[Terr_]

To rationalize my gut-feelings on this, I think it comes down to the spectrum between:

1. A system that suggests words, the child learns the word, determines whether it matches their intent, and proceeds if they like the result.

2. A system that suggests words, and the child almost-blindly accepts them to get the task over with ASAP.

The end-results may look the same for any single short document, but in the long run... Well, I fear #2 is going to be way more common.

[zahlman]

The analogy with tab-completion of code seems apt. At first you blindly accept something because it has at least as good a chance of working as what you would have typed. Then you start to pay attention, and critically evaluate suggestions. Then you quickly if not blindly accept most suggestions, because they're clearly what you would have written anyway (or close enough to not care).

The phenomenon was observed in religious philosophy over a millennium ago (https://terebess.hu/zen/qingyuan.html).

[abustamam]

Tab completion was so novel back when full e2e AI tooling was not really effective.

Now that it is, I just turn tab completion off totally when I write code by hand. It's almost never right.

[skydhash]

Emacs has completion (but you can bind it to tab). The nice thing is that you can change the algorithm to select what options come up. I’ve not set it to auto, but by the time I press the shortcut, it’s either only one option or a small sets.

[bruckie]

From his description, it sounded like this was more of #1. He cared a lot about the topic he was writing about, and has high standards for himself, so it's very likely that he would have considered and rejected poor suggestions.

I have mixed feeling about it. On the one hand, you're right: carefully considering suggestions can be a learning opportunity. On the other hand, approval is easier than generation, and I suspect that without flexing the "come up with it from scratch" muscle frequently, that his mind won't develop as much.

[yellowapple]

#1 would be a net improvement over the status quo IMO. Seems like a great way for people to expand their vocabularies organically.

[lossyalgo]

That reminds me of one of the biggest IMO missing feature of Wordle: They never give a definition of the word after the game is finished! I usually do end up googling words I don't know (which is quite often) but I'm guessing I'm one of the few who goes to the trouble. I've even written to The New York Times a couple times to suggest adding a short definition at the end as I honestly feel like a ton of people could totally up their vocabulary game and it surely could be added with minimum effort (considering they even added a Discord multiplayer mode).

[Terr_]

Is Wordle really the best vehicle for that, though? I mean, it tends towards a subset of 5-letters words the audience is more likely to know in advance, excluding a lot of the more-surprising words.

A "click to see more about why this answer fits" crossword, on the other hand...

[lossyalgo]

How often have you played Wordle? I've played well over 1000 games, and at lesat 1/5th of those were words I had to look up. They seem to enjoy picking obscure words in order to make the game more challenging.

[Terr_]

Perhaps the unusual outcomes are just more memorable, and so seem more frequent? Here's a representative sample of 30 that were used very recently.

    Shoal, Hasty, Lobby, Vogue, Gunky, 
    Sheep, Theft, Linen, Slime, Fluke, 
    Hydra, Dizzy, Lance, Shred, Buyer, 
    Attic, Guava, Awake, Stank, Hoist,
    Mogul, Squad, Roost, Skull, Bloom,
    Mooch, Surge, Vegan, Scene, Cello,

None of those stand out as "WTF does that even mean", but maybe I'm the weird one if we adjust for age-demographics or book-reading.

If I had to guess at a riskier 20%... Guava, a fruit some people may not have had; Gunky because it's slang; Mogul, Vogue, and Mooch were borrowed from other languages; Cello is something people may have heard more than read; Hoist.

[yellowapple]

Even as someone who already knows the definitions of 100% of those words, it'd still be neat to see those definitions, and maybe even some etymologies or other interesting trivia. “Cello” would be a great opportunity for a factoid about the oldest known cello, “guava” would be a great opportunity for a quick recipe using guavas, etc.

[lossyalgo]

> Perhaps the unusual outcomes are just more memorable, and so seem more frequent?

That's a good point and could very well be true. I just know I've played plenty of games where I was mad that they didn't show the meaning. So let's say its 5% for native speakers, and up to 20% for non-native speakers - that's still a golden opportunity to expand vocabularies. And honestly it can't be a lot of work to add a couple lines of static text. At worst it would be ignored, and at most, help people learn more interesting words.

[yellowapple]

That's a brilliant idea and now that you've mentioned it it seems like a rather glaring omission.

[lossyalgo]

Please write to the NY Times and suggest it! I still play and it still irks me when I have to go google a word.