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Comment by ventana | Hacker News Reader

The title is not representing what the post is about. “Use LLM to learn complex topics” here actually means that the author asks an agent to describe the problem area, and then implement a simple web-based simulation game, and by playing that game, the author actually learns about the topic and its constraints. They use chip making as an example.

That's actually a fun way to learn processes!

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Its fun but is it really effective ? I mean I checked the LLM one and I came out more confused about a topic I already know about, I find the best way to to learn using LLMs is to just generate an example try to somewhat get a mental model of how it works and then ground my understanding with traditional documentation and resources, its an iteration of a technique I used to do in college where I would read the textbook questions first to understand what is important and then read the chapter

Game-based learning, described by Comenius, works if someone else prepares “a game” for you. E.g. like a dungeon master. :)

Otherwise you probably get more confused as you have mentioned.

On the other side, Peter Diamandis describes a situation where a bunch of kids were given a internet-connected computer and they had no teacher. Instead of it there was a “grandma” that checked kids from time to time.

After that there was a knowledge test that revealed “no teacher” approach was more efficient.

But it was a group, not an individual activity…

I assume different ways of learning work for different people. For me personally, it's taking a piece of paper and drawing the diagram of how things work together; of if it's some math, then, again, using the pen and paper to follow the text. I can very much accept that for some people playing the simulation is a good way to touch the new problem space. I can easily imagine that for some topics, let's say, traffic signal automation, a careful simulation game will probably give more information than reading papers or manuals.

> a careful simulation game

Totally agree, unfortunately careful simulation games are very rare

Thanks! The original title was "How I use LLMs to learn...", but somehow HN removed the "How" part. I even removed the initial post thinking it was a typo on my end and tried to post again, but I stumbled upon the same behavior.

HN likes to remove “How” and “Why” from titles. You need to edit them back right after you post it

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