Shopping Hungry

LLMs are the learning tool I wished for my entire life. The internet was already doing a bang-up job of democratizing information, but the advent of LLMs has effectively made information discovery a solved problem. Someday soon they’ll no doubt get enshitified and ChatGPT will force-feed me ads every tenth token, BUT FOR NOW. For now it’s lovely.

Unfortunately, finding information is only part of the problem. The crux of learning is attention. If we don’t teach people how to train their attention this new tech might just make us more effective at wasting time. This isn’t just an issue for young people either. The allure of trash content exists for everyone, and it doesn’t go away. You need something more important worth focusing on, and to learn how to curate your own experience online.

I can’t preach. I’ve been down enough of my own youtube rabbit holes. And it’s not just the fault of ‘the algorithm’. I have that algorithm to thank for every great channel I enjoy, but had to train it and maintain it. I had to learn to interact with the platform with intention. It’s like shopping for groceries: you have to know what you want before you go in. Or you’re going to impulse-buy a bunch of crap. And on the internet, you pay with something much more valuable than money - you pay with your time.