Comment by roywiggins
1 day ago
Lengthy ChatGPT rabbit holes are kind of a simulacrum of productivity, they keep you in a flow state but it's liable to be pure cotton candy, not actual productivity.
Spending all weekend on a puzzle or a project at least keeps you in a tight feedback loop with something outside your own skull. ChatGPT offers you a perfect mirror of the inside of your own skull while pretending to be a separate entity. I think this is one reason why it can be both compelling and risky to engage deeply with them: it feels like more than it is. It eliminates a lot of the friction that might take you out of a flow state, but without that friction you can just spin out.
It depends. Do not pursue pure cotton candy. :P
Put it this way: at least with vibe coding you'll eventually hit something where you realize that it's produced crappy, useless code that you need to throw out.
With extended philosophical conversations there is nothing grounding the conversation, nothing to force you to come up short and realize when you've spent hours pursuing something mistaken. It's intellectual empty calories.
Depends on how you use it. You can "ground" it by asking what authors have explored this or ask for book recommendations, then read the wiki page of the author, read some texts by them etc. You can explore the history as well, like what was happening at that time, who were important contemporaries or influences, people who thought the opposite etc. I've found interesting books (that are somewhat niche but fairly well known in the field, non-fringe) this way.