7 ms·

The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains fu

by kibwen 2y ago

The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Like, Socrates may have been against writing because he thought it made your memory weak, but at least I, an individual, am perfectly capable of manufacturing my own writing implements with a modest amount of manual labor and abundantly-available resources (carving into wood, burning wood into charcoal to write on stone, etc.). But I ain't perfectly capable of doing the same to manufacture an integrated circuit, let alone a digital calculator, let alone a GPU, let alone an LLM. Anyone who delegates their thought to a corporation is permanently hitching their fundamental ability to think to this wagon.

notyourwork 2y ago
Although I agree, convincing children to learn using that rationalization won’t work.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Yes it does. Plenty of children accept "you won't always have (tool)" as a reason for learning.
  - jplusequalt 2y ago
    All adults were once children and there are plenty of adults who cannot read beyond a middle school reading level or balance a simple equation. This has been a problem before we ever gave them GPTs. It stands to reason it will only worsen in a future dominated by them.
  - freeone3000 2y ago
    “You won’t always have a calculator” became moderately false to laughably false as I went from middle to high school. Every task I will ever do for money will be done on a computer. I’m still garbage at arithmetic, especially mental math, and it really hasn’t inhibited my career in any way.
    - goatlover 2y ago
      It's pretty annoying in customer service when someone handing you back change has difficulty doing the math. There's been many times doing simple arithmetic in my head has been helpful, including times when my hands were occupied.
      - laichzeit0 2y ago
        I don’t know where you live, but I haven’t used nor carried cash on me for at least 5 years now. Everything either takes card or just tap using your phone/watch. Everything. Parking meters, cashiers, online shopping, filling up your car. I live in a “third world” country too.
        goatlover 2y ago
        Good for you? I use cash half the time. For one thing, I'm not tracked for every single purchase.
        rpmisms 2y ago
        I also love (and own) goats and use cash for most purchases.
    - xarope 2y ago
      But I bet you'd know if some calculated number was way too far-off. I'm no Turing or Ramanujan, but my opinion is that knowing how the operations work, and as example understanding how the area under a curve is calculated, allows you to guesstimate whether numbers are close enough in terms of magnitude to what you are calculating, without needing to be exact in figures. It is shocking how often I have looked at a spreadsheet, eyeballed the number of rows and the approximate average of numbers in there and figured out there's a problem with a =choose-your-forumula(...) getting the range wrong.
hackyhacky 2y ago
> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Yes, but that horse has long ago left the barn. I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS. I do know how to write a web site. But if I cede that skill to an automated process, then that is the feather that will break the camel's back? The history of civilization is the history of specialization. No one can re-build all the tools they rely on from scratch. We either let other people specialize, or we let machines specialize. LLMs are one more step in the latter. The Luddites were right: the machinery in cotton mills was a direct threat to their livelihood, just as LLMs are now to us. But society marches on, textile work has been largely outsourced to machines, and the descendants of the Luddites are doctors and lawyers (and coders). 50 years from new the career of a "coder" will evoke the same historical quaintness as does "switchboard operator" or "wainwright."
- ryandrake 2y ago
  This reply brings to mind the well-known Heinlein quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - DrillShopper 2y ago
    This is a fantastic and underrated quote, despite all of the problems I have with Heinlein's fascism-glorifying work.
    - 2y ago
bko 2y ago
I don't know, most of the things I'm reliant on, from my phone, ISP, automobile, etc are built on fragile interdependent supply chains provided by for-profit companies. If you're really worried about this, you should learn survival skills not the academic topics I'm talking about. So if you're not bothering to learn how to farm, dress some wild game, etc, chances are this argument won't be convincing for "why should I learn calculus"
Zambyte 2y ago
For what it's worth, locally runnable language models are becoming exceptionally capable these days, so if you assume you will have some computer to do computing, it seems reasonable to assume that it will enable you to do some language model based things. I have a server with a single GPU running language models that easily blow GPT 3.5 out of the water. At that point, I am offloading reasoning tasks to my computer in the same way that I offload memory take to my computer through my note taking habits.
gh0stcat 2y ago
Why do people keep parroting this reduction of Socrates' thoughts... I don't think it was just as simple as he thought writing was bad. And we already know that writing isn't everything, anyone who as done any study of a craft can tell you that reading and writing don't teach you the feel of the art form, but can also nonetheless aid in the study. It's not black and white, even though people like to make it out to be. SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support. PHAEDRUS: You are absolutely right about that, too. SOCRATES: Now tell me, can we discern another kind of discourse, a legitimate brother of this one? Can we say how it comes about, and how it is by nature better and more capable? PHAEDRUS: Which one is that? How do you think it comes about? SOCRATES: It is a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent. [link](https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-on-the-forgetfulness-that-comes-with-writing https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...)
- namaria 2y ago
  Thank you for bringing light to this. I think it makes a very relevant point to us as well. The value of doing the work yourself is in internalizing and developing one's own cognition. The argument of offloading to the LLM to me sounds link arguing one should bring a forklift to the gym Yes, it would be much less tiresome and you'd be able to lift orders of magnitude more weights. But is the goal of the gym to more efficiently lift as much weight as possible, or to tire oneself and thus develop muscles?
- casey2 2y ago
1oooqooq 2y ago
nobody ever said that. that's ai apologist history revisionism.

by kibwen 2y ago

notyourwork 2y ago

Although I agree, convincing children to learn using that rationalization won’t work.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
Yes it does. Plenty of children accept "you won't always have (tool)" as a reason for learning.
- jplusequalt 2y ago
  All adults were once children and there are plenty of adults who cannot read beyond a middle school reading level or balance a simple equation. This has been a problem before we ever gave them GPTs. It stands to reason it will only worsen in a future dominated by them.
- freeone3000 2y ago
  “You won’t always have a calculator” became moderately false to laughably false as I went from middle to high school. Every task I will ever do for money will be done on a computer. I’m still garbage at arithmetic, especially mental math, and it really hasn’t inhibited my career in any way.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    It's pretty annoying in customer service when someone handing you back change has difficulty doing the math. There's been many times doing simple arithmetic in my head has been helpful, including times when my hands were occupied.
    - laichzeit0 2y ago
      I don’t know where you live, but I haven’t used nor carried cash on me for at least 5 years now. Everything either takes card or just tap using your phone/watch. Everything. Parking meters, cashiers, online shopping, filling up your car. I live in a “third world” country too.
      - goatlover 2y ago
        Good for you? I use cash half the time. For one thing, I'm not tracked for every single purchase.
        rpmisms 2y ago
        I also love (and own) goats and use cash for most purchases.
  - xarope 2y ago
    But I bet you'd know if some calculated number was way too far-off. I'm no Turing or Ramanujan, but my opinion is that knowing how the operations work, and as example understanding how the area under a curve is calculated, allows you to guesstimate whether numbers are close enough in terms of magnitude to what you are calculating, without needing to be exact in figures. It is shocking how often I have looked at a spreadsheet, eyeballed the number of rows and the approximate average of numbers in there and figured out there's a problem with a =choose-your-forumula(...) getting the range wrong.

hackyhacky 2y ago

> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Yes, but that horse has long ago left the barn. I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS. I do know how to write a web site. But if I cede that skill to an automated process, then that is the feather that will break the camel's back? The history of civilization is the history of specialization. No one can re-build all the tools they rely on from scratch. We either let other people specialize, or we let machines specialize. LLMs are one more step in the latter. The Luddites were right: the machinery in cotton mills was a direct threat to their livelihood, just as LLMs are now to us. But society marches on, textile work has been largely outsourced to machines, and the descendants of the Luddites are doctors and lawyers (and coders). 50 years from new the career of a "coder" will evoke the same historical quaintness as does "switchboard operator" or "wainwright."

ryandrake 2y ago
This reply brings to mind the well-known Heinlein quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- DrillShopper 2y ago
  This is a fantastic and underrated quote, despite all of the problems I have with Heinlein's fascism-glorifying work.
  - 2y ago

bko 2y ago

I don't know, most of the things I'm reliant on, from my phone, ISP, automobile, etc are built on fragile interdependent supply chains provided by for-profit companies. If you're really worried about this, you should learn survival skills not the academic topics I'm talking about. So if you're not bothering to learn how to farm, dress some wild game, etc, chances are this argument won't be convincing for "why should I learn calculus"

Zambyte 2y ago

For what it's worth, locally runnable language models are becoming exceptionally capable these days, so if you assume you will have some computer to do computing, it seems reasonable to assume that it will enable you to do some language model based things. I have a server with a single GPU running language models that easily blow GPT 3.5 out of the water. At that point, I am offloading reasoning tasks to my computer in the same way that I offload memory take to my computer through my note taking habits.

gh0stcat 2y ago

Why do people keep parroting this reduction of Socrates' thoughts... I don't think it was just as simple as he thought writing was bad. And we already know that writing isn't everything, anyone who as done any study of a craft can tell you that reading and writing don't teach you the feel of the art form, but can also nonetheless aid in the study. It's not black and white, even though people like to make it out to be. SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, writing shares a strange feature with painting. The offsprings of painting stand there as if they are alive, but if anyone asks them anything, they remain most solemnly silent. The same is true of written words. You’d think they were speaking as if they had some understanding, but if you question anything that has been said because you want to learn more, it continues to signify just that very same thing forever. When it has once been written down, every discourse roams about everywhere, reaching indiscriminately those with understanding no less than those who have no business with it, and it doesn’t know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not. And when it is faulted and attacked unfairly, it always needs its father’s support; alone, it can neither defend itself nor come to its own support. PHAEDRUS: You are absolutely right about that, too. SOCRATES: Now tell me, can we discern another kind of discourse, a legitimate brother of this one? Can we say how it comes about, and how it is by nature better and more capable? PHAEDRUS: Which one is that? How do you think it comes about? SOCRATES: It is a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent. [link](https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-on-the-forgetfulness-that-comes-with-writing https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-...)

namaria 2y ago
Thank you for bringing light to this. I think it makes a very relevant point to us as well. The value of doing the work yourself is in internalizing and developing one's own cognition. The argument of offloading to the LLM to me sounds link arguing one should bring a forklift to the gym Yes, it would be much less tiresome and you'd be able to lift orders of magnitude more weights. But is the goal of the gym to more efficiently lift as much weight as possible, or to tire oneself and thus develop muscles?
casey2 2y ago

1oooqooq 2y ago

nobody ever said that. that's ai apologist history revisionism.