Comment by causalscience
20 days ago
> why should I know anything
The obvious answer is "Because it's interesting."
But suppose you think strictly in utilitarian terms: what effort should I invest for what $$$ return. I have two things to say to you:
First: what a meaningless life you're living.
Second: you realize that if you don't learn anything because you have LLMs, and I learn everything because it's interesting, when you and I are competing, I'll have LLMs as well...? We'll be using the same tools, but I'll be able to reason and you won't.
I think the people who struggle with the question "Why should I know anything?" aren't going to learn anything anyway. You need curiosity to learn, or at least to learn a lot and well, and if you have curiosity you're not asking why you should learn anything.
To play devil's advocate: In the future, "knowing things" might not really be a prerequisite for living a decent life. If you could just instantly look anything up that you need to know, then why would you need to know anything? I don't think it's a ridiculous question. As long as I can maintain basic literacy and an ability to form questions for an LLM, why really do I kneed knowledge? Maybe I don't find any intrinsic "life meaning" from knowledge. Maybe I don't care if it's interesting. Pragmatically why should I be educated?
Why would I need to be able to lift 100kg? I'm never going to need to lift 100kg, and if I do need to, I'd just find a tool that will do it. My life isn't any less rich because I can't lift 100kg, and I can maintain basic body health without being able to lift weight from the ground.
Exactly. In the long term, I would argue that "interest" is always a bigger determining factor of professional success than innate "capability" in a field. An interested person can grow their competence over time, whereas a disinterested, yet capable person will mostly remain at a fixed level of competence.