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It gets you closer to the frontier, faster, which I think is a good thing. You still won't have deep understanding without practice and constant engagement, though. Just my opinion.
Agree with this. LLMs are something akin to highly personalized interactive Wikipedia. It can get you 80% up-to-speed on a topic quickly but mastery takes lots of time.
However there is a feedback loop involved: that is, the LLM gets you "off zero" which sets you on the road to master a subject.
Case in point, over the last 3 months I've designed my first PCB with Kicad. I did this literally by pasting back and forth screenshots into perplexity asking complete newbie questions like "is this correct way to place pull up resistors for I2C here..."
I AM NOT a master by any stretch of imagination, but without LLMs its doubtful I would've even attempted it as the entire learning curve both of learning new software + electronic design was all just a road too far for me to see any benefit from. LLMs close that gap....
Is there a labor theory of value when it comes to understanding things? ie. the things we have to work harder for are things we understand better.
yes! or things that we come to truly appreciate
Do you think using llms can shift into using a crutch of sorts? I notice that for technical topics that I used to have to spend maybe a day or two researching and trying to figure out, now I can do a little back and forth with an llm and get myself pretty close to a workable understanding...but I worry I miss the deeper understanding that I used to have to "earn."
Is there a labor theory of value when it comes to understanding things? ie. the things we have to work harder for are things we understand better. Or, maybe you can't really get to a deep understanding of something with out actually struggling and working for it.