j4yav

God help me, my manager (product director) has taken this approach for product strategy docs. Everything has become very stupid and extremely shallow. It’s easier than ever to coast, but man.. that’s not really what I wanted.

Oh, haha, sure.

Like random bird facts though?

I always thought insurance claims were more complex, some things may be wholly or partially covered on a line by line basis, and there should be justification provided. In certain cases they go to mediation or even court. It doesn’t seem binary to me but maybe it works differently where you are.

She's got some real "Founder Mode" energy

What’s binary choice we are discussing here and what’s the opposite that you’d do? Approve every claim that was denied by the AI, and vice versa? Or what’s the binary choice related to stock prices you’re referring to?

Sure, you can be much more productive writing essays for example if you have AI write them. Homework of course is much faster and easier if ChatGPT does it for you. All of these things were possible even pre-AI by paying someone else to do things for you (though in some cases it would be considered cheating, but if we set that aside). You’ll definitely blow anyone out of the water who studies or writes for themselves. I also totally get that the productivity gains are so attractive you don’t mind not learning some or all of it. But we are talking about knowing and learning things. Or at least that’s what I thought the thread was about.

I just mean that I’ve been able to casually look things up once in a moment of curiosity on the internet since the 90s. This did not lead to memorising all those interesting facts, much less understanding them, and I’m not sure what the mechanism is that would lead to that sort of knowledge acquisition. If anything I’ve probably learned less because I know I can just look something up I’d have otherwise needed to learn. And in any case, actually learning hasn’t resulted in a collection of random otherwise unrelated facts I can remember, but understanding systems and relationships.

The knowledge I have learned has indeed come from what might arguably be described as, maybe not as painstaking, but certainly something with intention and effort.

To me it sounds like you’re describing learning to write by having ChatGPT write essays for you. You don’t actually know how to identify birds, you know how to ask your phone to do it for you. Though I can understand the illusion this may cause you to feel. I get the same when I watch high level chess players play, and then am reminded what I can actually do my next game.

Being able to look something up real quick isn’t the same as knowing something, is it, especially in the specific absence of some reinforcement mechanism to retain it?

I can easily build you a system that will guess the price of a stock tomorrow wrong at least 90% of the time. Even 100% wrong if you'd like. How would you use that to make fewer errors in some other system?

I didn’t realize until now that the “me, an intellectual:” meme format was parodying something that some people did earnestly.

That's more or less exactly what someone who wants to openly get away with it would tell you.

That's true, and it's also one of those factoids that everybody already knows but certain people can't help themselves from bringing up every time it's even tenuously relevant.