No tool replaces reasoning itself. Not even an LLM. All (most) tools have the capacity to, if you use them for this purpose.
> I would not classify calculators, spreadsheets, spelling and grammar checkers etc as basic reasoning tools.
Why not? I have seen people use calculators to chug "6-2" before, and they were not children. In fact, all four of those examples are perfect for my point. They create the opportunity to do great things, or be a crutch so you don't have to think. If you are convinsed that there is no user of grammarly that didn't just quickly type a draft and throw it in without proofreading, for the sake of not needing to use basic grammatical reasoning, then you have a very kind view of mankind.
> I'm talking about bringing together several independent concepts or sets of facts and forming a coherent point of view or argument from them.
This is a more narrow view than what I was arguing, so it's possible we will have to agree to disagree. I guess a quick rebuttle here is that people who don't exercise sufficient thought to form coherent conclusions from separate information were going to stay stupid anyway. And then yes, ChatGPT would be bad because it could in theory enable this behavior in its handouts.