3 ms·

The question presumes that most of us are "thinking" in the first place, when in actuality, most of us are just acting according to the patterns that have emerg

by dentm42 3mo ago

The question presumes that most of us are "thinking" in the first place, when in actuality, most of us are just acting according to the patterns that have emerged from our encounters with the thoughts of others. We generally adopt them and/or try to hallucinate coherence when they conflict. Very few people actually "think". It's hard work and takes time. We neither have (take) the time nor are we particularly motivated to put in the work because the patterns we have learned from others are useful enough to achieve the low goals we set for ourselves. IOW - modern AI is simply an extension of the lack of thinking that characterizes the modern life... It just does it faster and uses a hulluva lot more energy.

vasco 3mo ago
Everyone is always thinking, just many of us not about what we're doing! Sorry
abirch 3mo ago
Have you ever read Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake? I think it's very applicable to the average human experience.
plaidthunder 3mo ago
> the modern life I don't think modernity caused any sort of degradation. You said it yourself, "thinking is hard work". It's rational to save energy. This might even have incentivized the emergence of mimesis in humans, which is arguably the foundation of our ability to cooperate at large scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimesis Maybe a few of us do the hard work of thinking, and, if we figure out something novel and useful, huge numbers of people ape us uncritically. It's not an inspiring picture of humanity, but it's also not a reason to disparage anyone. More of a fact of life to be dealt with strategically.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
jdw64 3mo ago
I agree with many points. Even on Hacker News, when you see debates like 'X technology is good' or 'X technology is bad,' most of it seems to be about identity. And that identity often originates from the community they belong to. The first identity usually starts with a community or the person who created it. Once the community forms, people under it often forget the original reasons and just accept it as their identity. This is especially true for technology related issues, because the market share of a technology is directly tied to one's career, which makes it even more prone to becoming an identity issue. I also do some 'thinking' in certain areas, but most of the time I don't. As my field gets deeper, it becomes harder to allocate cognitive resources to other areas. So in general, most people follow the crowd's opinion, but only maintain deep, thoughtful thinking, including 'taste,' in a few specific technical domains.
- redwood 3mo ago
  Re identity, relevant post from today in case you missed it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907290
  - jdw64 3mo ago
    Thank you for the human algorithm. But I read the article at the link you sent, and there are points where our thoughts differ significantly. However, since the context of my criticism here on Hacker News would be high-cost criticism (I'm an East Asian man, not the mainstream white Western male here), I find it difficult to comment there. I'm basically filtering myself to some degree, even if others don't see it that way. In other words, when I write, I only do so at points where I think I can sufficiently withstand the criticism at low cost from my perspective. What I wanted to say in this post was essentially that I only do deep 'thinking' in a very narrow set of domains. For the rest, I outsource my thinking to the identity of the community I belong to. Thank you for your kind comment, Redwood. However, commenting on that post would require deep engagement with others, and I'm a bit hesitant to do that.
    - redwood 3mo ago
dominotw 3mo ago
if we were really thinking then llm wouldn't have been able to compress all knoweldge into few gbs. everyone is just thinking about how to recall, remix and repeat.
boothby 3mo ago
This is such a strange perspective to me. I wouldn't describe anybody I know in this way. Do you not engage in thoughtful conversation with the people you meet? Do you not know people who make art as a hobby? When techies propound such a dim view of humanity, I truly fear for our species. Nobody will shed a tear when your bodily resources are reallocated to paperclip production.
- ryandvm 3mo ago
  Man, I appreciate your optimism, but I don't know how you can spend even 5 minutes on Facebook looking at the absolutely bonkers shit one's own relatives and neighbors post and still come away thinking that most people are "thoughtful". Are humans capable of profound creativity? Of course. Are they actually doing it? No, not very often.
  - boothby 3mo ago
    I do not spend even 5 minutes on facebook. Aside from a comment or two per day on HN, the only human interactions I have on the internet are with coworkers, a of whom I regularly see in person. If you find yourself consuming more than 5 minutes of content you don't find thoughtful per day, I would ask why. "Touch grass" seems to be the common advice to combat this.
    - ryandvm 3mo ago
      Okay, and you're not wrong, but it sounds like you're filtering out most of the shit that humanity is producing and then lecturing folks that say LLMs are smarter than most people. It's kind of like you hang out in a Buddhist monastery saying, "I don't know what you guys are talking about - people are so peace-loving!"
      - boothby 3mo ago
        No, I'm interacting with people in person. I'd debate your claim that "most of the shit that humanity is producing" is internet-mediated, but your choice of noun renders that rather moot. Stop ingesting shit. There's a whole world out there.
latexr 3mo ago
> and/or try to hallucinate coherence It’s bad enough for rational reasoned discourse that we anthropomorphise LLMs, let’s please not then feed those words back into human discourse, further diluting their meaning. No one “hallucinates coherence”, hallucinations are by definition a perception which does not match reality. > AI is simply an extension of It may be an extension, but not “simply” as it also creates the problem where it didn’t exist. I’ve seen several reports (both on and offline) of people who used to engage in deep thinking (I’m talking scientists, postgrads, PhDs working at the edge of what we know) now worrying they are losing their ability to properly think due to their LLM use. > It just does it faster and uses a hulluva lot more energy. I hope we can agree that’s bad and that we should try to stop and even reverse it, not simply shrug our shoulders and go “ah well, we were already going to shit anyway, might as well fuck everything up faster”.
- drdaeman 3mo ago
  > No one “hallucinates coherence”, hallucinations are by definition a perception which does not match reality. I don’t know how to put it well, but… Have you ever had a moment where you realized your perception of something was off and things weren’t as you thought they were? Have you seen people dead sure of something you were positive as nonsense? I have, ranging from simple small isolated situations to whole worldviews. I have personally held mental models that were broken, but felt consistent and true. I still sure do, just don’t know (hopefully, yet) how they’re mismatching the reality this time. Call it “delusion” or “hallucination” or “misunderstanding” or something else - it’s still a thing and it happens in language-capable humans and machines alike.
mycocola 3mo ago
> Very few people actually "think". Unknowable. And a callous notion.

by dentm42 3mo ago

vasco 3mo ago

Everyone is always thinking, just many of us not about what we're doing! Sorry

abirch 3mo ago

Have you ever read Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake? I think it's very applicable to the average human experience.

plaidthunder 3mo ago

> the modern life I don't think modernity caused any sort of degradation. You said it yourself, "thinking is hard work". It's rational to save energy. This might even have incentivized the emergence of mimesis in humans, which is arguably the foundation of our ability to cooperate at large scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimesis Maybe a few of us do the hard work of thinking, and, if we figure out something novel and useful, huge numbers of people ape us uncritically. It's not an inspiring picture of humanity, but it's also not a reason to disparage anyone. More of a fact of life to be dealt with strategically.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

jdw64 3mo ago

I agree with many points. Even on Hacker News, when you see debates like 'X technology is good' or 'X technology is bad,' most of it seems to be about identity. And that identity often originates from the community they belong to. The first identity usually starts with a community or the person who created it. Once the community forms, people under it often forget the original reasons and just accept it as their identity. This is especially true for technology related issues, because the market share of a technology is directly tied to one's career, which makes it even more prone to becoming an identity issue. I also do some 'thinking' in certain areas, but most of the time I don't. As my field gets deeper, it becomes harder to allocate cognitive resources to other areas. So in general, most people follow the crowd's opinion, but only maintain deep, thoughtful thinking, including 'taste,' in a few specific technical domains.

redwood 3mo ago
Re identity, relevant post from today in case you missed it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907290
- jdw64 3mo ago
  Thank you for the human algorithm. But I read the article at the link you sent, and there are points where our thoughts differ significantly. However, since the context of my criticism here on Hacker News would be high-cost criticism (I'm an East Asian man, not the mainstream white Western male here), I find it difficult to comment there. I'm basically filtering myself to some degree, even if others don't see it that way. In other words, when I write, I only do so at points where I think I can sufficiently withstand the criticism at low cost from my perspective. What I wanted to say in this post was essentially that I only do deep 'thinking' in a very narrow set of domains. For the rest, I outsource my thinking to the identity of the community I belong to. Thank you for your kind comment, Redwood. However, commenting on that post would require deep engagement with others, and I'm a bit hesitant to do that.
  - redwood 3mo ago

dominotw 3mo ago

if we were really thinking then llm wouldn't have been able to compress all knoweldge into few gbs. everyone is just thinking about how to recall, remix and repeat.

boothby 3mo ago

This is such a strange perspective to me. I wouldn't describe anybody I know in this way. Do you not engage in thoughtful conversation with the people you meet? Do you not know people who make art as a hobby? When techies propound such a dim view of humanity, I truly fear for our species. Nobody will shed a tear when your bodily resources are reallocated to paperclip production.

ryandvm 3mo ago
Man, I appreciate your optimism, but I don't know how you can spend even 5 minutes on Facebook looking at the absolutely bonkers shit one's own relatives and neighbors post and still come away thinking that most people are "thoughtful". Are humans capable of profound creativity? Of course. Are they actually doing it? No, not very often.
- boothby 3mo ago
  I do not spend even 5 minutes on facebook. Aside from a comment or two per day on HN, the only human interactions I have on the internet are with coworkers, a of whom I regularly see in person. If you find yourself consuming more than 5 minutes of content you don't find thoughtful per day, I would ask why. "Touch grass" seems to be the common advice to combat this.
  - ryandvm 3mo ago
    Okay, and you're not wrong, but it sounds like you're filtering out most of the shit that humanity is producing and then lecturing folks that say LLMs are smarter than most people. It's kind of like you hang out in a Buddhist monastery saying, "I don't know what you guys are talking about - people are so peace-loving!"
    - boothby 3mo ago
      No, I'm interacting with people in person. I'd debate your claim that "most of the shit that humanity is producing" is internet-mediated, but your choice of noun renders that rather moot. Stop ingesting shit. There's a whole world out there.

latexr 3mo ago

> and/or try to hallucinate coherence It’s bad enough for rational reasoned discourse that we anthropomorphise LLMs, let’s please not then feed those words back into human discourse, further diluting their meaning. No one “hallucinates coherence”, hallucinations are by definition a perception which does not match reality. > AI is simply an extension of It may be an extension, but not “simply” as it also creates the problem where it didn’t exist. I’ve seen several reports (both on and offline) of people who used to engage in deep thinking (I’m talking scientists, postgrads, PhDs working at the edge of what we know) now worrying they are losing their ability to properly think due to their LLM use. > It just does it faster and uses a hulluva lot more energy. I hope we can agree that’s bad and that we should try to stop and even reverse it, not simply shrug our shoulders and go “ah well, we were already going to shit anyway, might as well fuck everything up faster”.

drdaeman 3mo ago
> No one “hallucinates coherence”, hallucinations are by definition a perception which does not match reality. I don’t know how to put it well, but… Have you ever had a moment where you realized your perception of something was off and things weren’t as you thought they were? Have you seen people dead sure of something you were positive as nonsense? I have, ranging from simple small isolated situations to whole worldviews. I have personally held mental models that were broken, but felt consistent and true. I still sure do, just don’t know (hopefully, yet) how they’re mismatching the reality this time. Call it “delusion” or “hallucination” or “misunderstanding” or something else - it’s still a thing and it happens in language-capable humans and machines alike.

mycocola 3mo ago

> Very few people actually "think". Unknowable. And a callous notion.