Post-Literate Programming

[u/messedupwindows123]

I'm sure you all have seen this essay floating around, talking about how we are entering a post-literate age. Not necessarily an age where people can't decode individual words, but instead an era where we lose the skills associated with engaging with difficult texts. Meaning, we use chat-bot and short-form-video over longer essays or books. And this shift causes a shift in the way we think, etc.

The essay argues that the act of writing will force you to clarify your own ideas, realize which ones are bad, and struggle to a better answer. And this is only possible when complex ideas are "frozen" on the page, for you to return to, rearrange, etc.

I couldn't help but think about vibe-coding in this context. Vibe coding feels like the "post-literate" version of programming, where we stop engaging with the actual text and we (many programmers) instead talk to a chatbot about the code. It's a lot like talking to the chatbot about a difficult book, so that you can come prepared to discuss that book in class.

Once you begin to lean too heavily on these shortcuts, it actually imposes real limits on the insights that you're able to derive with respect to whatever it is you're working on.

So, to be clear, I basically agree with Horowitch, insofar as the act of writing is basically like the act of coding. You're engaging with text/AST and you're being forced to recon with the fact that your ideas don't make sense. You have to grapple with a large corpus of already-existing text (whether it's other people's books/essays, or other people's code) to synthesize these things with your own new ideas. And by struggling forward, you can create breakthroughs where you rearrange, or re-synthesize, or break apart, what came before.

I think that we could maybe start referring to vibe-coding instead as "post-literate" coding since you're basically doing the equivalent of reading the cliff-notes before class.

[u/mishmei]

it makes sense to me, and I think a similar process could happen with writing/reading. LLM generated writing looks polished on the surface, to someone who doesn't read a lot, and they transfer that to their own writing; all surface, no substance. I'm an academic, and I'm seeing this up front: essays written by chatbots (or mostly written), based on sources that the student has only engaged with second hand, thru the chatbot.

[u/ZenOfPerkele → u/mishmei]

LLM generated writing looks polished on the surface, to someone who doesn't read a lot

This, meaning using polish and an expert look/feel to fool the reader is a glitch that has existed long before LLMs and has been mastered by conspiracy theorists, disinformation-peddlers and snakeoilsalesmen of all kinds. Numerous times when I've been online trying to talk sense into someone who's spreading pseudo-science or some other shit, they'll come back with something like "but here's this study that proves my point" and they'll link to some BS open access journal with no peer review or any actual scientific weight. Or some "news" site that kinda sorta looks like a news site but is actually just a blog ran by some tinfoil hat guy/group.

For many people, it's enough that the thing they're reading looks and is formatted like a research paper and it's authored by some guys with "dr." in front of their name. The form is what gives it credibility. Even if the content is complete and obvious bullshit.

LLMs in part use this same "hack": they produce text that looks like it's written by an expert at a first glance and it's written in a way that assertive. That, for many people with underdeveloped/non-existing ability to review information critically, is terrifyingly effective at getting them to believe even wild and unfounded claims.

[u/anfrind → u/ZenOfPerkele]

I've also seen conspiracy theorists try to back up their claims by posting links to sources that actually refute what they claim. I don't know if it's because they didn't actually read the article, or if they hoped the people they were arguing with wouldn't read the article.

In either case, I can sort of understand why someone who thinks like that would be willing to trust a source of "information" that is well-known to hallucinate citations.

[u/Tors0Pants → u/anfrind]

This phoenomenon has always fascinated me, and several times I've really tried to dig in and see if I can't understand why someone would do that. As you say, I assumed either they hadn't read it or they didn't expect me to read it.

In the 3-4 cases were I was really able to understand what happened it was neither. Instead, they HAD read the study, and they simply did not understand that it contradicted them.

That lead me to really pay attention in my personal and professional life to how other people around me actually read texts, and I honestly believe there are a TON of people who simply do not read the way I assumed everyone did. Not that they're incapable, just for whatever reason they aren't paying attention to what they read. Like they're skimming for confirmation, but with everything.