Something I’ve found very helpful is when I have a murky idea in my head that would take a long time for me to articulate concisely, and I use an LLM to compress what I’m trying to say. So I type (or even dictate) a stream of consciousness with lots of parentheticals and semi-structured thoughts and ask it to summarize. I find it often does a great job at saying what I want to say, but better.
(See also the famous Pascal quote “This would have been a shorter letter if I had the time”).
P.s. for reference I’ve asked an LLM to compress what I wrote above. Here is the output:
When I have a murky idea that’s hard to articulate, I find it helpful to ramble—typing or dictating a stream of semi-structured thoughts—and then ask an LLM to summarize. It often captures what I mean, but more clearly and effectively.
Agreed, the messiness of the original text has character and humanity that is stripped from the summarized text. The first text is an original thought, exchanged in a dialogue, imperfectly.
Elsewhere in this comment section, it's discussed about the importance of having original thought, which the summarized text specifically isn't, and has leeched away.
The parent comment has actually made the case against the summarized text being "better" (if we're measuring anything that isn't word count).
Learning to articulate your thoughts is pretty vital in learning to think though.
An LLM could make something sound articulate even if your input is useless rambling containing the keywords you want to think about. Having someone validate a lack of thought as something useful doesn't seem good for you in the long term
Your original here is distinctly better! It shows your voice and thought patterns. All character is stripped away in the "compressed" version, which unsurprisingly is longer, too.
(See also the famous Pascal quote “This would have been a shorter letter if I had the time”).
P.s. for reference I’ve asked an LLM to compress what I wrote above. Here is the output:
When I have a murky idea that’s hard to articulate, I find it helpful to ramble—typing or dictating a stream of semi-structured thoughts—and then ask an LLM to summarize. It often captures what I mean, but more clearly and effectively.