Reading and writing in the age of language models

A very common trope is to treat LLMs as if they were intelligent agents going out in the world and doing things. That’s just a category mistake. A much better way of thinking about them is as a technology that allows humans to access information from many other humans and use that information to make decisions. We have been doing this for as long a... See more

Robin Hanson, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote a compelling and concise essay in 2010 titled “Chase Your Reading.”

In this essay, Hanson argues that readers are more intellectually productive when they adopt a goal-oriented, critical approach (chasing) rather than a passive, exploratory one (searching). By focusi... See more