“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”—Leslie Lamport
Declan Molony
Karma: 1,717
And now you can!
For me it comes down to temptation. It’s so easy to ask an LLM to check my grammar. But then maybe also check my wording for specific paragraphs, and word choice, and checking my ideas for an essay… Until eventually I’m exporting some of my thinking to it which is making me a lazier writer.
A human editor simply doesn’t have the time to rewrite everything for me. And humans aren’t instantly available all the time like LLMs.
If you have the self-control to draw a clear line in the sand for LLM use and abide to it, more power to you. For me, however, LLMs are too tempting and I know that if I allowed an inch that I would take a mile.
The reason you should not solve other people’s problems for them is not because they don’t want your advice.
^Exactly. The main reason I wrote this post was to avoid didactic behavior (ie: lecturing or teaching others too much) and what to replace it with (ie: curious & nonjudgmental questioning).
That’s kind of what I was going for when I said that simple questions (of skill) should be met with prescriptive answers. Whereas more complicated questions (like: what should I major in college?) is not as straightforward.
The wise will know which skills afford which approach.
^That’s a good way of putting it.
On AI-use in writing
Upon telling a new friend that I write blog posts, he asked me if I ever use LLMs to assist my writing.
I answered, “No, I don’t use it for any part of my writing process whatsoever.”
“But why not? Wouldn’t it make tedious things like checking for grammar a lot easier?”
“Why would I want that to be any easier? The reason I write is to challenge my brain to think more clearly. Even with grammar, were I to delegate that task to AI, I’m effectively saying, ‘I no longer need to think about grammar or care about having my ideas flow smoothly.’ But that’s the whole point of writing: to polish something over and over and over until it reads like smooth butter.”
In my post called “Will LLMs supplant the field of creative writing?”, I wrote the following (which is, in my opinion, one of the coolest things my wet brain has ever come up with):
I wonder if we’ll look back on the people (like me) who solely use their biological brains to produce writing and view them as luddites compared to everyone else using LLMs. Am I basically a grumpy old scribe complaining about the newfangled Gutenberg Press? Or will my steadfast refusal to let go of a fading art form be seen as the death throes of a generation that’s more than happy to slide into the warm comfort of brain rot.
maybe for so invasive a thought you actually need to discard it or not-argue-with-it
^For OCD, this is true. I was reading an example of a guy in Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior (by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD with Beverly Beyette) who repeatedly had the intrusive thoughts for years and years that his fingertips had razorblades in them. So he compulsively avoided touching anyone, even his wife. That kind of thought doesn’t need to be debated, especially when you’ve been having it for years on end. Once he identified it as a manifestation of his OCD, he was able to relabel the thought as intrusive and stopped engaging with it. His symptoms then improved.
it may very well be that OCD is radically different, and this doesn’t work at all for it
^I think this is a case of the Typical Mind Fallacy: “The typical mind fallacy is the mistake of modeling the minds inside other people’s brains as exactly the same as your own mind. Humans lack insight into their own minds and what is common among everyone or unusually specific to a few. It can be often hard to see the flaws in the lens, especially when we only have one lens to look through with which to see those flaws.”
I think extrapolating from my post to think about general anxiety is potentially interesting, but that’s not why I made the post. The post’s target demographic is not for people with general anxiety, it’s for specifically helping people with OCD.
A meta-awareness of metacognition itself: that affected me when I first began labeling my thoughts. I would wonder if a particular thought was disordered. But eventually, like the Pilates OCD therapist mentioned:
if you’re spending time wondering if a specific thought is OCD related, it probably is. I have found that to be true every time.
If someone with OCD was monitoring their thoughts and it gave them anxiety, then I would suggest non-judgmentally watching their thoughts. Dr. Bruce Tift’s book Already Free has some good suggestions for that.
Updated the links, thanks. Short version.
My mind’s default state is to ruminate all day long if I let it. For most people, short-term rumination (even if it’s all day long) isn’t all that bad. But if you’re beating yourself up for days, weeks, or years, then it certainly qualifies as a problem worth addressing.
I’ll DM you on the side.
Reading this with Mozart’s Requiem playing elevates this post to a whole nother level:
Thanks for bringing this up! I just added this line to the post to make things clearer for others:
Or if you’re unsure exactly what you believe, I’d recommend just writing down everything you do with respect to the problem. That’ll reveal what you believe about it.
If “beliefs” seem too opaque or undefined, I’d recommend just writing down everything you do with respect to the problem.
The simping was a clear example of that in my opinion—the nerd kept doing the same thing over and over; that was his entire interaction with the cheerleader. If he can recognize his behavioral pattern by observing what he consistently says/does, that gives him the opportunity to try something else.
or any number of other ineffable signs subtler than an em dash.
I just started using em dashes (at the recommendation of my older brother) in my writing circa 2022 before I even knew about LLMs. I like using them—I’m not giving them up!
I thought about your comment for a few days, especially the line “You are fighting ghosts.”
That’s probably more true for prisoners than most. To be locked in a cell for the rest of your life, wondering, ruminating, if things could have been different...
How lucky the rest of us are to merely ruminate over a lost love, or from upsetting a friend.
For prisoners, their mistake was serious. It’s not just in their heads. They’re haunted.
The book ‘Death with Interruptions’ is a 2005 speculative fiction novel written by Portuguese author José Saramago.
Because of this post, I checked out ‘Death with Interruptions’ from the library and read it this month. Wow, a really good read—thanks!
“All cats are equal, but some cats are more equal than others.”—George Pawwell, Animal Farm
“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”—Leslie Lamport
“I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want catnip.”—Aldous Clawxley, Brave New World
I am the ultimate rationalist! My willingness to sacrifice for someone follows a perfect distribution along kinship genetic similarity:
Siblings: share 50% of their genes, so I’d be willing to take a 50% chance of dying if it meant their genes could potentially live on and reproduce
First cousins: share 12.5% of their genes, so I’d be willing to take a 12.5% chance of dying
So what about for a random friend? If they could just take a quick DNA test, then our genetic relatedness would determine my willingness to sacrifice for them.
Supposing that I die while saving them, I would want a guarantee that they propagate their genes in proportion to our genetic similarity:
Siblings: I would want them to have at least 2 kids
First cousins: I would want them to have at least 8 kids
Random friend with 1% genetic similarity: That’s right! 100 kids please! 😉
I keep spellcheck turned on. I don’t think it significantly influences the way I write.
I suppose, from a grammar perspective, spellcheck is the equivalent of using the bumpers while bowling—using them won’t allow for any gutter balls (ie: egregious spelling errors), but they won’t teach you how to be good at the game (ie: write a coherent essay).
The AI tool Grammarly “goes beyond basic spellcheck to improve grammar, punctuation, clarity, tone, and conciseness.” This would be like having bumpers turned on for bowling, and also having a slight auto-tracking feature inside of the bowling ball that curves the ball once thrown to promote strikes. Are you even bowling at that point? Or is the machine doing most of the work?