silly_goose

Fun fact: large energy expenditure even from renewables is subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It heats up the planet.

So I prefer to do everything the old fashion way with principles of frugal computing, offline docs, local editing, and try to keep as much in my brain as possible.

I don’t expect others to do the same. It’s about how much convenience you want to sacrifice to live a wholesome life.

edit: It makes sense from the perspective of keeping your brain young too. The more you use it even for “tedious” tasks like navigating instead of relying on gps, learning languages, doing mental arithmetic instead of using a calculator, memorizing phone numbers, and writing manually etc, the better it’ll function especially after middle age.

Firstly thank you for such a thoughtful and long reply. You are right about LLMs reducing cognitive overload and helping you concentrate on the core problem. I avoid them for environmental reasons too.

I too am not a fan of boilerplate and tedious languages like latex.

My approach for dealing with it is using better abstractions like typst. When I was seriously writing LateX years ago I had emacs macros and shortcuts to power through the tedious parts.

I also choose modern programming languages like gleam instead of java or js. They are easier to reason about and write fast manually. IME you can overtake the productivity gains that LLMs offer after 3-6 of working on a project.

LLMs can remove education from your brain? Or functionally make you stupid?

Definitely.

There are studies showing that LLMs make you measurably stupid and insane in just a few years of usage.

And it makes sense too. The brain is always changing. It prunes and rewires connections related to unused skills and memories. That’s why if you haven’t done math, played chess or haven’t spoken in a language you were once fluent in, for a while you get rusty.

Of course you can recover if you start practicing again. But sometimes the damage is too great and you can never go back to how you used to be.

Put simply, it’s propaganda by the LLM salesman and liars like scam altman.

Avoid LLMs. Preserve your brain and skills. Don’t become a slophead.

The only think you’ll fall behind on is humanity’s race to the bottom into total idiocracy.

You can delude yourself all you want that the AI is enabling you to do “x”. But all it’s doing is ensuring that you can never do x and that you keep getting worse at everything related.

And science is proving it. In just a few years of usage, llms are making people stupid and insane.

The brain is like a muscle. Each time you get in a car to travel 5 miles in 6 mins instead of running there in 30 minutes you get weaker. After 10 years your body will be in a horrible shape and much closer to death.

Yes I’m against calculators too for most things. Because of avoiding them I can do small calculations faster in my mind than most people can type into a calculator.

And guess what I’m not left behind. Because of my philosophy I am stronger and sharper than most people half my age.

I agree.

I wasn’t so surprised by tea / coffee because most people add sugar and diary to it. Like you said, alcohol is associated with diseases like cancer but it does reduce stress and helps you bond with others.

Degrading your sanity and mental health for yourselves is not okay. But if it’s to serve a rich guy then it’s fine…

What’s going on in the chart at the end? Fast food looks greener than legumes.

Because you can slap on a ‘30g protein’ label on junk food and charge double for it

You can cure many allergies with exposure therapy. I’m surprised nobody mentioned it.

tldr:

Calories: Amount of energy in food.

Carbs: An energy source that is abundant in plant food.

Glucose: Most carbs are digested into glucose. It gets absorbed by each cell and burned into energy.

Gluten: A protein in wheat that makes the dough stretchy. Causes gut issues for some people.