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Comment by orzig | Hacker News Reader

I have been wondering about this in the context of being ready for work in the age of LLM‘s. What nobody can deny is that they memorize information at a superhuman level, so it might reduce the value of having done that myself. On the other hand, “couldn’t you just google that“has been an erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing. has been a erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing it.

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In the same way that notation is a tool of thought [1] actually knowing facts paves routes[2] of possibility and impossibility (instead of pausing everything to research or drowning in too many paths).

It's akin to seeing 37*55 and knowing it won't be a 20 digit number, greatly reducing your search space. Imagine feeding someone without knowing what they like (how do you choose something?) vs. "allergic to dairy"?

[1] https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm [2] https://alexalejandre.com/programming/forge-deeper-thought/

It seems pretty easy to illuminate this question once you consider concrete examples.

For example, neither google nor an LLM replaces the utility of building your own vocabulary so that you can express yourself in a foreign language when you're in convo with someone.

If the goal is for you to be understood in a foreign language, this will become possible in the near future with real time translation with something as simple as an AirPod. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WzUnEfiIqP4

Sure but being understood and expressing yourself are not the same.

sunnybeetroot explicitly said being "if your goal is being understood then x".

A software-based spaced repetition system probably could have made someone appear borderline superhuman in the era before Google. Google cleared a lot of this low-hanging fruit, and then it became "merely" the best way to cram facts into your noggin so you can become an expert at whatever you want, which is still extremely valuable. Your doctor probably used SRS to get through medical school, and now look at how much money they're making. For most professions, nothing -> Google was probably a much bigger jump than Google -> LLMs, so I expect that to still largely be the case.

TL;DR: SRS is, perhaps counterintuitively, most useful for those of us seeking true mastery over something.

> it became "merely" the best way to cram facts into your noggin so you can become an expert at whatever you want

Counterpoint: a noggin full of facts does not an expert make. Makes a good cocktail party trick, or Jeopardy champion. Expert in a subject? Definitely not.

Necessary, but not sufficient. Even the greatest genius can't operate without any raw material in there.

> during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing. has been a erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing it.

I imagine spaced repetition is not actually a cause of repeating yourself. That's just caused by being too lazy to proofread before you post.

LLMs memorize information at a superhuman level the same way an 8 tb harddisk does.

Silly.

Actually it's way easier to search for the information in an LLM compared to an 8 tb harddisk.

The search is vague, and the result is nondeterministic, but in a lot of cases it's still the better method.

https://fchollet.substack.com/i/137628402/llms-as-program-da... I like the way this article puts it. "LLM is a continuous, interpolative kind of database"

> the result is nondeterministic

That funny way to spell "hallucinated"

What you remember becomes part of your thinking and reasoning. So no, why would you google something if it doesn’t come to mind as something relevant.

You can't know it all so choose what is important to know and what you look up.

I would even go as far as to say, you don’t know something, so you look it up, and now you know the thing. Onus to remember notwithstanding, I personally feel like when I look something up I didn’t know, it tends to stick.

Except for the regex syntax, and ffmpeg pipelines, I won’t ever dedicate brain-space for those.

So I suppose I contradict myself. Huh. Nuts.

it doesn't have to become part of your thinking and reasoning, even in context, even though it does carry some actual weight. because it can be (over)shadowed. something that some people currently learn to code into LLMs, if I understood layering and quantization more or less superficially correct.

so, you might want to google it, because some part in the back of your head itches to remember something that is actually relevant and located on the rim (of the knowledge graph) of something that you do remember.

fucked up indexing. an 8 hour rabbit hole and that one of 43 links you didn't open in a new tab.

> What you remember becomes part of your thinking and reasoning

I find it also true for books, you unconsciously internalize things by reading the full book VS reading a summary. I sometimes reread books I read 10+ years ago and I often have these "ah so that's where I got this idea from". Most of the time it isn't even about the main point of the book, it can be a sentence or a dialogue that left an imprint on your psyche

I'd hate to be a simple proxy between google/llms and the real world

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