I wish I could recommend this piece more, because it makes a bunch of great points, but the "normal technology" case feels misleading to me.
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Furthermore, it is not "nuts" to dismiss the experience of an LLM user. In fact, you must dismiss all experiences of LLM users, even if the LLM user is yourself. Fly by instruments because the cognitive fog is too think for your eyes to see.
Because the interesting, novel thing about LLMs, the thing that makes them dangerous and interesting, is that they are, by design, epistemic disruptors.
They can produce symboloids more rapidly than any thinking mind. Repetition influences cognition.
@glyph “You must dismiss all experiences of LLM users”
This is where you lose me. There’s no universe in which I’m comfortable dismissing the lived experiences of people that categorically. The most important lesson I’ve learned from decades of activism is “believe people when they tell you about their experiences” — and I see no reason to change now. I’m not willing to give up my curiosity and empathy and I hope you aren’t either.
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@glyph i've used the term "neural asbestos" before and it feels a lot like that may be the type of thing we're dealing with
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I don't want to be a catastrophist but every day I am politely asking "this seems like it might be incredibly toxic brain poison. I don't think I want to use something that could be a brain poison. could you show me some data that indicates it's safe?" And this request is ignored. No study has come out showing it *IS* a brain poison, but there are definitely a few that show it might be, and nothing in the way of a *successful* safety test.
@glyph From everything I've seen, there's some kind of metacognitive subversion and/or corrosion going on - it's the throughline I see from the METR dev study through the LSAT confidence one to the recent "cognitive surrender" paper. Any kind of sustained exposure just obliterates the normal self-regulation and self-evaluation
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@glyph While this is purely anecdotal, it's darkly comical that just yesterday, at work, a "chief architect" explained and described their claude code setup as ... "giving a monkey a machine gun" ... with no irony or shame.
His point was very clearly that he wasn't sure he could trust his setup, but it was still certainly worth it for the perceived gains.
While I've not made many arguments pro/against LLM usage in general (based on how useful they are or aren't), this admission seemed really odd to me.
We're being asked to implement these tools in our workflows, but we're not given guidance on how to do so safely.
And I'm not against experimentation and learning new things--but I think that has its place within a certain context.
You want to give a monkey a machine gun? Well, find someplace safe to do so, and hope nobody gets hurt... but, like, why should I do the same thing?
@pythonbynight Cory's bit on the byzantine premium echoed your thread in some way. "All this money can't be for nothing, all these people can't be so irrational, there has to be something under that pile of crap."
@glyph -
@glyph “You must dismiss all experiences of LLM users”
This is where you lose me. There’s no universe in which I’m comfortable dismissing the lived experiences of people that categorically. The most important lesson I’ve learned from decades of activism is “believe people when they tell you about their experiences” — and I see no reason to change now. I’m not willing to give up my curiosity and empathy and I hope you aren’t either.
@jacob@social.jacobian.org @glyph@mastodon.social I think I'm currently at a point in my journey where I try very hard to believe people when they talk about what they have experienced internally, and have become increasingly sceptical of people's ability to judge accurately what actually happened and the results (in both cases for pretty much the same reasons as Glyph as I've noticed the difference between my #adhd internal experience and real world what actually happened).
So "using an LLM made me feel a god-like developer!" I'll completely take as your experience. "My productivity went up by 15 times after I started using agents" (actual claim I have seen) will leave me asking for hard evidence and possibly a scientific study.
It's awkward that we use 'experience' to cover both, and I had the same reaction you're expressing when I read that section but assuming (from the context) that Glyph means the second type of experience I think he has a strong argument, if not the clearest wording.
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@delta_vee @kirakira @glyph Leaded gasoline.
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@glyph “You must dismiss all experiences of LLM users”
This is where you lose me. There’s no universe in which I’m comfortable dismissing the lived experiences of people that categorically. The most important lesson I’ve learned from decades of activism is “believe people when they tell you about their experiences” — and I see no reason to change now. I’m not willing to give up my curiosity and empathy and I hope you aren’t either.
@jacob Perhaps "dismiss" wasn't the best word choice there, but that's why I included "even if the LLM user is yourself". I dismiss _my own_ experience of LLMs, _as evidence of their quantitative efficacy_. As evidence of their subjective experience, of course it is valid. If it didn't produce the intense subjective experience then there wouldn't be a problem!
There are two reasons that activism teaches us to believe people's lived experience, and neither apply here: …
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@jacob Perhaps "dismiss" wasn't the best word choice there, but that's why I included "even if the LLM user is yourself". I dismiss _my own_ experience of LLMs, _as evidence of their quantitative efficacy_. As evidence of their subjective experience, of course it is valid. If it didn't produce the intense subjective experience then there wouldn't be a problem!
There are two reasons that activism teaches us to believe people's lived experience, and neither apply here: …
1. The distance between an account of an experience of oppression and the actual event of the oppression is very short. "That man assaulted me" / "that cop beat me". The only way to think that people saying these things are not relaying true information is to believe that they are intentionally lying for personal gain, which just isn't true. (And that's not what I believe about LLM users.)
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1. The distance between an account of an experience of oppression and the actual event of the oppression is very short. "That man assaulted me" / "that cop beat me". The only way to think that people saying these things are not relaying true information is to believe that they are intentionally lying for personal gain, which just isn't true. (And that's not what I believe about LLM users.)
2. The filter of oppression *itself* means we only hear the accounts of people who are not only probably telling the truth in the first place but had to push through aggressive filtering to even get heard. If you hear one complaint of police violence or SA there's probably hundreds more where that came from. That also doesn't apply. The archetypical LLM user is not silenced by oppression, they're being massively amplified by the largest propaganda apparatus on earth.
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@pythonbynight Cory's bit on the byzantine premium echoed your thread in some way. "All this money can't be for nothing, all these people can't be so irrational, there has to be something under that pile of crap."
@glyph@ddelemeny @glyph Yup, I read that and smirked ...
Again, "investing" in an open source tooling that will speed up your CI/CD is almost a no-brainer for an organization. They spend zero dollars and reduce costs/risks associated to the problem that the tool is designed to solve. But even then, there are security risks based on supply chain/dependencies that are often scrutinized to no end.
Investing in LLM tooling is supposedly "cheap" (due to subsidies), but the risks include vendor lock in, security vulnerabilities, and weakening worker autonomy (among others). But there seems to be zero scrutiny in spite of that.
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The "critic psychosis" thing is tedious and wrong for the same reasons Cory's previous "purity culture" take was tedious and wrong, a transparent and honestly somewhat pathetic attempt at self-justification for his own AI tool use for writing assistance. Which is deeply ironic because it pairs very well with this Scientific American article, which points out that pedestrian "writing AI tools" influence their users in subtle but clearly disturbing ways. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-autocomplete-doesnt-just-change-how-you-write-it-changes-how-you-think/
@glyph You're so extremely full of yourself that I didn't even finish reading your comment, and I no longer care about anything you have to say. Go touch grass.
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2. The filter of oppression *itself* means we only hear the accounts of people who are not only probably telling the truth in the first place but had to push through aggressive filtering to even get heard. If you hear one complaint of police violence or SA there's probably hundreds more where that came from. That also doesn't apply. The archetypical LLM user is not silenced by oppression, they're being massively amplified by the largest propaganda apparatus on earth.
@jacob Consider another type of "lived experience" — the racist who says "DEI took my job". It would be a mistake to think that this person is *lying* about their experience — they are clearly motivated to their racism by genuine animus, and maybe they did lose their job — but their indirect, abstract experience of the nebulous entity of "DEI" is not reliable, particularly not in terms of employment statistics. So we are more skeptical in that case, and we look at the numbers.
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@ddelemeny @glyph Yup, I read that and smirked ...
Again, "investing" in an open source tooling that will speed up your CI/CD is almost a no-brainer for an organization. They spend zero dollars and reduce costs/risks associated to the problem that the tool is designed to solve. But even then, there are security risks based on supply chain/dependencies that are often scrutinized to no end.
Investing in LLM tooling is supposedly "cheap" (due to subsidies), but the risks include vendor lock in, security vulnerabilities, and weakening worker autonomy (among others). But there seems to be zero scrutiny in spite of that.
@ddelemeny @glyph Early on at my current job, I built a tool that I thought was very useful and mentioned that I would like to open source it...
I was ultimately shut down. In the interest of "intellectual property" and other sorts of red tape... And I didn't really feel like fighting it.
So, I couldn't share my tool with the commons, but there are absolutely no qualms about feeding my code to a company that WE PAY, so they can ingest it and charge others for benefitting off of it? ...
Sigh...
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@jacob Perhaps "dismiss" wasn't the best word choice there, but that's why I included "even if the LLM user is yourself". I dismiss _my own_ experience of LLMs, _as evidence of their quantitative efficacy_. As evidence of their subjective experience, of course it is valid. If it didn't produce the intense subjective experience then there wouldn't be a problem!
There are two reasons that activism teaches us to believe people's lived experience, and neither apply here: …
@glyph You’ve reasoned yourself into a position where anyone who says anything contrary to you is either delusional or lying. You might be right — I don’t think you are but who knows maybe — but even so, that’s just not a position I’m willing to take about anything ever.
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@jacob Consider another type of "lived experience" — the racist who says "DEI took my job". It would be a mistake to think that this person is *lying* about their experience — they are clearly motivated to their racism by genuine animus, and maybe they did lose their job — but their indirect, abstract experience of the nebulous entity of "DEI" is not reliable, particularly not in terms of employment statistics. So we are more skeptical in that case, and we look at the numbers.
@glyph Honestly? The left would be in a better place if we didn’t instantly dismiss that person but actually explored that feeling and engaged with him. “You’re wrong” may be true, and feels good to say, but “what makes feel that way?” is a much better opening if you want to win people over to your side.
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@glyph You’ve reasoned yourself into a position where anyone who says anything contrary to you is either delusional or lying. You might be right — I don’t think you are but who knows maybe — but even so, that’s just not a position I’m willing to take about anything ever.
@jacob No. I do not think it is a "delusion" to have an inaccurate quantitative understanding of a subjective experience. As the thread explains, I personally have that experience every single day. And I certainly do not believe that anyone saying "anything contrary to me" is doing that. What I am saying is that *one specific type of experience* — the feeling of LLMs positively impacting productivity — is poor evidence of *one specific type of claim*.
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@jacob No. I do not think it is a "delusion" to have an inaccurate quantitative understanding of a subjective experience. As the thread explains, I personally have that experience every single day. And I certainly do not believe that anyone saying "anything contrary to me" is doing that. What I am saying is that *one specific type of experience* — the feeling of LLMs positively impacting productivity — is poor evidence of *one specific type of claim*.
@glyph Ok but that’s a much more narrow version of what you said. You said you must dismiss ALL experiences. If you want to argue specifically about the productivity claims fine whatever I still think you’re wrong but not in a way that matters to me, it’s a narrow thing and I’m only going off vibes anyway. It’s specifically the “all” I’m objecting to.
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@glyph Honestly? The left would be in a better place if we didn’t instantly dismiss that person but actually explored that feeling and engaged with him. “You’re wrong” may be true, and feels good to say, but “what makes feel that way?” is a much better opening if you want to win people over to your side.
@jacob @glyph I have to say that's only true for folks who are capable of reason. I mean, it's possible that everyone is, but I have some uncles who will do something to the form of:
"Because all X are Y, because Z said so"
And regardless of any further lines of inquiry, it's always, always dismissed with "... Z said so!"
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@glyph Ok but that’s a much more narrow version of what you said. You said you must dismiss ALL experiences. If you want to argue specifically about the productivity claims fine whatever I still think you’re wrong but not in a way that matters to me, it’s a narrow thing and I’m only going off vibes anyway. It’s specifically the “all” I’m objecting to.
@jacob I am frustrated that you read it that way, but perhaps it's my fault. I thought the meaning of "all" was obvious in context but it's the reader who gets to decide the meaning. I guess I will see if I can edit this to remove that ambiguity.
And I guess to be fair even this qualification is maybe a *little* narrower than what I meant, because I also mean things like the subjective impression of LLM factual accuracy or output quality, not *just and only* productivity.
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@jacob @glyph I have to say that's only true for folks who are capable of reason. I mean, it's possible that everyone is, but I have some uncles who will do something to the form of:
"Because all X are Y, because Z said so"
And regardless of any further lines of inquiry, it's always, always dismissed with "... Z said so!"
