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To err is human. Higher level thinking has fewer constraints on being wrong than lower level subconscious thinking. Low level stuff tends to have some repetiti

by pixl97 6d ago

To err is human. Higher level thinking has fewer constraints on being wrong than lower level subconscious thinking. Low level stuff tends to have some repetitive and evolutionary basis. Higher level thought tends to be more one off, less evidence based, and more exploratory until we get to the point of being an expert around particular concepts. A huge amount of human thinking is being a parrot and repeating statements without a deeper understanding. For example when I say 1+1=2 I'm not thinking about it. If I say 638483+949948= calculation is necessary. So in this, your voice has always been one of a somewhat faulty narrator, LLMs just may be further degrading the quality of the narration.

mpalmer 6d ago
Left, right, higher, lower, male, female. People love to explain the brain by dividing it in half, or into poles. Nothing more human than to label, simplify and categorize, even in the absence of higher quality information.
pclowes 6d ago
Lets say you have a colleague named Bob. Bob is a pretty good engineer, but he is as confident when he doesn’t know as when he knows. You can never tell his degree of confidence in his answer. For low-level things he is pretty good but for critical high-level things it is more ambiguous. You work around this by checking Bob’s work. Having formal verification steps to check what he says. Now let’s say you meet Bob’s twin brother Bill. Who talks and sounds just like Bob. He makes fairly grand high-level statements that you can neither test nor verify. How much do you intuitively distrust him?
- brabel 5d ago
  Bob also knows how to quickly check things with a little bash scripting and tests. Can quickly switch branches to confirm regressions and consult documentation if something requires more information. His twin can also quickly scan for all the common security vulnerabilities in any code, and will do it without complaining as many times as you want him to. I’ve come to trust Bob with code more than any human.

by pixl97 6d ago

mpalmer 6d ago

Left, right, higher, lower, male, female. People love to explain the brain by dividing it in half, or into poles. Nothing more human than to label, simplify and categorize, even in the absence of higher quality information.

pclowes 6d ago

Lets say you have a colleague named Bob. Bob is a pretty good engineer, but he is as confident when he doesn’t know as when he knows. You can never tell his degree of confidence in his answer. For low-level things he is pretty good but for critical high-level things it is more ambiguous. You work around this by checking Bob’s work. Having formal verification steps to check what he says. Now let’s say you meet Bob’s twin brother Bill. Who talks and sounds just like Bob. He makes fairly grand high-level statements that you can neither test nor verify. How much do you intuitively distrust him?

brabel 5d ago
Bob also knows how to quickly check things with a little bash scripting and tests. Can quickly switch branches to confirm regressions and consult documentation if something requires more information. His twin can also quickly scan for all the common security vulnerabilities in any code, and will do it without complaining as many times as you want him to. I’ve come to trust Bob with code more than any human.