“Let me just use a glorified autocomplete instead of learning a subject domain or craft” seems like the opposite of hacker spirit and curiosity.

"Let's learn this new modern tool and how I can utilise it to fulfill my goals, while avoiding its shortcomings and flaws" sounds like the epitome of hacker spirit and curiosity. "Let's discredit this new technology as glorified autocomplete, and pretend it doesn't exist" is the opposite.

If it implies not having to learn anything new (or learning as little as possible) in order to get a result fast, then the correct term is “script-kiddie spirit” not “hacker spirit”.

Do you feel the same about using search engines to learn literally anything? What about youtube learning channels? What about the documentation? You know, hackers from the past could write amazing things in assembly using only an outdated book on a somewhat related subject (if any at all). We have invented internet to share knowledge as quickly as possible. ChatGPT is the next step.

What does a true Scotsman, sorry, hacker have to do? Go to a remote place and rediscover the entire human knowledge for 20 years?

The key word is “learn”!

I would love to understand this better.

Why do you think it is anti-curiosity to use LLMs?

The original commenter did not say they used it for producing content, so and auto complete is not really precise, is it?

You could say that it is an advanced, stochastic knowledge-retrieval system. Does the workings of such merit your curiosity? Does the workings of compression algorithms merit your curiosity?

Or are you merely and ignorant person already left behind due to your own inability to be curious?

>Why do you think it is anti-curiosity to use LLMs?

"Don't need to study and trial/error to learn about business, I can get business advice in a box".

It's Stack Overflow copy-pasting MkII.

This reads like a comment from a person who has not tried to integrate LLMs into various workflows.

Have you tried making and LLM draft a study plan for you? Kickstarting learning of a new area?

Have you tried making an LLM correct your "homework" for your studies? When you try to learn a new language?

Curiosity is about not being categorical - "It's Stack Overflow copy-pasting MkII." is extremely categorical and thus, anti-curiosity.

>This reads like a comment from a person who has not tried to integrate LLMs into various workflows

This reads like a comment from a person who makes the discussion about the other person.

>Curiosity is about not being categorical - "It's Stack Overflow copy-pasting MkII." is extremely categorical and thus, anti-curiosity.

You could say the exact same thing about someone criticizing regular Stack Overflow copy-pasting as lacking curiocity and hacking spirit. "Oh, that critique is so extremely categorical".

Sorry, "that's categorical" is not the trump card you think it is.

The root for this is a comment that urges to boycott some persons startup because they express that they were thankful for the advice they get from LLMs (a PhD in physics, that is).

Yes, I find that commentary extremely inappropriate. And yes, I am defending my stance in the sub-threads.

But tell me: you say that my critique of a reductionist categorical view on the use of LLMs (it is merely stack overflow...) is catagorical itself? Can you please elaborate on that.

>The root for this is a comment that urges to boycott some persons startup because

I didn't write it so don't care about the "root for this".

I quoted what I was commenting upon: "Why do you think it is anti-curiosity to use LLMs?".

>Yes, I find that commentary extremely inappropriate.

Feel free to do so. Has nothing to do with my comments and it's not a responce to my arguments. It's sidelining them and trying to appeal to outrage and emotion by getting back to what a different person said.

You do enter into a context when you decide responding within a thread - let's see if we can forget this.

Your sentiment is that this is stack overflow c/p style business development. I understand this as: You receive instructions from a third party entity and carry them out verbatim. An because that to use a LLM that is anti-curiosity.

Let's delve into that, shall we?

1. Following instructions verbatim is as old as instructions. You could apply the same sentiment to mentorship, books, and well, Q/A systems. Just to inspire some reflection: Do you think good chefs ever use recipes or is that only bad chefs? It is quite well established that following instructions is key to learning.

2. You say that it is equivalent to follow instructions from an LLM to following instructions from SO - I think this misses a key feature of LLMs: The ability to index them. You can tell them they are care about business development in a narrow sense, to what it is index all future responses. This is realtime interactive and does probe behavior like changing what you index your instructions for, which indeed is the core of curiosity.

Based on this I hold on to my previous statement as a response yo your comment:

> Curiosity is about not being categorical - "It's Stack Overflow copy-pasting MkII." is extremely categorical and thus, anti-curiosity.

I do find that your line of thought is narrow and dismissed the elements to be curious about regarding LLMs.

>You do enter into a context when you decide responding within a thread - let's see if we can forget this.

Oh, please

In my comment I objected to “hacker spirit” and “curiosity” being misappropriated to mean what they don’t (in a way, something opposite); if I wanted to support the call for boycott, I would have written so.

Treating a comment here as endorsing or refuting the entire thread leading up to it is not going to help a nuanced discussion.

It sounded like the author is not trying to learn, say, how to run a business, but instead just proxies output of an unthinking tool. After the former, you come out with new knowledge and skill. After the latter, you come out none the wiser.

> Does the workings of such merit your curiosity?

Not really, if the workings of such are well-understood (like in case of LLMs).

> Or are you merely and ignorant person already left behind

You think you are mounting a personal attack that would make me feel humiliated, but you need to check who would be ignorant after what I outlined in the beginning of my comment.

> ... but instead just proxies output of an unthinking tool. After the former, you come out with new knowledge and skill. After the latter, you come out none the wiser.

This reads like "bla bla bla" without any support. Let's try to dissect what you are saying

1. You are saying that LLMs are "unthinking tools" what is that? It does appear to be a made up word. What does it mean?

2. You set up a dichotomy between using this "unthinking tool" and running a business. Can you please point me to the passage where the commenter is saying that they are only doing one or the other, and not both?

3. You say that you become non the wiser by using this "unthinking tool". Would you extend that to all similar activities? Such as reading a book, reason blog articles, receiving lectures etc?

> but you need to check who would be ignorant after what I outlined in the beginning of my comment.

After you establishing false dichotomies and using non-existing words? You demonstrate neither being able to reason or use knowledge. The hallucinations from an LLM is strictly more useful that the hallucinations from you - At least they can be corrected.

HN has plenty of bad takes, and this is up there with the worst. OP is obviously learning from the LLM. What is with this knee-jerk reflex to complain about AI regardless of whether your complaint makes any sense?

It sounds like OP consults an LLM on each next step. “Apply pressure and move the brush to the right” is not how you learn to draw, “press the 44th key counting from the left” is not how you learn to play piano. Not to say LLM can’t be used to learn things, like any tool, with its own strengths and weaknesses.

There’s a proverb (I can’t remember where I read it now) that goes something like, “what comes in through the front gate isn’t the family jewels.” Seems appropriate here. There are no short cuts to building insight and and intuition.

Indeed, but a bigger gates takes more effecient machinary for the jewel production in the back.

You could use the same proverb to dismiss the effects of Gutenbergs printing press.

And also, now when you respond again: can you elaborate on why you feel it is necessary to urge people to boycott a startup, because they use a technique that you currently are not familiar with? I see that you have earned your PhD and I would not expect this kind of behavior from a person who has credentials like you.

I’ve dabbled with using LLMs, but in my experience they’re not even as good as using an annotated bibliography to help guide your study of a new domain. A bibliography, even a mediocre one, will give you an entry point into a literature, which can greatly speed up your exploration of the space. You still have to put in the work to synthesize and understand the literature and how it applies to your problem. Until LLMs can stop fabricating sources and concepts, they are not even as useful to research as an annotated bibliography. I suppose if no such bibliography exists, an LLM is better than nothing, but it must be used with extreme caution, and I’m not really sure how much time they would save than simply spending a week or two working through the literature for a domain using library search engines.

That's cool, seems like you have something that works well for you. Something which is also based on several hundreds of years of refinement.

And yet you are still extremely dismissive and rude around people investigating methods where foundational work is roughly 40 years old.

Humbleness and perspective can nobody blame on you, though - maybe an llm could help you on that?