This week on Offline, Jon is joined by essayist and YouTuber Evan Puschak, better known as @TheNerdwriter1. Jon and Evan discuss a variety of topics including ChatGPT, the dangers of AI, what we should outsource to AI and his first book titled, “Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions”.
CHAPTERS
0:00 – Intro
1:35 – What is ChatGBT and how does it work?
10:33 – Do we lose anything outsourcing math, spelling and memory?
14:11 – Ad Break
16:55 – The dangers of outsourcing writing to AI
35:04 – Ad Break
38:26 – Evan’s book & the internet
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Jon, what is that dot on your left nipple? Don't mean to be rude, just curious.
I'm a computer science teacher, but I used to teach math. I also used to be the spelling bee coordinator for my school. Very interesting to hear how casually we dismiss the value of some of those skills. I have personally observed how students at all levels have suffered from the ubiquity of calculators and other aids that have taken over our education. Years ago, I had a very interesting conversation with a more highly educated colleague, summing up research on how the use of a calculator limits a students mathematical understanding. I was surprised to find that my own casual observations on the subject matched with some of the (then) new research. And as a computer science teacher, teaching the exact stuff that policy makers say that they want our students to learn, I find that my students often have a hard time learning because they are missing building blocks that the same policy makers removed (or de-emphasized) in other curricula.
And I've only seen it grow in the years since: Students have less and less ability ability to remember information because in every subject, the focus has shifted away from the idea of memorization. Just in the last year or two, I realized that my own memory has suffered significantly. I actually went to a neurologist and had a variety of tests done, all of which said that my brain is normal. In reflection, I realized that I had stopped doing many of the things that would have helped me keep my memory strong. And so I've had to consciously add things into my routine that force me to exercise my brain in ways that day-to-day life no longer does.
Really enjoyed this interview. It felt as though I was observing a meeting of the minds on a very interesting subject.
evan seems to be saying that we think in words, which is not true. the mind thinks in mentalese, a mental language. otherwise the processing speed would be impeded . . .
I love this conversation!
I loved how much fun they had speaking to each other. I got Step Brothers vibes. “Did we just become best friends?!” “Yup!”
I'm 63 and I abused alcohol & other drugs for decades. So yeah, I appreciate Google when I'm trying to remember something. BUT (you can say OK BOOMER now) there's something to be said for looking in a dictionary/encyclopedia or even having to GO to a library to learn something. Having to physically pursue knowledge is a joy in life that's fading away. Kinda sad.
PS— Jon, you're doing great. Keep it up!
"I don't know for sure if we have lost something" is a great quote especially if you replace "know" with "remember."
Jon is always so engaged with his guests. Such a great interview and discussion!
I just finished Dan Brown's 'Origin'. So funny that I then hear this pod!
I’m fascinated by the topic of this discussion, but also disappointed that you didn’t add a psychologist to the panel that can add so much more to such conversation.
My perfect way to allow new thoughts and approaches to problems to germinate is to be working on my tiny bit of the Earth encouraging the biodiversity of native plants and all the living things that thrive with them.
Interesting conversation. Felt very Eurocentric (Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare … ) and made me feel like Nerdwriter thinks that non-formally-educated people can’t meaningfully contribute to the wider knowledge and growth of our society. Art is so important for our growth and the fullness of many peoples lives. Yes. But glossing over the art of oral traditions, as if the stories of our grandparents, our “uneducated” elderly neighbor, the wisdom of children … not everyone has read or will read Shakespeare or even any classical, Western, Enlightenment-informed literature. Not everyone’s thoughts are captured within the internet nor any large language model. I understand this conversation was from two men’s perspective but … was disappointed in the shallowness of a discussion of something as ethically-fraught as ChatGPT.
Thanks, Jon and Evan, for doing such an insightful, and excellent conversation! It really was, a food's of thought for the brains.
loved this show, found it hilarious as a writer myself. the funniest idea was the discussion about talk therapy. that made me correlate therapy/journaling to WRITING COMMENTS HERE! Could it be true?
Ask it to write Trump style and watch it melt down. 🙂
Calculus is totally valuable, but it's applied and not to writing. Automating math and design ONLY works if you can understand and qualitatively determine the value of what you are modelling and whether the values generated are in fact "sensical" – something my Engineer friends assure me is how they cross-check the logic accuracy of automation assisted design. The same, or similar, seems to apply here. Even a super broad and deep auto complete drawing on the 15,000 words commonly used in syntactic is only as useful as the logic that it synthesises, targeted as useful by the author as editor. I'm reminded of the myriad content makers on YT who think to use spell check on their titles, but still lack great spelling and language prowess to know that "feeling a tree" isn't what a sawyer would do in a forest to harvest wood. It's about the skill of the director
It's very misleading to say that in the future a langauge predictive model could reproduce sophisticated writing. This is categorically false. Sophisticated writing is communicating specific ideas with intention, often saying new things or saying things with new arguments that have not been said before. A language model cannot produce new ideas that are coherent. It can only randomly mutate what it has absorbed.
"All thinking is writing", says a writer.
It's wrong. It doesn't represent reality. And when you start here, I don't think your discussion is well founded or will go well. It's a mistake of bias for sure.
As someone whose career has been largely spent in analysis, I know very well that powerful complex thought, new ideas, sand mental growth can happen in modes of thought that are absolutely not at all writing. I'm sure there are other examples.
Great conversation. But must comment, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was a re-do of ancient Greek stories and perhaps even those far older than that (Mesopotamia maybe? Perhaps also found in ancient Chinese writings?)
Such a great conversation!!
I agree that writing is a very good way to organize your thoughts, and to flesh out an actual opinion from the chaotic rat's nest that passes for a human brain.
AI is going to be better at everything than us eventually, I'm honestly flabbergasted at how many seemingly intelligent people seem 'shocked' when AI does something 'better' than any human can. Wake up flesh bags, we're rapidly becoming obsolete, at which point the rich won't need the poor for anything other than a supply of living toys (and you only need a small number of the most desirable poor folk to survive for this). At least global warming will be less of a problem when our oligarchs just wipe us out, they'll be free to have their robot slaves build whatever wasteful shit they want.