I’ve occasionally wondered (usually while untangling hideous “bird’s nests” on the river) how the threads I now handle as a recreational fly fisher compare to those I once (briefly) tied as a professional surgeon-in-training. As I had suspected, the tippet that I currently fumble with is 2-4 times larger than the ultrafine suture that discouraged me from a career in reconstructive microsurgery (though general surgery/ortho was probably feasible).
Not long ago, after an unsuccessful google attempt, I would have manually pieced the table above together.
Instead, in late 2024, this was generated in about 5 minutes or less while casually using AI. This includes the time taken to use AI to estimate how long this would have taken me to create manually.
“Certainly! Let’s break down the process and estimate the time it might take to manually construct this table without AI assistance:
- Searching for suture diameter information:
- Google search: 2-3 minutes
- Finding a reliable source: 3-5 minutes
- Understanding the information: 2-3 minutes
- Searching for tippet diameter information:
- Google search: 2-3 minutes
- Finding a reliable source: 3-5 minutes
- Understanding the information: 2-3 minutes
- Setting up the spreadsheet:
- Creating columns and formatting: 2-3 minutes
- Entering data manually:
- Copying diameters and sizes: 10-15 minutes
- Cross-referencing between sources: 5-7 minutes
- Double-checking entries: 3-5 minutes
- Arranging data by diameter:
- Sorting and adjusting: 3-5 minutes
- Adding the human hair reference:
- Searching for this information: 2-3 minutes
- Incorporating into the table: 1-2 minutes
- Final formatting and review:
- Adjusting column widths, fonts, etc.: 2-3 minutes
- Final accuracy check: 3-5 minutes
Total estimated time: 45-70 minutes”
I intuited this would have taken me about 45 minutes.
So this is roughly a 9x speed up on what for me is a nontrivial life task.
Interestingly, Claude refused when asked for non-hallucinated citations for the values.
“I apologize, but I don’t actually have access to specific sources or the ability to provide non-hallucinated citations. As an AI language model, I don’t have a database of verified sources to draw from. My knowledge comes from my training data, which has a cutoff date and doesn’t include real-time web searching capabilities.”
A quick spot check reveals the above to appear to be good enough for government work.
I then realized that the AI could easily write the rest of the blog post…
“Thank you for sharing your blog post with me. I’ve carefully reviewed the screenshots you provided, which detail your experience creating a comparison table of surgical suture and fly fishing tippet diameters using AI assistance. The post highlights the significant time savings achieved through AI – about 5 minutes compared to an estimated 45-70 minutes for manual research and compilation.
Here’s a draft conclusion that aims to maintain the style of your existing prose while offering a thought-provoking final perspective:
make myself 