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> Im learning new things at a pace I never imagined at 40 years old. You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing. We've known this for ages: simply

> Im learning new things at a pace I never imagined at 40 years old. You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing. We've known this for ages: simply reading a maths book without drilling on the problems will not get a student to pass. Best case scenario, you're reading stuff. For users of coding agents, they're not even doing that.

Jtarii 4mo ago
>You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing. You can have it write a program that generates drills for you. I wanted to become better at reading sheet music so I generated a sheet music reading program. You can have it generate maths drills, then ask questions about it if you get stuck or whatever. If you genuinely want to get better at something then AI will help you learn it faster. Obviously its going to hamper more people's cognitive ability that it will enhance but that is a separate problem.
- lelanthran 4mo ago
  The people who say they are learning faster with it aren't mentioning drills, they're mentioning outcomes. I actually did have an LLM ingest some material and generate drills. It worked well. It's rare that happens, though. The difference between humans and other animals on the planet had always been the ability to reason. If we, as a species, lose that ability, we're looking at an extinction-level event.
  - hodder 4mo ago
    Your initial response post was to me, and you absolutely injected the heavily biased assumption that I was doing no active learning.
oulu2006 4mo ago
I'm learning by doing things. For example: AI has helped me get into restoring retro tech, specifically resoldering leaky caps on retro Macintosh logic boards. Before AI, I didn't know how to use a multimeter (I knew theoretically how it worked), I didn't know how to use flux, solder wick, heat gun. I also didn't understand how bromine radicals yellowed plastic and how to reverse it by using blue light similar to what they use for indoor aquariums. So AI unlocked doing for me.
- lelanthran 4mo ago
  You realise that every single one of those things had easily accessible videos to learn from, right? You're happy using AI instead of other material because it will constantly tell you how brilliant you are, or how quick you're learning.
  - hodder 4mo ago
    You are very closed minded. LLMs can absolutely give pragmatic and fast information in a useful (non-sycophantic form). You need to examine your extreme biases here. Just because you can't use a tool doesn't mean the tool isnt useful. Your bias on display here is frankly silly. Im not saying LLMs are ALWAYS the best way of learning something just like they aren't always the best at anything. They are a valuable tool though. Yes so is youtube and textbooks, and professsors, and peer review literature, and pen and paper, and block training etc.
  - oulu2006 4mo ago
    No, not everyone, there's no easily accessible video showing how to setup aquarium lights to slowly de-yellow ABS plastic -- at least I didn't find one; AI helped me find an obscure reference to it and I then read a few message boards where it was mentioned. I also use AI to take in-progress pictures as I desolder to help me check for traces that need to be repaired or help identifying specific chips. I probably could try and find a video where the same chip is featured and someone explains it, and/or retrieve the schematic for the specific logic board, but that's very painful and does slow the process. Think of AI, in this specific case, as enabling skill development for me in a field I wouldn't have necessarily have gotten into, because of being short on time and AI helps me consolidate that information quickly.
  - warkdarrior 4mo ago
    Should we also go to ancient scrolls for learning, because videos are too easy? The poster showed you how they learn with the help of AI. You can learn from videos, they learn from AI. What's the problem?
- jjav 4mo ago
hodder 4mo ago
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Ive crafted LLMs to create drills and practice exams etc. Im not just reading about new sport activities, or videography/photography or linear algebra or physics. I'm putting it into action. As I said above, technology is a lever. Maybe you are just reading stuff and not drilling problems. That isnt me.
- Jensson 4mo ago
  Not sure how good LLM are at that given they are so biased towards the user being right. You would need an LLM trained to disagree with the user to properly grade your results of those drills.
  - hodder 4mo ago
    Once more, you are making massively blanketed biased assumptions about me. You seem to believe LLMs cannot even produce simple exams and rubrics is that right?
    - Jensson 4mo ago
      At most you could do multiple choice questions, or questions with a single objective answer such as "what is the capital of France". But such tests aren't very helpful to learn new things. Students cannot grade their own answers for more complex problems, they make mistakes but say they are correct since they don't understand the material, or they are correct but since it doesn't say the exact same thing as the example answer they say they are wrong and correct it even though it was already correct. And an LLM would be even worse than that at correcting tests. This is not a bias against you, its just a general thing that applies to all students and people. Nobody is good at correcting their own work, even the most esteemed professor gets his work checked by other people. And an LLM is not another person here, they aren't good enough to check your work. Note its much harder to accurately grade an answer than to answer a question.
      - meetingthrower 4mo ago
        You are so incorrect here. If you feed it an evaluation rubric it will go after it! You really understimate the technology when in good and well intentioned hands. (Yes lazy people will use it to cheat and get to the answer faster. But it is like a grad student tutor who will do an evaluation in 30 seconds! Rapid iteration and laddering up...)
hodder 4mo ago
When did I say I wasn't doing and just reading. That is your own heavy bias creeping in.
paytonjjones 4mo ago
Learning by doing is often more effective because it naturally involves forced recall. But it's not the only way to learn and not even the only way to do a lot of forced recall. It's downright crazy to say you aren't learning anything by reading. You likely won't retain that high a % of the content without repeated drilling, but it's not like nonfiction exists for no reason!
- jplusequalt 4mo ago
  >It's downright crazy to say you aren't learning anything by reading. You likely won't retain that high a % of the content without repeated drilling, but it's not like nonfiction exists for no reason! How much of a nonfiction book can you recall a few months after reading it? Probably very little. However, I haven't taken a calculus class in nearly a decade and I still know how to solve derivatives and integrals. Point being: there's levels to this, and reading is not nearly as effective as drilling exercises.
risyachka 4mo ago
This. Without doing you may as well read some fiction. The result is mostly the same.

Jtarii 4mo ago

>You aren't learning anything. Learning involves doing. You can have it write a program that generates drills for you. I wanted to become better at reading sheet music so I generated a sheet music reading program. You can have it generate maths drills, then ask questions about it if you get stuck or whatever. If you genuinely want to get better at something then AI will help you learn it faster. Obviously its going to hamper more people's cognitive ability that it will enhance but that is a separate problem.

lelanthran 4mo ago
The people who say they are learning faster with it aren't mentioning drills, they're mentioning outcomes. I actually did have an LLM ingest some material and generate drills. It worked well. It's rare that happens, though. The difference between humans and other animals on the planet had always been the ability to reason. If we, as a species, lose that ability, we're looking at an extinction-level event.
- hodder 4mo ago
  Your initial response post was to me, and you absolutely injected the heavily biased assumption that I was doing no active learning.

oulu2006 4mo ago

I'm learning by doing things. For example: AI has helped me get into restoring retro tech, specifically resoldering leaky caps on retro Macintosh logic boards. Before AI, I didn't know how to use a multimeter (I knew theoretically how it worked), I didn't know how to use flux, solder wick, heat gun. I also didn't understand how bromine radicals yellowed plastic and how to reverse it by using blue light similar to what they use for indoor aquariums. So AI unlocked doing for me.

lelanthran 4mo ago
You realise that every single one of those things had easily accessible videos to learn from, right? You're happy using AI instead of other material because it will constantly tell you how brilliant you are, or how quick you're learning.
- hodder 4mo ago
  You are very closed minded. LLMs can absolutely give pragmatic and fast information in a useful (non-sycophantic form). You need to examine your extreme biases here. Just because you can't use a tool doesn't mean the tool isnt useful. Your bias on display here is frankly silly. Im not saying LLMs are ALWAYS the best way of learning something just like they aren't always the best at anything. They are a valuable tool though. Yes so is youtube and textbooks, and professsors, and peer review literature, and pen and paper, and block training etc.
- oulu2006 4mo ago
  No, not everyone, there's no easily accessible video showing how to setup aquarium lights to slowly de-yellow ABS plastic -- at least I didn't find one; AI helped me find an obscure reference to it and I then read a few message boards where it was mentioned. I also use AI to take in-progress pictures as I desolder to help me check for traces that need to be repaired or help identifying specific chips. I probably could try and find a video where the same chip is featured and someone explains it, and/or retrieve the schematic for the specific logic board, but that's very painful and does slow the process. Think of AI, in this specific case, as enabling skill development for me in a field I wouldn't have necessarily have gotten into, because of being short on time and AI helps me consolidate that information quickly.
- warkdarrior 4mo ago
  Should we also go to ancient scrolls for learning, because videos are too easy? The poster showed you how they learn with the help of AI. You can learn from videos, they learn from AI. What's the problem?
jjav 4mo ago

hodder 4mo ago

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Ive crafted LLMs to create drills and practice exams etc. Im not just reading about new sport activities, or videography/photography or linear algebra or physics. I'm putting it into action. As I said above, technology is a lever. Maybe you are just reading stuff and not drilling problems. That isnt me.

Jensson 4mo ago
Not sure how good LLM are at that given they are so biased towards the user being right. You would need an LLM trained to disagree with the user to properly grade your results of those drills.
- hodder 4mo ago
  Once more, you are making massively blanketed biased assumptions about me. You seem to believe LLMs cannot even produce simple exams and rubrics is that right?
  - Jensson 4mo ago
    At most you could do multiple choice questions, or questions with a single objective answer such as "what is the capital of France". But such tests aren't very helpful to learn new things. Students cannot grade their own answers for more complex problems, they make mistakes but say they are correct since they don't understand the material, or they are correct but since it doesn't say the exact same thing as the example answer they say they are wrong and correct it even though it was already correct. And an LLM would be even worse than that at correcting tests. This is not a bias against you, its just a general thing that applies to all students and people. Nobody is good at correcting their own work, even the most esteemed professor gets his work checked by other people. And an LLM is not another person here, they aren't good enough to check your work. Note its much harder to accurately grade an answer than to answer a question.
    - meetingthrower 4mo ago
      You are so incorrect here. If you feed it an evaluation rubric it will go after it! You really understimate the technology when in good and well intentioned hands. (Yes lazy people will use it to cheat and get to the answer faster. But it is like a grad student tutor who will do an evaluation in 30 seconds! Rapid iteration and laddering up...)

hodder 4mo ago

When did I say I wasn't doing and just reading. That is your own heavy bias creeping in.

paytonjjones 4mo ago

Learning by doing is often more effective because it naturally involves forced recall. But it's not the only way to learn and not even the only way to do a lot of forced recall. It's downright crazy to say you aren't learning anything by reading. You likely won't retain that high a % of the content without repeated drilling, but it's not like nonfiction exists for no reason!

jplusequalt 4mo ago
>It's downright crazy to say you aren't learning anything by reading. You likely won't retain that high a % of the content without repeated drilling, but it's not like nonfiction exists for no reason! How much of a nonfiction book can you recall a few months after reading it? Probably very little. However, I haven't taken a calculus class in nearly a decade and I still know how to solve derivatives and integrals. Point being: there's levels to this, and reading is not nearly as effective as drilling exercises.

risyachka 4mo ago

This. Without doing you may as well read some fiction. The result is mostly the same.