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Playing in the Creek

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346 points c1ccccc1 | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.351s | source
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DrSiemer ◴[] No.43651677[source]
So many articles and comments claim Ai will destroy critical thinking in our youths. Is there any evidence that this conviction that many people share is even remotely true?

To me it just seems like the same old knee-jerk luddite response people have to any powerful new technology that challenges that status quo since the dawn of time. The calculator did not erase math wizards, the television did not replace books and so on. It just made us better, faster, more productive.

Sometimes there is an adjustment period (we still haven't figured out how to deal with short dopamine hits from certain types of entertainment and social media), but things will balance themselves out eventually.

Some people may go full-on Wall-E, but I for one will never stop tinkering, and many of my friends won't either.

The things I could have done if I had had an LLM as a kid... I think I've learned more in the past two years than ever before.

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1. Tistron ◴[] No.43652300[source]
I would expect people today to be quite a lot worse at mental arithmetic that we used to be before calculators. And worse at memorizing stuff than before writing.

We have tools to help us with that, and maybe it isn't a big loss? And they also bring new arenas and abilities.

And maybe in the future we will be worse at critical thinking (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484224), and maybe it isn't a big loss? It is hard to imagine what new abilities and arenas will emerge. Though I think that critical thinking is a worse loss than memory and mental arithmetic. Though, also, we are probably a lot less good at it than we think we are, generally.