On AI: at an embarrassing age I learned that almost everyone hates reading.

[leonoverweel@mastodon.social]

@bert_hubert this is why populists gain power, right? Don’t bother with critical thinking, nuance, data or research; just listen to the strong man who will tell you which evil people you should hate because they’re secretly plotting to burn down everything you love — but luckily the strong man is onto them and will protect you!

[hrbrmstr@mastodon.social]

@bert_hubert most folks regress to mediocrity b/c it's "just/good enough" and requires little to no effort. The modern "west" has been programmed to want mediocrity, and — at least in the U.S. — folks haven't been taught the various ways to interrogate the world, challenge assumptions, develop deep curiosity, etc. b/c schools just teach students how to pass tests to get to the next mediocre stage. It's hard to break folks out of it.

[porcus@hostux.social]

@bert_hubert I stand on your side , I love reading but have lacked the energy to do so recently because #life . Once I got better , I got back to books/documentation/papers and always have pleasure with it . One thing I was discussing aroud the use of LLM to 'read for you' throw me back to a form of laziness : I , most of the time , enjoy the pleasure of learning/understanding by myself, as it's quite rewarding. Maybe it's not the case for everyone. 1/2

[porcus@hostux.social]

@bert_hubert Also , my circle (social and parasocial) is usally thinkers, readers, curious people, therefor I'm not aware of someone who suffers of the learning (etc) process. Finding the purpose to do so isn't always easy, and some prefer to stay at a more ' simple ' level , but once you found something you wan't to explore , using the traditional means (no ai), feels rewarding from what i exchanged. Amazing and so current topic, thanks for raising it here.
2/2

[quantensalat@scicomm.xyz]

@bert_hubert Yes thinking is 100% painful/unpleasant for many people. If you ask me it's not much different from sports wrt to training and rewards.

[janetgrbr@mastodon.social]

@bert_hubert I just ordered some new meds at the pharmacy by mail. I didn't think it was a good idea to also give them my new email address in the same email. It probably won't be read.

[thomastc@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@bert_hubert Reminds me of Kahneman's work. Super short summary from fallible wetware memory: System 2 (the deliberate, reflective, reasoning, uniquely human part of the brain) is lazy by default, and tends to not kick into action unless triggered in the right way. System 1 is faster and more efficient for almost all inputs.

Maybe it's a matter of training, exercise, habit, call it what you will, that makes System 2 pay attention sooner in some people than in others.

[haraldki@nrw.social]

@bert_hubert

One of the more interesting thinking endeavors is math and similarly abstract gymnastics. And seeing how many (a majority of people) get a headache with math, you are probably right: thinking huts many people.

[synlogic4242@social.vivaldi.net]

@bert_hubert at first I thought you were joking. but you're serious. and I think you nailed it. I bet that explains so much of the AI uptake and enthusiasm out there. the people who like (and are good at) thinking and writing are in minority. but it is the latter that constititues the intellectual class and handles many key parts of the functional success and prosperity of modern civ.

[goose@fosstodon.org]

@bert_hubert I tend to be in it with people who have declared themselves non-thinkers. I do things by assessment, and not by rote. It really pissed a few of them off over the years.

Also, I met a lot of people who openly avoid hiring intelligent people because of the technical debt they'll create.

Same again at parties. Thinkers were aggressively hounded out of non-thinker territory.

A non-thinker tends to have ready answers, and will notice anyone belabouring the issue.

[jhaas@a2mi.social]

@bert_hubert A challenge in multiple contexts is understanding how fundamentally people are in the how and why they think.

As an example, if 3% of the people experience aphantasia, that's already a pool of people that aren't going to get the same thing out reading as those without it:

Aphantasia - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

[softwaretheron@mas.to]

@bert_hubert
Someone told me once that they voted for Margaret Thatcher because she was a strong leader.
This explains that exactly.

[goose@fosstodon.org]

@leonoverweel @bert_hubert it's sort of not wrong! A lot of intellectuals are extremely dangerous.

It's like a doctor who murders her husband. There's a good chance it will be instantly lethal, and with a minimum of fuss.

Also, think of how Einstein stimulated the Manhattan project.

[diazona@techhub.social]

@bert_hubert As someone who finds exercise mostly unpleasant, I've often suspected but never really confirmed that athletic people fundamentally don't understand what that experience is like for me. It stands to reason that the same would be true for reading and deep thinking.

Though, I gotta imagine there has to be some ignorance or outright denial of the fact that LLMs don't necessarily do what you think they're doing. (It sounds kind of like someone discovering wheelchair basketball and deciding "hey now I can play basketball" but if the wheelchairs randomly turn on their own)

[lmk@infosec.exchange]

@thomastc @bert_hubert People avoid System 2 thinking which requires attention and is metabolically costly - laziness. I'd say the US (and many other places) political situation proves a widespread lack of critical thinking.

[ulrikeheiss@eldritch.cafe]

@bert_hubert I guess it depends on how you define thinking. I was taught (but I haven't fact-checked this) that thinking requires ridiculous amounts of energy, so it makes sense to avoid it. On the other hand thinking and planning ahead would probably have helped a group of hunter-gatherers to survive. To avoid it entirely would not have been an advantage.
I was also tought that this is why we have developed routines as ways of saving energy by not thinking about repetitive tasks. This would sort of balance the opposing interests. But the price we pay for this balance, is that there is a resistance against thinking we have to overcome, before we get into the flow of it. And I believe some people find this resistance harder to overcome than others. Or they were never encouraged to overcome it.
And something I have noticed in this context: some people seem to be less curious than others. I believe curiosity helps me overcome my resistance to thinking and I'd be interested to know if there is research to back this up.

[duarte@hachyderm.io]

@bert_hubert True! Maybe it’s avoiding effort or the perception thereof, or avoiding an expected feeling of fatigue (either muscular or directed attention fatigue).

[denofearth@mas.to]

@bert_hubert
The bit about burying the lede is maybe not (only) because people don't read, but using inbox preview to sort and skip mail. So if your letter looks like:

Dear Mike,

Thanks for that report on the McCarthy file, much appreciated and timely.

On that note, can I ask you to amend appendix 1 to add the following...

Mike's Inbox preview will show the thanks. No need to bother opening, mark read and file, move on.

I've taken to putting my requirements in the first sentence at the expense of civility.

[bert_hubert@eupolicy.social]

@UlrikeHeiss thinking, oddly, does not appear to require additional calories beyond the 25W our brain consumes non-stop. And this is what makes it weird! But perhaps the costs of thinking are more subtle. There are some anecdotes of chess players burning through more energy, but this does not appear to be brain related. Also if thinking required calories I'd be thin by now!

[winfried@fosstodon.org]

@bert_hubert that's an interesting thought and would explain many conflicts and misunderstandings, it seems to have something to do with "cognitive bias"