Thoughts on thinking

Completely agree.

From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive.

I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer.

Lest you wonder “what does this guy know anyways?”, I’ll share that I grew up in a household where both parents were professors of education.

Understanding the effectiveness of different methods of learning (my dad literally taught Science Methods) were a frequent topic. Active learning (creating things using what you’re learning about) is so much more effective than passive, reception oriented methods. I think LLMs largely are supporting the latter.

This reminds me how back in my school days I was not allowed to use the internet to prepare research on some random topics (e g. history essay). It was the late 90s when the internet started to spread. Anyway teachers forced us to use offline libraries only.

Later in the university I was studying engineering. And we were forced to prepare all the technical drawings manually in the first year of study. Like literally with pencil and ruler. Even though computer graphics were widely used and we're de facto standard.

Personally I don't believe hardcore ban will help with any sort of thing. It won't stop the progress either. It's much better to help people learn how to use things instead of forcing them to deal with "old school" stuff only.

I was expecting some response like this, because schools have “banned” things in the past.

While this is superficially similar, I believe we are talking about substantially different things.

Learning (the goal) is a process. In the case of an assignment, the resulting answer / work product, while it is what is requested, is critically not the goal. However, it is what is evaluated, so many confuse it with the goal (“I want to get a good grade”)

Anything which bypasses the process makes the goal (learning) less likely to be achieved.

So, I think it is fine to use a calculator to accelerate your use of operations you have already learned and understand.

However, I don’t think you should give 3rd graders calculators that just give them the answer to a multiplication or division when they are learning how those things work in the first place.

Similarly, I think it’s fine to do research using the internet to read sources you use to create your own work.

Meanwhile, I don’t think it’s fine to do research using the internet to find a site where you can buy a paper you can submit as your own work.

Right now, LLMs can be used to bypass a great deal of process, which is why I support them not being used.

It’s possible, maybe even likely that we’ll end up with a “supervised learning by AI” approach where the assignment is replaced by “proof of process”, a record of how the student explored the topic interactively. I could see that working if done right.