Thinking through conversation
I often write in order to "think out loud", so to speak. Two different things are going through one's own train of thought privately, and trying to convey it to someone else. Some stuff that seems to make sense, when uttered to another human being suddenly sound stupid. That is one reason I like to come and write blog posts. I also imagine there is a kind of conversation going on. Not a one-to-one conversation, of course, but a more open conversation in which we all participate and which develops our collective understanding of things. I read your post and I gain a new perspective. I, in turn, write a post where I pose my own ideas for your consideration.
Now, I don't really have any friends (the ones I do have are far away and busy with their lives), and I don't like to go into most internet communities for a number of reasons. So I don't use Discord, Reddit, imageboards, or even IRC anymore. I like this sort of paused conversations, where one is allowed to develop their own point and is not immediately buffetted by a bunch of mostly inane replies.
But I do sometimes want to think out loud and get some kind of immediate feedback, enter the LLM. For a while I've used LLM chatbots as a way to try to sort out my thoughts, having virtually nobody to talk to. You probably already know this, but it sucks. Anyone who has talked to one of those chatbots for any period of time knows that their response is always the same. It is always the same. Just as there is a certain pattern to how they write that the brain immediately recognizes, their replies to anything I say have exactly the same format and, ultimately, all they do is merely echo back what I just said, only much belaborated.
So, you know, I would rather come here, and talk. I have many ideas, some half formed, some are thoughts I have during my day, plans I make, and some are deep issues that are relevant to me and that I ponder over the long term. I used to be afraid of letting them out to the public, perhaps fearing they are not very good or interesting. This is something I must overcome, but I think it certainly is better than dumping it into a chatbot that doesn't understand anything and only builds a profile for the benefit of techno-oligarchs.