To rationalize my gut-feelings on this, I think it comes down to the spectrum between:

1. A system that suggests words, the child learns the word, determines whether it matches their intent, and proceeds if they like the result.

2. A system that suggests words, and the child almost-blindly accepts them to get the task over with ASAP.

The end-results may look the same for any single short document, but in the long run... Well, I fear #2 is going to be way more common.

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zahlman 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The analogy with tab-completion of code seems apt. At first you blindly accept something because it has at least as good a chance of working as what you would have typed. Then you start to pay attention, and critically evaluate suggestions. Then you quickly if not blindly accept most suggestions, because they're clearly what you would have written anyway (or close enough to not care).

The phenomenon was observed in religious philosophy over a millennium ago (https://terebess.hu/zen/qingyuan.html).

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abustamam 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Tab completion was so novel back when full e2e AI tooling was not really effective.

Now that it is, I just turn tab completion off totally when I write code by hand. It's almost never right.

	▲	skydhash 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Emacs has completion (but you can bind it to tab). The nice thing is that you can change the algorithm to select what options come up. I’ve not set it to auto, but by the time I press the shortcut, it’s either only one option or a small sets.

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bruckie 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From his description, it sounded like this was more of #1. He cared a lot about the topic he was writing about, and has high standards for himself, so it's very likely that he would have considered and rejected poor suggestions.

I have mixed feeling about it. On the one hand, you're right: carefully considering suggestions can be a learning opportunity. On the other hand, approval is easier than generation, and I suspect that without flexing the "come up with it from scratch" muscle frequently, that his mind won't develop as much.

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yellowapple 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

#1 would be a net improvement over the status quo IMO. Seems like a great way for people to expand their vocabularies organically.

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lossyalgo 7 hours ago | parent [-]

That reminds me of one of the biggest IMO missing feature of Wordle: They never give a definition of the word after the game is finished! I usually do end up googling words I don't know (which is quite often) but I'm guessing I'm one of the few who goes to the trouble. I've even written to The New York Times a couple times to suggest adding a short definition at the end as I honestly feel like a ton of people could totally up their vocabulary game and it surely could be added with minimum effort (considering they even added a Discord multiplayer mode).

	▲	Terr_ 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Is Wordle really the best vehicle for that, though? I mean, it tends towards a subset of 5-letters words the audience is more likely to know in advance, excluding a lot of the more-surprising words. A "click to see more about why this answer fits" crossword, on the other hand...
	▲	yellowapple 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's a brilliant idea and now that you've mentioned it it seems like a rather glaring omission.