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cgannettyesterday at 2:17 PM1 replyview on HN

You can get pretty dang far asking the AI to explain things and show you where it got that info, especially with IT/DEV stuff. Thing that has been very useful to me is specifically asking AI for that vocabulary. AI is suprisingly useful for giving a vague description of something you want and asking for possible words that match. But you have to KNOW to try that. A tinkerer might have started that convo with the chatbot by asking "What are web pages built from" "Can we use those building blocks to make our own simple app" and gotten there from a place of low expertise in web development but juicing out the knowlege from a place of low expertise is itself a skill.


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scp3125yesterday at 3:45 PM

I know you are not arguing from bad faith, but you are making an assumption along cultural lines, which is a mistake of missing the forest through the trees.

The vast majority of people (blanket statement, I know..) do not come from a culture where embracing curiosity, asking questions, or trying to break things down is the norm. Developers, tinkerers, etc., sure... you can reasonably make that assumption. But not everyone. A cultural practice of critical thinking and problem solving is HOW you KNOW to ask WHAT questions need to be answered FIRST, in order to solve a problem or progress toward a solution (if more information is needed).

You might even make the argument that everyone should have these skills, and I would agree with you. But the missing link here is a culture or cultural practice that provides those things (the WHY), and an AI/LLM will not provide those things in absentia, without "prompting", or build up that infrastructure in meatspace for a given set of users. Ignore this at your own risk.

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