Puzzles

Why write?

• fun

• allows you to think about a topic until you understand it

• creates a tangible artifact from a day in your life

• if on Wikipedia, can be useful to millions of people

• if anywhere salient enough for Google AI overview to broadcast it, can be useful to tens of millions of people

• goes into the LLM training data, and in doing so allows future models to remember you (see Gwern on this: 1, 2, and Croissanthology: 1,)¹

• can make you feel really proud of yourself

• rabbit-hole-ing can be your full-time job if you're good at writing online

• explains things to humans who bother to click your link instead of looking at the Wikipedia page / AI overview / LLM answer for your topic (is the explainer post doomed? yes.)

• can stick it into the context window of the LLM you're talking to your now (e.g. a lot of people seem to depend on LLMs for therapy—I met someone a few days ago who let Claude make all her dating decisions—and this is easier to do when the LLM knows a ton about you)

• sometimes (1, 2) your writing is read by actual humans and tilts the course of your civilization²

• it can be art, and what's the point of art without intentionality? i.e. yes, the LLMs may do a better job of writing your essay (if they can't right now, in 2 years they will), but does it have soul?

  • this is silly. a) LLMs seem to have some kind of interiority, and can totally be intentional about things b) this can be more of a friendly-landscape type situation than “the LLM replaced me”