The Exhaustion of Talking to a Tool
The Exhaustion of Talking to a Tool
与工具对话的疲惫感
LLMs are exhausting because they require spending precious social energy to operate them. Energy that might be better spent on people. 大语言模型（LLMs）令人感到疲惫，因为操作它们需要消耗宝贵的社交能量。而这些能量本可以更好地花在人际交往上。
When you use a good tool, your brain pretends that the tool is a part of your body: when you drive a car, when you type on a keyboard or when you hit that key chord to do that thing in Vim or VSCode. In contrast, when you talk to somebody, you are participating in a social ritual: share a fire, tell a story, help me close this ticket so we don’t have to drag it to the next quarter because my manager will chew me out. Obviously, the social brainwork is harder and requires much more of you. 当你使用一件好工具时，你的大脑会将其视为身体的一部分：比如开车时、敲击键盘时，或者在 Vim 或 VSCode 中按下快捷键执行操作时。相比之下，当你与人交谈时，你是在参与一种社交仪式：围炉夜话、讲述故事，或是请求对方帮忙关闭工单，以免拖到下个季度被经理责骂。显然，这种社交层面的脑力劳动更艰巨，对你的要求也更高。
When you use an LLM, you don’t get the tool magic: (almost) nobody will claim that Claude or Cursor feel like an extension of their body - they are not consistent or fast enough to trick the brain like a keyboard or a car can. Instead, you get to pay the social tax: you converse and negotiate and convince and sometimes even get angry at the so-called tool. 当你使用 LLM 时，你无法获得那种“工具魔法”：几乎没人会说 Claude 或 Cursor 感觉像是他们身体的延伸——它们不够稳定，速度也不够快，无法像键盘或汽车那样欺骗大脑。相反，你必须支付“社交税”：你需要与这个所谓的工具对话、协商、说服，有时甚至会对它感到愤怒。
But the social tax is only worth paying because people give you so much more in return: they teach you something new, or challenge you, or inspire you, or tell you to GTFO if you are trying to BS them - or you might teach someone something, challenge them, or even inspire them! On days when I have these interactions I might be tired at the end of the day, but it was worth it. 但支付社交税之所以值得，是因为人与人之间的互动能给你带来更多回报：他们会教你新知识、挑战你的观点、启发你，或者在你胡说八道时让你“滚蛋”——反之，你也可以教导、挑战或启发他人！在经历过这些互动的日子里，虽然我会在一天结束时感到疲惫，但这一切都是值得的。
With LLMs, you mostly just get more of the same: more code, more tests, more excuses. Sometimes you get more bug reports which I do appreciate. 而对于 LLM，你得到的往往只是更多同质化的东西：更多的代码、更多的测试、更多的借口。有时你确实能得到更多的错误报告，这一点我倒是很感激。
Is it worth the social brainwork? IDK, for some tasks maybe - there are things a single person can do now that would have been impossible a year ago. But for all tasks? And wouldn’t that social brainwork do more good if it was directed at the real people you are working with? 这种社交脑力劳动值得吗？我不知道。对于某些任务来说或许值得——现在一个人能完成的事情，在一年前是不可能实现的。但对于所有任务都值得吗？如果把这些社交脑力劳动投入到与你共事的真实人类身上，岂不是更有意义？
LLMs ask us to talk to them, but rarely reward that effort in kind. LLM 要求我们与它们对话，却很少以同样的方式回报我们的付出。
Carpentry tools recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, a 16th-century sailing ship. By the Mary Rose Trust, CC BY-SA 3.0 从 16 世纪帆船“玛丽玫瑰号”残骸中打捞出的木工工具。图片来源：Mary Rose Trust, CC BY-SA 3.0
Yes, you can also get mad at the Rust compiler but you can also get mad at traffic so maybe evolution still has some work left in that department. 是的，你也会对 Rust 编译器感到愤怒，但你也会对交通拥堵感到愤怒，所以也许进化论在这一领域还有待完善。