Hacker News Reader

Comment by WhyComboNadir | Hacker News Reader

Lots of reactions here, but if it works for you then that's great.

For me I feel that LLMs have exploded (in a good way) my cognitive capabilities. I'm now the general of an army, rather than playing the role of a soldier. Of course that means that I lose the experience of being the lonely soldier, but it is a no-brainer tradeoff for me.

Anyway, I have to go now so I can push my car to the grocery store (so I don't forget how to walk), me and my giant calves will be back in a few hours.

All meant in good spirit. Keep doing what you're doing, thanks for sharing, and hope people are kind and only give good natured ribbings.

View on HN

I feel like you think the car analogy was a clever parallel to draw here but looking at a car centric north american population and the dimensions of a non trivial slice of them that are unable to walk a 5k, id say you made the opposite point.

You have a point based on the way I wrote it. What I was trying to get at:

If you're going to walk to the store, don't push you car there! Just walk. So if you want to write code, don't retype what the LLM said, create your code from your own brain.

Haha, your analogy reminds me of one I often make to highlight just how much we undervalue fossil fuels.

Imagine filling your car with $1 worth of fuel and then driving it on flat terrain as far as it will take you. Now get out and push your car back. Friction and momentum aside, that's the astounding amount of energy/work we get from a dollar's worth of fuel.

Now imagine your car is actually an LLM model. It gets you a great distance on $1 worth of tokens but what happens when you run out and for whatever reason (I can imagine quite a few) further LLM use is not possible. You have to push your car/LLM back all by yourself to finish what was supposed to be a quick, convenient trip to the grocery store. Might've been better off walking.

Seriously though, I do think there is a real risk that LLMs are going to lure a lot of people far beyond their ability to swim back. It might even be the case that LLMs help strand people in situations that even the LLMs can't help rescue them from.

I've gotten into a situation multiple times where an LLM (usually a low-end free model) will write a whole bunch of code and then be unable to make any more correct changes to it because it can't hold enough context. Super easy to get into a duplicative spaghetti mess - exactly like I've seen human developers do countless times, but even worse.

I agree with your point, I found it makes more sense with the company when they have a problematic product no one can fix.

Of course I push my car to the store! It has the GPS and I've lost the ability to self-navigate. Plus, how else could I carry my groceries.

Ah, I agree with they way you reiterated that, that wasn't my initial read but it makes sense now :)

If a computer is a bicycle for the mind, perhaps LLMs are the cars for the mind…

If a computer is a bicycle for the mind I think LLMs are a unicycle for the computer..

That’s my own personal take on it anyway.

Intriguing. Like the computer instantiated a wheel and rolls off by itself, no humans needed?

No, in that it's something inherently much more unstable than a bicycle and needs a trained human onboard to have any hope of getting anywhere without falling over spectacularly

Managers famously get dumber but think they get smarter and then start to write army metaphors.

lol

Unfortunately coding is a perishable skill, unlike walking which is at least partially ingrained into our DNA.

Don’t good generals know how everyone else in their army does their jobs? At the very least to the extent they can see through the bullshit.

For example, I don’t handwrite the code that the compiler produces, but I know how to troubleshoot the IR/assembly and fix optimization issues that arise occasionally. That makes me better at my job of directing the compiler.

> Don’t good generals know how everyone else in their army does their jobs?

They most certainly do, but on a mid-higher level. They don't probably know every single motion and definitely lack hands-on experience. But they know enough to be able to manage them efficiently.

y'all have to come up with a better argument than "LLMs are cars"

Try doing the same things now without an LLM.

I know another thing that gives you the same (fake) feeling: Cocaine.

Show us what you've built, general.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com