Learning

In a discussion about LLMs and their impact on learning, gchamonlive writes on Hackernews: We can finally just take a photo of a textbook problem that has no answer reference and no discussion about it and prompt an LLM to help us understand what’s missing in our understanding of the problem, if our solution is plausible and how we could verify it. LLM changed nothing though. It’s just boosting people’s intention. If your intention is to learn, you are in luck! It’s never been easier to teach yourself some skill for free. But if you just want to be a poser and fake it until you make it, you are gonna be brainrot waaaay faster than usual. ...

This post from Dan is one of the best reads in the past few months for me. He openly talks about instances that he might look like a stupid person, and how it’s benefiting him. I highly recommend reading the full blog post . … I frequently ask questions when there’s something I don’t understand or know, from basic stuff, “what does [some word] mean?” to more subtle stuff. On the flip side, one of the most common failure modes I see with junior engineers is when someone will be too afraid to look stupid to ask questions and then learn very slowly as a result; in some cases, this is so severe it results in them being put on a PIP and then getting fired. ...

Herbert Lui writes about his experience getting writing feedback from editors: My editors were giving me comments and suggestions on all of these posts, but I noticed a tension: as I accepted these changes and resolved comments, they would effectively disappear into a basement-equivalent dropdown menu, never to see the light of day again. I would lose the majority of the feedback that I received. But it’s difficult to learn from your mistakes if you don’t reflect on them. He then starts logging the feedbacks he receives: ...