Playing in the Creek

Requesting someone to please explain the "coquina" metaphor.

Maybe I’m not smart enough, or too tired to decode these metaphors, so I plugged the essay into ChatGPT and got a clear explanation from 4o.

Are you at all concerned that plugging stuff like this into ChatGPT is leaving you with weaker cognitive muscles? Or is it more similar to what people do when they see a new word and reach for their dictionary?

> Are you at all concerned that plugging stuff like this into ChatGPT is leaving you with weaker cognitive muscles?

Couldn't this very same argument have been used against any form of mental augmentation, like written language and computers? Or, in an extended interpretation, against any form of physical augmentation, like tool use?

You can argue whatever you want to argue.

I make my living with my brain so I do worry about the downsides of removing boredom and mental struggle from my days.

It's almost certainly going to be bad, and almost certainly going to be unavoidable.

I can't spell for shit anymore. Ever since auto correct became omnipresent in pretty much all writing fields, my brain just kinda ditched remembering how to spell words.

buuuttt

Manual labor has been obsolete for at least 100 years now for certain classes of people, and fitness is still an enormous recreational activity people partake in. So even in an AI heavy society, I still strongly suspect there will be "brain games" that people still enjoy and regularly play.