Pulling the thread of thoughts
Preserving my own human thoughts with language models.
A friend shared this video podcast (in mandarin) to me the other day about how to learn. His opinion is that learning is about experiencing discomfort - doing something that ergonomically feels awkward until your brain starts to get accustom to it. And the method to discomfort is different based on your goals.
He pointed out writing is one of the best path to critical thinking.
It externalises silhouette of thoughts that exist only inside your head as you groom through the logical flow from one concept to another concept. The process of externalising and editing drafts allows us to iterate and discover new mental connections. It also serves as a great tool for us to notice gaps in understanding when we are stuck or notice incoherence in our flow of ideas.
There is something very enlightening about writing.
But as we move into a world of language models who elevate a lot of this friction from people what may this mean?
The clutch of a ghostwriter
I start off writing every substack article with talking to Claude and the early two to three articles are all written by Claude where I ask him to make an artefact that summarises the essence of our conversations. I would proof read it, make some adjustments and publish it.
Mostly I fulfil the role at the beginning coming with the idea and at the end as the editor.
And a few times people who are close to me read those articles, they would mention oh the content makes sense but it just doesn’t feel quite like you. It may be a bit vain to also want to make the things I make have my personal touch, I reverted back to mostly using Claude for discussions and thought partnership rather than my ghostwriter.
It is definitely more effort.
Having to string together the sentences, pick the right words and worry about how entertaining I am. At the same time, the joy is that I get to make those decisions and those decisions reflect my tendencies that is not “flattened” by a model (tbh Claude is already way more pleasurable than ChatGPT). I have to force myself to come up with the cognitive structure to scaffold my thoughts.
It also makes me think when the civilisation is flooded with AI produced records how will knowledge and opinion be accumulated over generations. Rather than individuals deeply think through writing, we may communicate idea through these language model’s compression where by the style of delivery and the distinct decisions on how to present the flow of an idea be homogenous to the point where it compresses the range of reactions we might get from our audience. It would be a sad moment in our history to lose the distinct voices and unique ways to express ideas.
Also begs the question of how will language itself evolve - making us monoculture and everything sounds polish but just almost the same.
Finding a partner that compliments you
This may be a topic that very little people point to when we are discussing about the concerns of AI on our civilisations. Many conversations circle around job replacement and economic implications - which is completely valid.
And I think this particular opinion about writing is just a slice of the broader conversation about the role of AI in how we work. Many people and especially companies see AI as a method to replace labour (for obvious cost reasons), but in reality if AI is used to do 90% of what it’s good at more on the routine, repetitive tasks as leverage and use humans as the crucial comparative advantage of critical judgement and creativity - it helps to preserve human agency.
If you are curious to read more on this, a recent paper by Economist Erik Brynjolfsson might be a fun starting point.
And I think this leverage is even more pronounce in fields that require that human tastes to understand what resonates with humans - like the fields of art, entertainment and care.
The most value I get out of the language models isn’t how it summarises the topics we discuss. Rather, through the exercise to talking to it allows me expand the way I think about the topics, look into nooks and crannies that I didn’t pay attention to. It gives me a wider palette to present to you how my ideas string together.
But when it comes to being focused and converge into my own point of view, there is still something special about picking and choosing what I wanna to share with you.