[dangom]

Part of the appeal for "Tools for Thought" is that by using them we feel we are taking action towards being productive, regardless of whether that turns out to be true of not.

The falacy comes, I believe, from the combination of two facts: 1. much of the intellectual work we do these days simply takes time. No amount of writing can accelerate that beyond our biological limit of learning, so we might as well just sit and think. 2. Just sitting and thinking is considered unproductive and regarded as lazyness, so we believe we should be writing even more instead.

In that regard, using tools for thought may be pointless, since all we need is time to think. But perhaps that pointlessness serves a purpose. Like a guardrail in a highway, tools for thought are not something we "really need", but they're there to at least keep us on track in case we were to drift away while our minds move forward.

[Kinrany]

Thinking with paper is very obviously better than keeping all the thoughts in your head.

[dangom]

Sure, just like working out continously is better than rest. There is no better or worse, you need both. Ideas take time to materialize.

[Kinrany]

Using or not using paper is not at all similar to working out or resting. When you're thinking with paper in front of you, you're free to not use paper or switch back and forth in a matter of seconds. It's a strict improvement, the downsides are all logistical.

[marniewebb]

For me, what makes these tools useful is the time I spend in review. Which often feels like the opposite of productivity.

[thewarrior]

Sorry to be cliched but do you think AI could make a difference here by thinking for us ?

[dangom]

The point of the article is that we don't like being idle. We'd rather spend our idle time "pretending" we are being productive, and tools for thought are what we use for that.

Being actually productive (quality > quantity), I argue, is a process that takes physical time. Absorbing information, internalizing it, and summarizing it with our own understanding requires a lot of energy. This process cannot be massively accelerated. Same as with physical fitness, one can operate close to optimum and see and maintain great results, but one cannot operate better than optimum given one's own physical constraints.

For intelectual work, defining what "operating close to optimum" means is much harder because the quantity of output is usually the metric, and that varies so much from discipline to discipline and person to person. I believe many of us are already operating close to optimum (reading and writing, attending meetings, presenting our work), so there is no point in investing even more towards productivity. But the falacy is that because we don't have a proper metric for productivity, we believe investing even more is worthwhile since it increases output, and so we perceive ourselves as better.

I don't see AI changing the picture for us because the problem is not what we are doing, but how we perceive to be doing it. That's what's up with tools for thought and personal wikis.

[theCrowing]

I believe that a fine-tuned autoregressive language model such as GPT, enhanced with your personal notes, has the potential to serve as a highly effective cognitive aid, potentially even fulfilling the role of a "second brain" that many of us are looking for.

[ianmcgowan]

It's not scalable, but as an existence proof of what you're saying, my partner and I fulfill this role for each other - we each are tasked with remembering different facets of our lives (e.g. I know the plot and cast of every movie we've ever watched, she remembers to pay taxes :).

It seems pretty obvious we're heading for that utopia/dystopia where everyone is assigned a personal assistant loaded onto a pervasive mesh (your glasses, watch, phone, computer, desk, house). On the one hand it sounds great to have an AI assistant that knows what I know, a model of how I think, and the ability to fill in the gaps instantly. On the other, it's so ripe for abuse/deepening inequality, the idea almost qualifies as "don't create the torment nexus".