom 2y ago
        A lot of traditions would strongly disagree with that, myself included. I would imagine you would find a lot of Gnostics who disagree, a lot of "witches" who have been literally burned over the years, and also the aboriginal people of Australia. Well, you wouldn't find so many of them, because those lines of thought have literally been beat out of our human societies in the name of progress. If it's not worthy of being in the oral tradition, it's not worthy of the society, it's not worthy thought. (unworthy thought does not need to be rigorously engaged with.) Also remember, your conclusion itself is "the devil" - the trap of the analytical mind. :) You will likely do everything you can do avoid the fact that you may be disagreeing directly with the word of the creator as given via various prophets, if you go back to the sources, the command is quite clear, however humans will interpret it: because the command is too simple and terrifying to adhere to. It seems impossible to us that we should indeed, be doing nothing but living in nature in a state of oral tradition and anything outside of that is an unintended state, trusting that energy cannot be destroyed and we are nothing but energy. I don't particularly like it either tbh, hence I'm writing a book about it.
vunderba 2y ago
Thinking out loud is an age old practice and is the equivalent of "rubber ducking" to yourself. As someone who comes from a long ancestral line of people who talk to themselves while reasoning through problems - it would occasionally prove to be a minor handicap during proctored exams, as internal monologue isn't really the same thing.
- forthac 2y ago
  From what I have seen from split-brain experiments, I am of the belief that by vocalizing our thoughts, we are more fully engaging both hemispheres of our brain through the auditory pathway in addition to the Corpus Callosum.
  - rzzzt 2y ago
    Pictures tell me that the language area is dominant in a single hemisphere, mostly the left side, with motoric stuff and thinking about words in the front (Broca's area) and hearing in the back (Wernicke's area). So you may have to use the SLI bridge again just to make sense of what the other side is hearing.
- rendall 2y ago
  Me, working through a problem: "So, that means..." Girlfriend, coming in from outside: "Who are you talking to?" Me: "I talk to myself. You know that." Gf: "Oh right. You also whisper to yourself, which is scary." Me: "Scary?" Gf: "It sounds demonic." Which, to be fair... Evidently, my internal monologuing gets quite a bit vocal even with other people around.
  - vijucat 2y ago
    Maybe demons were those who learned to cogitate better and ended up being the Ted Kacynzkis of their ilk :)
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    It's your reasoning daemon running in the background.
yapyap 2y ago
… some of yall
thesz 2y ago
Exam is interpolation. Research is extrapolation. Neural networks are interpolators, they are notoriously bad at extrapolation. For simple example, look at pendigits data set [1]. The test part of pendigits is taken from different "writers" than train part and neural networks aren't that good at it. [1] https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/81/pen+based+recognition+of+handwritten+digits https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/81/pen+based+recognition... Humans do extrapolation all the time.
arjonagelhout 2y ago
I use this method too for programming problems I would normally procrastinate on and offload to subconscious thinking. Actually writing out all thinking steps helps with ironing out some wrong steps in my reasoning or going in circles due to having limited working memory. I started doing this more rigorously after seeing how reasoning based AI does reasoning, because it seemed like a useful thinking technique. These reasoning AI models help me think on a meta level about my own thinking and shows me tools I can use to improve it. Great to see that I’m not alone in this!
- EncomLab 2y ago
  Sounds like you rediscovered the long held practice of "Rubber Ducking".
  - floatrock 2y ago
    eh, writing it out is closer to "proto design document" or just plain ol "whiteboarding"
    - resize2996 2y ago
      the only reason I haven't written a design doc or busted out the felt tip for my rubber duck is because it can't read.
      - federiconafria 2y ago
        Have you tried? Maybe it can.
        floatrock 2y ago
        I mean, I'm sure there's some founder out there pitching an AI-powered rubber duck dev productivity tool. At the very least, someone at Copilot must have pitched a rubber duck avatar as the new Clippy by now...
  - 2y ago
yapyap 2y ago
My god, that’s literally just thinking aloud, doing the rubber duck thing. You are not “emulating R1”, you are talking to yourself to make sure you understand the concept. Which is fine but don’t act like AI is making this part of life better in any way with this example. Nonsense
- owenpalmer 2y ago
  I think you're missing a key point, which is that by extensively reading the R1 outputs, I'm able to observe how R1 thinks about things, which I can then replicate. There are good ways and bad ways to think aloud, R1 just gave me a large set of examples of doing it the "good" way. It's uncommon to read hundreds of paragraphs of a smart person's internal reasoning process. Usually we're only able to read the final results of their thoughts.
nico 2y ago
Super interesting > As I read over practice questions, I spoke aloud This is also something that’s expected of the applicant in technical interviews The interviewers want to hear the applicants thought process and how they develop a strategy to solve the problems presented to them as they work them out
Cheer2171 2y ago
You computer scientists cosplaying as cognitive scientists really never took single psychology class, did you?
- astrange 2y ago
  I believe the quote here is "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the system goes up."
- calf 2y ago
  I'm slightly terrified I'm mot consciously trying any of these metacognitive things to "self improve" myself.
- swyx 2y ago
  do you want to try that again but being more constructive?
calf 2y ago
Those four parts sound like one unified, cognitive algorithm -- having an ontology of the problem by breaking it into subgoals; checking your work properly; thinking backwards to debug a mistake and retrying; and thinking ahead and reasoning backward from the end result. It's all just one algorithm for solving hard problems. A skill that can be practiced, and then it builds on itself.
aussieguy1234 2y ago
Humans train AI, now AI trains Humans
sinuhe69 2y ago
Consider the recent advancements in reasoning models, I’d say your method is a bit inefficient ;) It’s equivalent to the LLMs reasoning in the output and not in the latent space before the final output, which gave the rise to the reasoning models we see today. So speaking out loud might not be the best reasoning method ;)
richardreeze 2y ago
This is fascinating. Reminds me of how people improve at chess by studying a chess engine's suggestions.

jdpage 2y ago

This is a well-known approach: verbalizing your thought process (either by speaking aloud, or by writing) is something that's long established as a good tactic for making sure that you're actually thinking through something, rather than glossing over it. Ironically, I've seen people bemoaning that use of AI will rob people of that. I agree that there's potential here, though, and do genuinely hope that we find ways to make human intelligence better as we're going about AI research. Even pessimistically, I think we'll at least surface approaches that people use without thinking about, which is on its own a good thing, because once you know you're doing something, it becomes a lot easier to train yourself to do it better.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
This is one of the secrets of the top British universities. They do a lot of debating in small groups. Even their papers are read out loud
crooked-v 2y ago
> Ironically, I've seen people bemoaning that use of AI will rob people of that. There's that quote from Socrates, recorded by Plato: > For this invention 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.
- neom 2y ago
  Pretty much every single spiritual philosopher has said some version of that (I'm writing a book on this subject right now, heh): The Buddha (from the Pali Canon, Vinaya Pitaka, Cullavagga 10:4): “Writing is like a drug that weakens memory.” and: “Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor... But when you yourselves know: 'These things are good; these things are not blameable; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them.” Confucius (Analects 2:15): “Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.” Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48): “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.” Jesus (Matthew 16:26): “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Muhammad (Hadith, Sahih Muslim): “The worst vessel to fill is the stomach; sufficient for the child of Adam are a few morsels to keep his back straight. If he must fill it, then one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air.” (This Hadith symbolically warns against excessive reliance on external consumption diminishing spiritual clarity and internal balance.) Rumi (Masnavi): “These outward forms are but dust and air; Seek the reality beyond appearance and form.” Krishna (Bhagavad Gita, 2:42-43): “Those who are attached to pleasure and power, whose minds are drawn away by such things, have no capacity for absorption into higher states of awareness.”
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Sometimes it's good to forget something, commit to written record and let it go. People can carry too much old stuff around in their heads, and it can become burdensome. Even things like confession, or therapy, leverage this - people letting go of bad things that are hanging around in their memory.
    - neom 2y ago
      A lot of traditions would strongly disagree with that, myself included. I would imagine you would find a lot of Gnostics who disagree, a lot of "witches" who have been literally burned over the years, and also the aboriginal people of Australia. Well, you wouldn't find so many of them, because those lines of thought have literally been beat out of our human societies in the name of progress. If it's not worthy of being in the oral tradition, it's not worthy of the society, it's not worthy thought. (unworthy thought does not need to be rigorously engaged with.) Also remember, your conclusion itself is "the devil" - the trap of the analytical mind. :) You will likely do everything you can do avoid the fact that you may be disagreeing directly with the word of the creator as given via various prophets, if you go back to the sources, the command is quite clear, however humans will interpret it: because the command is too simple and terrifying to adhere to. It seems impossible to us that we should indeed, be doing nothing but living in nature in a state of oral tradition and anything outside of that is an unintended state, trusting that energy cannot be destroyed and we are nothing but energy. I don't particularly like it either tbh, hence I'm writing a book about it.

vunderba 2y ago

Thinking out loud is an age old practice and is the equivalent of "rubber ducking" to yourself. As someone who comes from a long ancestral line of people who talk to themselves while reasoning through problems - it would occasionally prove to be a minor handicap during proctored exams, as internal monologue isn't really the same thing.

forthac 2y ago
From what I have seen from split-brain experiments, I am of the belief that by vocalizing our thoughts, we are more fully engaging both hemispheres of our brain through the auditory pathway in addition to the Corpus Callosum.
- rzzzt 2y ago
  Pictures tell me that the language area is dominant in a single hemisphere, mostly the left side, with motoric stuff and thinking about words in the front (Broca's area) and hearing in the back (Wernicke's area). So you may have to use the SLI bridge again just to make sense of what the other side is hearing.
rendall 2y ago
Me, working through a problem: "So, that means..." Girlfriend, coming in from outside: "Who are you talking to?" Me: "I talk to myself. You know that." Gf: "Oh right. You also whisper to yourself, which is scary." Me: "Scary?" Gf: "It sounds demonic." Which, to be fair... Evidently, my internal monologuing gets quite a bit vocal even with other people around.
- vijucat 2y ago
  Maybe demons were those who learned to cogitate better and ended up being the Ted Kacynzkis of their ilk :)
- HPsquared 2y ago
  It's your reasoning daemon running in the background.

yapyap 2y ago

… some of yall

thesz 2y ago

Exam is interpolation. Research is extrapolation. Neural networks are interpolators, they are notoriously bad at extrapolation. For simple example, look at pendigits data set [1]. The test part of pendigits is taken from different "writers" than train part and neural networks aren't that good at it. [1] https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/81/pen+based+recognition+of+handwritten+digits https://archive.ics.uci.edu/dataset/81/pen+based+recognition... Humans do extrapolation all the time.

arjonagelhout 2y ago

I use this method too for programming problems I would normally procrastinate on and offload to subconscious thinking. Actually writing out all thinking steps helps with ironing out some wrong steps in my reasoning or going in circles due to having limited working memory. I started doing this more rigorously after seeing how reasoning based AI does reasoning, because it seemed like a useful thinking technique. These reasoning AI models help me think on a meta level about my own thinking and shows me tools I can use to improve it. Great to see that I’m not alone in this!

EncomLab 2y ago
Sounds like you rediscovered the long held practice of "Rubber Ducking".
- floatrock 2y ago
  eh, writing it out is closer to "proto design document" or just plain ol "whiteboarding"
  - resize2996 2y ago
    the only reason I haven't written a design doc or busted out the felt tip for my rubber duck is because it can't read.
    - federiconafria 2y ago
      Have you tried? Maybe it can.
      - floatrock 2y ago
        I mean, I'm sure there's some founder out there pitching an AI-powered rubber duck dev productivity tool. At the very least, someone at Copilot must have pitched a rubber duck avatar as the new Clippy by now...
- 2y ago

yapyap 2y ago

My god, that’s literally just thinking aloud, doing the rubber duck thing. You are not “emulating R1”, you are talking to yourself to make sure you understand the concept. Which is fine but don’t act like AI is making this part of life better in any way with this example. Nonsense

owenpalmer 2y ago
I think you're missing a key point, which is that by extensively reading the R1 outputs, I'm able to observe how R1 thinks about things, which I can then replicate. There are good ways and bad ways to think aloud, R1 just gave me a large set of examples of doing it the "good" way. It's uncommon to read hundreds of paragraphs of a smart person's internal reasoning process. Usually we're only able to read the final results of their thoughts.

nico 2y ago

Super interesting > As I read over practice questions, I spoke aloud This is also something that’s expected of the applicant in technical interviews The interviewers want to hear the applicants thought process and how they develop a strategy to solve the problems presented to them as they work them out

Cheer2171 2y ago

You computer scientists cosplaying as cognitive scientists really never took single psychology class, did you?

astrange 2y ago
I believe the quote here is "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the system goes up."
calf 2y ago
I'm slightly terrified I'm mot consciously trying any of these metacognitive things to "self improve" myself.
swyx 2y ago
do you want to try that again but being more constructive?

calf 2y ago

Those four parts sound like one unified, cognitive algorithm -- having an ontology of the problem by breaking it into subgoals; checking your work properly; thinking backwards to debug a mistake and retrying; and thinking ahead and reasoning backward from the end result. It's all just one algorithm for solving hard problems. A skill that can be practiced, and then it builds on itself.

aussieguy1234 2y ago

Humans train AI, now AI trains Humans

sinuhe69 2y ago

Consider the recent advancements in reasoning models, I’d say your method is a bit inefficient ;) It’s equivalent to the LLMs reasoning in the output and not in the latent space before the final output, which gave the rise to the reasoning models we see today. So speaking out loud might not be the best reasoning method ;)

richardreeze 2y ago

This is fascinating. Reminds me of how people improve at chess by studying a chess engine's suggestions.