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Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

I’m in grad school right now. I use chatgpt to convert first drafts into polished final drafts by asking the following questions

- is this text convincing? How can it be improved?

- rewrite the following passage for clarity. Target an audience of X level.

It’s like a more efficient version of grammarly, I don’t have any qualms with this use. Saves hours debating phrasing, and acts as a TA for getting initial feedback on whether you are missing the mark.

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If you are in graduate school, you should learn how to write. You will not always be in the luxury to have an internet connection to clarify your point to your audience.

This argument is basically the same as teacher's argument that 'You'll not always have a calculator in your pocket'. And I suspect it will age equally badly.

That argument hasn’t really aged badly though. People do still study math in school..you still need to learn arithmetic. Not because you’ll necessarily need to be able to arithmetic without a calculator, but for the cognitive skills it’s training you in

I was also terrible at arithmetic, my major was physics :shrug: I was also terrible at cursive, and prone to getting lost prior to GPS. I also never learned to carve a spear without modern power tools.

I'm either a fool who's able to get by with modern technology - or we're freeing up mental capacity to work on new ideas. ChatGPT is yet another tool, one which is demonstrating productivity improvements comparable to the launch of the internet IMO.

This has not aged badly at all, you now have people who can not quickly add numbers together, or even figure out fractions. Example:

My mom (Rhonda, 64) is the shop steward at a deli counter and had this conversation with her fellow employee Janice (25y):

Janice: "Hey Rhonda, they want 2/3 of a pound of cheese. How much is that on the scale?"

Rhonda (mom): "Janice, that's .66 on the scale."

Janice: "Yea but why is it .66 on the scale if they want two thirds?"

Rhonda: "Janice, you don't have to worry about that, just know that two thirds is .66."

Janice: "Yeah, but HOW do you know that?"

Rhonda: "..."

I'm sure someone will say "Your mom is wrong because she should teach her fractions! What a huge jerk!" Note that this person has gone through high school, and children do this math regularly. What I am saying is, being numerate is useful at all levels of life, not just academic exercise.

people should learn how to use their computer everywhere.

Sure, let me bust my phone calculator out in a deli with customers while wearing food service gloves.

The model is very easy to break down, all to learn something ONCE.

Here's the difference: You know fractions everywhere and you don't have to think about it more than 2s without your phone because you are math literate. OR Every time someone asks you something, you take 5s to pull out your phone type the numbers (hopefully correctly), and you get your decimal answer that you can hopefully interpret.

Which do you think is a better employee overall?

I have a particular axe to grind on this one, as the response "well I'll just look it up!" is so glib it throws the entire house out with the bathwater and the baby inside :).

For day to day math, needing a calculator to do the basics is like walking instead of flying. Mastery of the basics really pays off, especially for young students.

I'd argue that using language is more innate than calculating things, and that practicing it may well contribute to being able to form more coherent thoughts/ideas. After all, language seems to be one of the biggest things setting humans apart from animals.

It's funny you are trying to use this argument with me :) the value of mental math was instilled in me as a young man. When I am with family and buying things and they read out fractions or add up costs, they've developed the habit to defer to me to do mental arithmetic because taking out their phones to add things is tedious. Mental arithmetic is easier and requires no time punching in numbers.

I have never used a calculator app on a phone, ever, at least I don't remember the last time I did. The only times where I need to add up a large set of numbers, I get in front of a computer and use a python repl or a spreadsheet, but even then I "pre-stage" the calculation by doing approximations in my head, so I'm sort of ready.

Not letting your tools think for you is how you distinguish a professional from someone who can just push buttons. Don't disservice yourself by allowing yourself to never really learn to the limit of your abilities.

"because taking out their phones to add things is tedious. Mental arithmetic is easier and requires no time punching in numbers."

This is a hilariously bad take. I'm sorry how long does it take to "punch in numbers"? Is it possible to fail touch typing class on a phone?

The value in understanding mathematics is not the ability to be able to recite the quadratic formula or to be able to perform long division in your head, it's knowing when to use the formulas and understanding their applications in your daily life and work.

Yes, it is quicker... I don't know if it is because you do not have such an experience to compare with but is quicker and easier. If your hands are full of things then it does save a few seconds.

>The value in understanding mathematics is not the ability to be able to recite the quadratic formula or to be able to perform long division in your head, it's knowing when to use the formulas and understanding their applications in your daily life and work.

You can do both, really. You should be able to recite the mathematics you use in your daily work without having to look it up. I've never met a good scientist who wasn't able to.

EDIT: okay, may be one exception is for example something like tedious calculations from QFT or something, but you should be able to gesture at general parts of it, you should be able recite certain simple equations or particular approximations. If you have to refamiliarize yourself with your work every time you look at it, I do not know how you can advance in your research.

I thought the same thing, then I also realized that might be nice if people actually enjoyed writing, enjoyed the process, enjoyed getting better at it and who knows, even...used their brains a little bit more.

Even though I find ChatGPT impressive, it still doesn't write what I want to it write in the way I want it written.

The same way Dall-E, Mindjourney doesn't really draw what I want it to draw. It draws something , but I can just accept it's "good enough", but it's a different experience to creating something yourself.

ChatGPT writes something, but it's not me. While it might save me time, it's not as fun.

I think learning to enjoy the process important because honestly, that is all there is to life.

That is what I consider part of the process. You learn to write because it is a requisite skill and part of your craft, but eventually, as a professional, it becomes part of what you use to distinguish yourself. It is a part of your professional persona, in the same way writing in creative senses (blogs, novels, etc) is.

It's one thing to automate dry responses (email bots have been doing it for decades now) but automating writing in your career work leaves little left of your career, and further, it dilutes what you add in value to everyone else you work with.

Wow, props on getting that username!

Sounds like they're just using it to touch up an existing draft. They've come up with the fundamental ideas and to me the writing is merely ornamentation and window dressing.

I used to be an ESL instructor in another life and as I've always said to my students, "it doesn't matter how many languages you know if you've got nothing to say."

aye - I learned that lesson the hard way many years ago. As with all things ChatGPT - it does better with an expert user. Prior to ChatGPT I learned how to write well both for my job, and then for grad school. ChatGPT is just a time saver.

LOL, anywhere on the planet where you would actually need to clarify a point to an audience, you'll have an Internet connection.

Do you honestly think you'll get into a philosophical debate so incredibly challenging that you'd need to fall back upon ChatGPT to argue on your behalf in the middle of say, the Australian bush??

And even if you did, RV Starlink is there to save the day.

ChatGPT doesn't "do work for you". ChatGPT is like having a subject matter expert by your side to guide you. And like every single person who has access to a subject matter expert, you're going to take away whatever you want, and leave whatever you don't. Lazy shitbags will be lazy shitbags with or without ChatGPT. But inquisitive people who want to soar with the eagles have an impossibly powerful tool at their disposal.

Your committee will be real impressed if you whip out a phone during your oral examination and ask to talk to ChatGPT first.

Then they will argue that the examination method is outdated

Oral or dissertation defense is a high stakes version of things you tend to do a lot: giving talks, teaching, etc.

Until your phone dies. The point is some skills you either have, or you don't.

It sounds to me that they are learning how to write, ChatGPT is the tool that they are using to do so.

I think they know how to write if they're in graduate school.

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