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theshacklefordyesterday at 10:53 PM2 repliesview on HN

> When interacting with LLMs it feels a lot more like I'm just receiving knowledge passively and I don't think it gets integrated as well.

This sounds like it's more down to how the individual uses the tool. I am not someone who has even been particularly good at reading > learning the thing. I've only ever been capable of learning by doing and with capability to interrogate on the points I don't get. LLMs allow that in a way that is just not feasible with any human being whose tolerance of me would diminish rapidly.

In most cases, I will be writing down my understanding as I would in isolation from a primary source, building flash cards and actively practicing what I have learned, only with more capability to interrogate on the points I have difficulty understanding or need clarity on. Effectively, I am doing the following in a capacity I personally never had via any other means:

> I seem to be doing a lot of integrating and reorganizing my thoughts.

If you are using it as a slot machine of knowledge, and going from receiving > doing with no intermediate step I see how outcomes could differ.


Replies

tclancyyesterday at 11:37 PM

Seconded. At a minimum, you can literally tell the agent to guide you but not point you and only help when you are stuck if you're actively trying to learn something. It's been a help for me to bridge a couple of gaps I'd struggled to cross before (mainly hardware things).

Forgeties79today at 4:05 AM

> This sounds like it's more down to how the individual uses the tool.

I genuinely agree with a lot of your comment but lines like this drive me crazy. Anytime somebody has a critique of AI, so many people hand wave away with “well you’re doing it wrong.” If we can just chalk up every negative thing with AI to “incorrect tool usage” then we’ll never honestly assess it.