<img attachment="system-1-system-2-thinking.webp" align="right">The title is clickbait but the content is nonetheless interesting. It discusses how to move processing from "system 2" (logical reasoning) to "system 1" (intuition). It's how you get to a point where you understand a language without thinking about it. Or how you can just read music, or code, or vast swaths of text on economics or philosophy. Or how your body has learned to move in any sport or activity. There is no way around using familiarity and repetition to get to highly accurate and seemingly effortless intuitive responses. It's not effortless. The effort is front-loaded. <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xS68sl2D70" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/0xS68sl2D70" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics" caption="Veritasium: What Everyone Gets Wrong About AI and Learning – Derek Muller Explains"> At <b>33:00</b>, there's a good example of a technique for moving people from system 2 to system 1. <bq>[...] this is kind of a problem we have in complex domains like physics where, to the physics professor, everything's perfectly clear because their system one is so fully developed. But, to a student, it's not. So, this is the expert/novice divide. The professor can't see with the student eyes what that problem looks like.</bq> At <b>40:00</b>, <bq>[...] the thing that I'm really worried about is how AI has this opportunity to reduce effortful practice. I have four kids who are 8, 6, 4 and 0. And I worry about them that, you know, if they're going to be...will they write an essay, will they write 100 essays? <b>If there is a generative AI that can write for them, what forces them to practice crafting those sentences? And if they don't craft those sentences, what happens to their brains?</b> The argument here is that you get good at your command of the English language. You get good at being able to speak in front of people, at being able to express your thoughts in writing by doing it again and again and again and again. <b>And you should suck at the beginning, and you shouldn't let that stop you.</b> And you should keep going and going and making slight tweaks and improving and getting feedback and getting going. If they never do that, I really worry what gets into system one, you know, what is that? <b>Do they have an amazing network of connected knowledge that they can draw on? Do they have things that are automated? I fear that they won't.</b> How do we force people to have to do that painful, effortful work when there's a magic machine that will do it for you? That's a big concern. What about drawing? You know, if you can just ask it to make a picture of whatever you like. The bat and the ball was AI, by the way. I can't draw, so.... But again, like, what will happen to people's artistic abilities? So this is, <b>I think my biggest concern, is if it prevents us from going through this painful, effortful process which is the core process of learning.</b> Using your limited system two resources to engage with things and practice again and again and again, even when it's hard, even when it doesn't feel good, even when you're not great at it. That is my big concern.</bq> This was already a problem with people who thought that knowing something in a web of other knowledge in your own head could be replaced with "just Google it." You can't develop intuition about things that you don't know. You can't draw connections between things that you don't know. At <b>59:30</b>, a question came in, <bq>I feel like everybody here might understand [it's a roomful of scientists] when you don't understand something, it's exciting. <b>A lot of people, when they don't understand something, it's not exciting. So how do you think we change that?</b></bq> 🎤 💧 That's a very important thing to remember: intelligence is more like seeing and hearing. Different people have different levels of ability. I always tell people that I can spend so much time on reading and writing because it's <i>actually rewarding</i> and, if I'm honest, it kind of always has been. When I put time into something, I'm rewarded by getting better at it within a noticeable amount of time.