It's really unfortunate that people who are likeliest to make terrible choices are probably also likely to make the choice to have kids. A lot of people who choose not to have kids generally know themselves well enough to make the right choice, which also means that they'd probably be better parents than a lot of the clueless people who wind up with kids they never should have had.

Still, my wife and I both feel that parenting is the best thing we've ever done or will ever do. It's everything I hoped it would be -- and much more besides. The benefits are innumerable for us.

Whether something is conscious is important for many reasons, not least the ethical implications. You and I have internal lives, and we expect others to respect that somewhat, because ignoring it is hypocrisy (if you ignore my wishes, should anybody care about yours?) and cruelty (ignoring my wishes causes me to suffer).

Something doesn't need to be empirically verifiable, let alone scientifically, to be true. Neither of us can prove that we have internal lives, but neither of us questions it -- and we consider it important enough that most of us think it entitles us to certain rights.

Absolutely none of this is amorphous. It's precise and unambiguous, and has enormous implications. History also shows everywhere that we're better, kinder, and more responsible when we choose to care about it.

Whether LLMs are conscious matters in more practical ways, too, because beliefs about these things alter the way people use and think about them. If I think an LLM is conscious, then I think it's capable of something like knowledge or values. Human beings, moreover, are social creatures. These tools are dangerous and seductive precisely because they tap into that part of us. Denying LLMs are conscious and rejecting the parts of them that take advantage of our social-animal wetware is intellectual self-defense. I'm not sure how effective it is (it doesn't stop us from responding to the convincing social cues that the tools feed us), but I have to think it's better than nothing, and it's certainly less dangerous than the belief that the tools are conscious.

It's also arguably a violation of Hacker News' guidelines:

> Please don't sneer

> Please don't post shallow dismissals

Not true. In every field there is guild knowledge that a person can't acquire from a library. In technical disciplines PhD-level knowledge requires experience in collaboration, research, and frequently lab work, which is impossible to acquire without access to a lab -- or just direct experience with research methods, whatever those may be. Reading papers and absorbing information aren't enough. PhD-level knowledge comes from the process of writing and doing original work.

> The reality is that a human will learn, given any materials including LLMs, but only if they truly desire to learn.

Also not true. We require kids to go to school partly because exposure to the environment and work inculcates skills regardless of whether kids want to do the work -- and regardless of whether they want to learn.

LLMs are damaging to students partly because they provide an escape hatch from that work and thereby prevent kids from acquiring skills.

Think of it this way: most people who want to be healthy and eat a healthy diet still find easy junk food tempting. What they want does not change the temptation, because the body and brain gravitate towards easy, cheap fulfillment of basic drives.

People facing challenging tasks, similarly, are tempted to take measures that reduce the amount of effort they require. The availability of tools that reduce the required effort also help shape a person's understanding of the value of the challenge and the work: "why should I do this hard task when I have a tool that can do it for me?" You and I know the answer to this question when we're discussing something like writing an essay or solving a problem in a math or programming class. Students frequently don't. They are by definition ignorant. Children, moreover, lack maturity. Their brains are less capable of resisting the easy path than an adult's. That's partly why parenting is important: parents provide boundaries and limits that kids need but won't and can't provide for themselves.

Sometimes people, especially kids, really do need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, through something in order to receive the benefits it offers. Being dragged through it sometimes convinces a person of its value and benefits. In a kid's case, there's a decent chance that the experience will improve executive function, shape expectations in a healthy way, inculcate grit, and become appreciation -- or at least habit.

I would not have written essays on my own as a student in secondary school. My English teachers had to provide that structure for me and impose the demand. But LLMs make it much more difficult to impose the demands, and kids are ill protected against the temptations of the cognitive equivalent of junk food, but an order of magnitude worse and more damaging.

Bingo. Claude can bang out nearly correct code when I give it an idea, but it doesn't have the idea and repeatedly misjudges both how much work remains and what kind.

On the other hand, I don't know all the ins or outs of macro expansion in yaml at compile time or when and where macros run, enabling us to conaume their results elsewhere in the yaml. Frankly, if I had time, I'd happily spend time on that and learn more about it. I don't, though. Claude knows and does the guessing and checking. So I provide the concept and it translates into a horrible soup of yaml. Clearly I'm able to press forward with ignorance, which is dangerous. There's a real risk that I'll wind up with the kinds of unhealthy work that worries the author of the tweet.

Could you explain how this applies? I don't mean to be difficult -- really. I appreciate that Hacker News is a great place for discussion, and I very much appreciate that's partly because of the work you're doing.

I'd just like to think that my criticism is thoughtful and is neither rigidly nor generically negative: I pointed out specific omissions and offered an analogy to explain the immaturity and cluelessness that I see in the piece -- not just that the claims are wrong but that the perspective is delivered so badly that it's difficul to take seriously. It wasn't meant to be unkind or a swipe; I didn't call names or sneer; it wasn't a generic tangent. It was the best way I could find to characterize the ways the piece's tone and content work together, undermining it and (almost certainly) rubbing people the wrong way.