I think this (LLMs as playful engineering) will white pill me the way the Gervais principle black pilled me around a decade ago. Cyberspace is healing 😌
Does being good at writing with AI mean you’re having fun while doing it or that what you’ve written is good? It sounded distinctly like the former, that that was the key message, but it became less clear and perhaps even went back and forth.
enjoyed the playfulness angle - reminded me of playing with the kids in the neighborhood back in the 60s building a tree house, catching bees in baby food jars, arranging ranks of toy soldiers on the driveway. The group aspect made a lot of difference.
LLMs can play in groups:
personas. Maybe it is multiple antagonistic personas. Like a writers’ room. ... Initially I made a writing coach, a developmental editor, and a marketer. ... What I have recently started exploring, however, is crafting competing versions of myself. These me’s have my core motivations, values, and styles, but dialed to very different settings to create (as characters often are) heightened versions of me.
which resonated for me with this bit about tensions that sounded protocolish:
It deliberately maintains tensions between these four types of thinking.
The system keeps the fast thinkers (Intuitive Recognizer and Technical Implementer) in productive tension with the slow thinkers (Creative Innovator and Systematic Validator). It also maintains tension between the aesthetically-oriented minds (Intuitive Recognizer and Creative Innovator) and the technically-oriented ones (Technical Implementer and Systematic Validator).
Think of it like a jazz quartet where the musicians are constantly riffing off each other’s ideas, creating something none of them could produce alone. The tension isn’t a bug — it’s the feature that generates breakthrough insights.
I think this (LLMs as playful engineering) will white pill me the way the Gervais principle black pilled me around a decade ago. Cyberspace is healing 😌
Does being good at writing with AI mean you’re having fun while doing it or that what you’ve written is good? It sounded distinctly like the former, that that was the key message, but it became less clear and perhaps even went back and forth.
didn't quite understand: do i need an LLM to play with text-toys or not?
Yes
enjoyed the playfulness angle - reminded me of playing with the kids in the neighborhood back in the 60s building a tree house, catching bees in baby food jars, arranging ranks of toy soldiers on the driveway. The group aspect made a lot of difference.
LLMs can play in groups:
personas. Maybe it is multiple antagonistic personas. Like a writers’ room. ... Initially I made a writing coach, a developmental editor, and a marketer. ... What I have recently started exploring, however, is crafting competing versions of myself. These me’s have my core motivations, values, and styles, but dialed to very different settings to create (as characters often are) heightened versions of me.
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/05/to-write-well-with-ai-write-against-it.html
which resonated for me with this bit about tensions that sounded protocolish:
It deliberately maintains tensions between these four types of thinking.
The system keeps the fast thinkers (Intuitive Recognizer and Technical Implementer) in productive tension with the slow thinkers (Creative Innovator and Systematic Validator). It also maintains tension between the aesthetically-oriented minds (Intuitive Recognizer and Creative Innovator) and the technically-oriented ones (Technical Implementer and Systematic Validator).
Think of it like a jazz quartet where the musicians are constantly riffing off each other’s ideas, creating something none of them could produce alone. The tension isn’t a bug — it’s the feature that generates breakthrough insights.
https://medium.com/intuitionmachine/the-ai-that-thinks-like-a-dream-team-9b177c66eecb
Re hyper(con)texts -> LLMs...
https://x.com/sotirov/status/1876891843331276862