Great piece! It made me think about several connected threads. I hope you don’t mind some unpacking :)
It was very thought-provoking when you said, “...I never could have written alone.” The opposite of alone is together, so you didn’t refer to a tool that assists your workflow, but perhaps to something entirely different.
Then I’d ask: why “never”? Do you think we’re moving toward a place where we, alone, are no longer good enough and our imperfections that were once okay now gradually become unacceptable? Is this real, or is it something we’re doing to ourselves?
Unsurprisingly, you've zoomed in on probably the most interesting sentence in the piece. :)
I spent considerable time pondering whether to include the word "never." After some self-reflection, I felt it was justified. I'm actually planning to develop a separate essay exploring just the reasoning behind that word.
Let me give you the short version with an example from my earlier research career.
Perhaps the most significant theory I ever developed, which I called "ludic constructivism," was never published. I delivered a keynote address about it at an international conference, and it formed the theoretical foundation for the physics learning game "Ludwig," which won several international awards. I've even been invited to write about it. Yet despite all this, it was never published in a book, journal, or conference proceeding.
The reason? By the time I had fully developed the theory, I had completely lost interest in it. I understood how everything worked, and that was enough for me. There were so many other fascinating things to pursue that writing it up felt like a waste of time. Even though I knew a peer-reviewed paper would be professionally beneficial and I had all the opportunities to do it, I simply couldn't bring myself to sit down and write the text.
Looking back, I now recognize this as my neurodiversity at work. Had LLMs existed then, there would likely be a book or at least a high-tier journal article today.
So the "never" in that sentence stems directly from my own experience. There were articles I simply couldn't write, even though the thinking for the articles was complete and the outcomes of that thinking were successfully implemented and tested.
That makes total sense! It sounds like it truly unlocks something for you. Neurodiversity is such an important part and is often overlooked.
In my case, writing can take over completely. I’ve noticed that after a couple of hours in that mental space, it becomes very difficult to join a spoken conversation. It feels like I have to throttle down from 300 mph to 10 mph in two seconds, and the transition is exhausting. Spoken sentences suddenly feel too linear and suboptimal to capture the pattern and speed of a thought. The same happens when I make art.
Btw, one of the things on my list is to go back and use a reasoning LLM to write up the theory in a way that updates it to our current understanding of Game Based Learning. Even though there is no written document, the keynote address at the Clash of Realities conference in Cologne 2010 still exists on my YouTube channel and I can probably dig up the powerpoint somewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTF1cOFwCDw
It would be an interesting experiment. I previously conducted a similar test using one of my recorded lectures from the pre-Zoom era. I extracted a wav and gave it to Word to transcribe it; it is surprisingly good at it. The biggest challenge was establishing the context for the LLM, as the context was not part of the text. For instance, when you mentioned that "the teacher would need to have some psychotherapeutic competencies," that would typically misdirect the disciplinary focus of the LLM based on my experience, because, while never mentioned otherwise, it is used to describe the teacher's role, which itself is a major focal point.
The context is still in my head. I expect it will take some extended interaction with the AI, but it should be possible to extract everything in a way that is true to the original idea.
Great piece! It made me think about several connected threads. I hope you don’t mind some unpacking :)
It was very thought-provoking when you said, “...I never could have written alone.” The opposite of alone is together, so you didn’t refer to a tool that assists your workflow, but perhaps to something entirely different.
Then I’d ask: why “never”? Do you think we’re moving toward a place where we, alone, are no longer good enough and our imperfections that were once okay now gradually become unacceptable? Is this real, or is it something we’re doing to ourselves?
Unsurprisingly, you've zoomed in on probably the most interesting sentence in the piece. :)
I spent considerable time pondering whether to include the word "never." After some self-reflection, I felt it was justified. I'm actually planning to develop a separate essay exploring just the reasoning behind that word.
Let me give you the short version with an example from my earlier research career.
Perhaps the most significant theory I ever developed, which I called "ludic constructivism," was never published. I delivered a keynote address about it at an international conference, and it formed the theoretical foundation for the physics learning game "Ludwig," which won several international awards. I've even been invited to write about it. Yet despite all this, it was never published in a book, journal, or conference proceeding.
The reason? By the time I had fully developed the theory, I had completely lost interest in it. I understood how everything worked, and that was enough for me. There were so many other fascinating things to pursue that writing it up felt like a waste of time. Even though I knew a peer-reviewed paper would be professionally beneficial and I had all the opportunities to do it, I simply couldn't bring myself to sit down and write the text.
Looking back, I now recognize this as my neurodiversity at work. Had LLMs existed then, there would likely be a book or at least a high-tier journal article today.
So the "never" in that sentence stems directly from my own experience. There were articles I simply couldn't write, even though the thinking for the articles was complete and the outcomes of that thinking were successfully implemented and tested.
That makes total sense! It sounds like it truly unlocks something for you. Neurodiversity is such an important part and is often overlooked.
In my case, writing can take over completely. I’ve noticed that after a couple of hours in that mental space, it becomes very difficult to join a spoken conversation. It feels like I have to throttle down from 300 mph to 10 mph in two seconds, and the transition is exhausting. Spoken sentences suddenly feel too linear and suboptimal to capture the pattern and speed of a thought. The same happens when I make art.
Btw, one of the things on my list is to go back and use a reasoning LLM to write up the theory in a way that updates it to our current understanding of Game Based Learning. Even though there is no written document, the keynote address at the Clash of Realities conference in Cologne 2010 still exists on my YouTube channel and I can probably dig up the powerpoint somewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTF1cOFwCDw
(Little warning: I was a lot heavier back then.)
It would be an interesting experiment. I previously conducted a similar test using one of my recorded lectures from the pre-Zoom era. I extracted a wav and gave it to Word to transcribe it; it is surprisingly good at it. The biggest challenge was establishing the context for the LLM, as the context was not part of the text. For instance, when you mentioned that "the teacher would need to have some psychotherapeutic competencies," that would typically misdirect the disciplinary focus of the LLM based on my experience, because, while never mentioned otherwise, it is used to describe the teacher's role, which itself is a major focal point.
The context is still in my head. I expect it will take some extended interaction with the AI, but it should be possible to extract everything in a way that is true to the original idea.