6 ms·

I disagree, both of those are skills. Neither are skills that a large portion of users of those services pursue to any meaningful extent, I'll grant you that.

by jfyi 1mo ago

I disagree, both of those are skills. Neither are skills that a large portion of users of those services pursue to any meaningful extent, I'll grant you that. They also certainly are not synonymous with the term "soft skills" as I know it. So I think I am on your side of the fence on that part any way.

js8 1mo ago
I feel like if they were skills under a reasonable definition, you should be able to name an expert in these skills, and how do we know they are an expert. But I think you can't. It seems to me, instead, one is better at googling/prompting the better they are in a particular domain, but it only applies in that domain. Like knowing a jargon is not a skill, knowing the domain is.
- andsoitis 1mo ago
  Soft skills include: handling change under ambiguity, critical thinking under pressure, self-awareness, prioritizing, motivating and guiding others without relying on authority, navigating disagreement constructively.
- jfyi 1mo ago
  Johnny Long is the godfather of google dorking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1BR9itwOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1BR9itwOY https://blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-long.pdf https://blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-long.p... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_Security
- jfyi 1mo ago
  Jason Wei's chain-of-thought prompting techniques literally revolutionized llms themselves. https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903
- dspillett 1mo ago
  > you should be able to name an expert in these skills There are certainly local “finding information online” experts in many families and social groups. > and how do we know they are an expert They are the ones who get mentioned a lot in conversations in the manner “I'll have to ask [name]” with the implication that [name] will look up the information or know it from previous occasions people (possibly this specific person and [name] is getting sick of them asking and not remembering simple answers!) have asked.
- Forgeties79 1mo ago
  And of course if you point any of this out people go “Well many people are good at it, people getting bad results are just bad at it.” The constant refrain of “you’re just using it wrong” has become very tiresome. If you can always say “just use it right” every time a critique comes up, then we aren’t having an honest conversation about the limitations of these tools.
Forgeties79 1mo ago
It is impossible to duplicate results with an LLM. This strikes me as a serious barrier to calling it a proper skill. If you can’t even somewhat replicate the results you can’t really improve the input consistently. You can’t become “skilled” at it if you can’t even reproduce what you did. If you enter the same prompt 3 times the results are of pretty significantly different quality. ChatGPT literally has you A/B test for them sometimes. They’re right to call it superstition - it feels like we’re making incantations and hoping for the best a lot of the time. Prompting LLM’s still feels like a constant game of guess and check. At best you can argue it’s an educated guess. I don’t know about you but I didn’t learn math by guessing and checking, I frequently had to work backwards and review where I went wrong and/or I had the answer given to me with the work shown so I can learn. I can’t do that with a prompt. When I get bad results (which we all frequently do) I just guess what it didn’t like, try again, and pray for a better result.
- gilrain 1mo ago
  > It is impossible to duplicate results with an LLM. Humans are called experts in many domains whereby they cannot achieve duplicate results. In fact, in what domain can an expert do that? Nobody crosses the same river twice.
  - Forgeties79 1mo ago
    If you ask me to write an email, all 3 variations will be more or less the same, except it will almost always improve with each iteration. 3 cracks at a prompt is 3 separate, unrelated attempts. None of them informs the other. In fact, you run the risk of making it worse if you include previous versions.
    - 1659447091 1mo ago
      > 3 cracks at a prompt is 3 separate, unrelated attempts. None of them informs the other. Thats where the "skill" part comes in. Like your 3 attempts at email that `almost always improve`. This is where you input the "previous versions", not directly back into the model. It's the "soft skill" of being flexible and adjusting based on how an entity responds to the input. Not learning how to adjust the input (by using previous attempts to inform the next) to more optimally direct the output given the state of the llm (chat? agent? model, effort lvl etc) it will seem chaotic. The skills wont make an llm* deterministic, same as applying these soft skills to people. Give the same input to a person in `3 times separate, unrelated attempts` you are likely to get 3 different seemly chaotic outcomes. The "skill" is in being able to take what you received as output the first time, and make adjustments based on previous attempts while accounting for the state of the entity for the next attempt. * In no way am I saying they are conscious beings or whatever nonsense by using people in the analogy. There are, however, parallels in how a set of soft skills (and this is why they are "soft" skills) can be used to get more optimal results from an entity that should never be expected to act as a pure function.

by jfyi 1mo ago

js8 1mo ago

I feel like if they were skills under a reasonable definition, you should be able to name an expert in these skills, and how do we know they are an expert. But I think you can't. It seems to me, instead, one is better at googling/prompting the better they are in a particular domain, but it only applies in that domain. Like knowing a jargon is not a skill, knowing the domain is.

andsoitis 1mo ago
Soft skills include: handling change under ambiguity, critical thinking under pressure, self-awareness, prioritizing, motivating and guiding others without relying on authority, navigating disagreement constructively.
jfyi 1mo ago
Johnny Long is the godfather of google dorking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1BR9itwOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo1BR9itwOY https://blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-long.pdf https://blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-05/bh-us-05-long.p... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_Security
jfyi 1mo ago
Jason Wei's chain-of-thought prompting techniques literally revolutionized llms themselves. https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903 https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903
dspillett 1mo ago
> you should be able to name an expert in these skills There are certainly local “finding information online” experts in many families and social groups. > and how do we know they are an expert They are the ones who get mentioned a lot in conversations in the manner “I'll have to ask [name]” with the implication that [name] will look up the information or know it from previous occasions people (possibly this specific person and [name] is getting sick of them asking and not remembering simple answers!) have asked.
Forgeties79 1mo ago
And of course if you point any of this out people go “Well many people are good at it, people getting bad results are just bad at it.” The constant refrain of “you’re just using it wrong” has become very tiresome. If you can always say “just use it right” every time a critique comes up, then we aren’t having an honest conversation about the limitations of these tools.

Forgeties79 1mo ago

It is impossible to duplicate results with an LLM. This strikes me as a serious barrier to calling it a proper skill. If you can’t even somewhat replicate the results you can’t really improve the input consistently. You can’t become “skilled” at it if you can’t even reproduce what you did. If you enter the same prompt 3 times the results are of pretty significantly different quality. ChatGPT literally has you A/B test for them sometimes. They’re right to call it superstition - it feels like we’re making incantations and hoping for the best a lot of the time. Prompting LLM’s still feels like a constant game of guess and check. At best you can argue it’s an educated guess. I don’t know about you but I didn’t learn math by guessing and checking, I frequently had to work backwards and review where I went wrong and/or I had the answer given to me with the work shown so I can learn. I can’t do that with a prompt. When I get bad results (which we all frequently do) I just guess what it didn’t like, try again, and pray for a better result.

gilrain 1mo ago
> It is impossible to duplicate results with an LLM. Humans are called experts in many domains whereby they cannot achieve duplicate results. In fact, in what domain can an expert do that? Nobody crosses the same river twice.
- Forgeties79 1mo ago
  If you ask me to write an email, all 3 variations will be more or less the same, except it will almost always improve with each iteration. 3 cracks at a prompt is 3 separate, unrelated attempts. None of them informs the other. In fact, you run the risk of making it worse if you include previous versions.
  - 1659447091 1mo ago
    > 3 cracks at a prompt is 3 separate, unrelated attempts. None of them informs the other. Thats where the "skill" part comes in. Like your 3 attempts at email that `almost always improve`. This is where you input the "previous versions", not directly back into the model. It's the "soft skill" of being flexible and adjusting based on how an entity responds to the input. Not learning how to adjust the input (by using previous attempts to inform the next) to more optimally direct the output given the state of the llm (chat? agent? model, effort lvl etc) it will seem chaotic. The skills wont make an llm* deterministic, same as applying these soft skills to people. Give the same input to a person in `3 times separate, unrelated attempts` you are likely to get 3 different seemly chaotic outcomes. The "skill" is in being able to take what you received as output the first time, and make adjustments based on previous attempts while accounting for the state of the entity for the next attempt. * In no way am I saying they are conscious beings or whatever nonsense by using people in the analogy. There are, however, parallels in how a set of soft skills (and this is why they are "soft" skills) can be used to get more optimal results from an entity that should never be expected to act as a pure function.