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Comment by Cumpiler69 | Hacker News Reader

This is the sequel to "You better learn calculus because you won't always have a calculator in your pocket." Well I already had a calculator on my Casio watch and now I have access to an AI supercomputer my pocket. Check mate Ms. Levenstein, joke's on you.

>It's sometimes a struggle to get them to think for themselves!

Was it any easier/better before ChatGPT? In my generation MTV and DOOM was to blame for kids being unable to think for themselves. Before that, rock metal was to blame for perverting the youth.

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An LLM is not an AI supercomputer. It will regularly give you information that is false, and if you do not know the subject well, you probably won't notice how wrong it is. We are still a very long way from Star Trek's computer being able to help you out.

I look at LLMs like the advice given when Wikipedia launched. Use it as a jumping off point, but check its sources.

Hard to dive, if you don't know how to swim. LLM generated information needs you to be able to understand what it's producing, to be able to judge it. For that, you need education... That it can't trustworthily provide.

You can't expect someone without a background to understand quantum entanglement. Can't expect someone without the knowledge to comprehend memory management.

And if you do have the background... You're going to do a much better job than AI "slop", and that nickname has become popular for a very good reason.

A calculator will give you bad information too if you don't know how to use the tool.

A calculator won't give you bad information if you use it correctly, though. AI, will. The same prompt can generate vastly different answers.

Even the codegen examples given by the AI companies themselves have flaws in them. Critical flaws, like Claude's testing rig that doesn't test what it says it does, for example. The system is inherently flawed for most purposes it is currently being used for.

A calculator won't give you bad information if you use it correctly, though. AI, will. The same prompt can generate vastly different answers.

I think this is exactly it except that part of “knowing how to use it” is also largely about knowing its limitations… ‘trust’ but verify my 11-year old has been using chatgpt/claude since it came out and I have nothing but awesome experience with how she is using it

You sorta just made the point I'm trying to make here.

How the heck, does your 11-year old, verify? Do they turn to you, who already has the necessary background? The AI generated information cannot be verified by someone who cannot already do, what it does.

how do you verify? think about how would you do that if say you were forced to use AI for everything you do (I have friend that works in a place like this…).

of course my kid is 11 so she is learning about algebra and electro motors and logic and roman empire… “AI” is one step in that learning but an insanely patient teacher. back in a day - she did not understand cube roots… she asked, was given an answer, she still didn’t get it, was given an alternate explanation which still didn’t click (worse than original), asked again (“I still do not understand, do you have another way to try to explain it to me…”) and so on. again, it is a guide, a very knowledgeable and patient guide… it is part of the journey, not the destination. anyone using it as destination (by reading MANY HN posts this is a vast majority of people) is going to be in the world of hurt

Could you easily verify the info from the library books back in the day?

Back in the day, publishers were punished with fraud cases if they didn't verify their authors writings, so yes, verification was part of the chain.

Different brands also traded on the trustworthiness of their platforms, and would issue yearly correctionals.

Neither of those is analagous to glue on pizza.

I think technology is making the general populace stupider. Presidential debates are a litmus test for what politicians expect of the populace. A hundred years ago they sounded a lot different than how they sound now. Does your nihilism encompass this change as well?

So what is your proposed solution?

Ban technology that helps us "think" and go back to paper and ink?

Or would you rather we keep innovating but then pretend that technology doesn't exist (closed book, no calculators) to force us to be "smarter"?

My tone might have indicated otherwise, but I don't have a solution because I don't really see a problem along this axis. I don't really care about how stupid everyone is, as long as their material conditions are at a standard I consider good.

Well for a long time Colleges artificially took away calculators as they are great cheating tools so I guess that was true

Let me tell you, back in my day ...

> This is the sequel to "You better learn calculus because you won't always have a calculator in your pocket."

Yeah it's all fun and games until you find a cashier who can't substract 20ct from $1 and need to get their iphone out to solve this really hard equation. Or people who can't locate Africa on a world map. You don't build a prosperous society on these foundations, regardless if LLMs can answer your questions

>Yeah it's all fun and games until you find a cashier who can't substract 20ct from $1 and need to get their iphone out to solve this really hard equation.

WTH, Cash registers have already been doing that automatically at every transition for the past 70 years or so.

>Or people who can't locate Africa on a world map.

How does that knowledge have anything to do with their work lives? Does your boss jump in the middle of your TPS reports in Jira and ask you to point Africa on the map within 3 seconds without using your phone or you're fired?

I lived in the 90's Eastern Europe where a lot of people knew where Africa was on the map but society was anything but prosperous. Knowledge of basic geography is no guarantee of prosperity, your ability to get money is, and plenty of people in rich countries can make money without knowing where Africa is since workers in rich countries are way more specialized than before. Now you can be a car owner without knowing how to change the oil or how a clutch works. That was not the case 50 or so years ago.

Knowledge of random shit or trivia has no value anymore in developed societies where every worker becomes more and more specialized in specific niches versus societies where everyone knows a little bit of everything from car repair, a little bit of plumbing, some farming and maybe some medical patch work on the side but nobody is specialized in any valuable skills.

> Unless they're geography teachers or pilots, how does that knowledge impact their work lives?

Democracy needs enlightened citizens, otherwise it's an idiocracy. But we already know in which world we live.

>Democracy needs enlightened citizens

Critical thinking makes one enlightened, not memorizing trivia that anyone can Google on a whim, like where Africa is on the map.

Understanding how democracy, taxes, politics, resources, compounding interest, inflation, lobbying, corruption, etc and ability to connect the dots between these, is more important for society than pointing at foreign continents on the map.

> Understanding how democracy, taxes, politics, resources, compounding interest, inflation, lobbying, corruption, etc and ability to connect the dots between these...

So how do you do this if you have an oracle that answers the exact question you have without any struggle? I find that the most useful things I learnt in life I bumped into after taking wrong corners while looking for something else.

>So how do you do this if you have an oracle that answers the exact question you have without any struggle?

By that logic we should all go back to using an abacus and slide ruler for calculations.

Life is about making progress, not struggling with outdated ways for the sake of it. Struggle isn't a virtue.

If give people the task of banging nails into a wall and one uses his head to bang nails, the other use a hammer, and the third uses a nail gun, which is more productive and valuable, the one who struggles the most or the one who gets it done quickly and efficiently?

> Understanding how democracy, taxes, politics, resources, compounding interest, inflation, lobbying, corruption,

You can google these too, why bother learning anything ?

Just press the buttons and get the peanuts, why bother being curious ?

>You can google these too, why bother learning anything ?

You can google their definitions, you can't google critical thinking.

> How does that knowledge have anything to do with their work lives? Does your boss jump in the middle of your TPS reports in Jira and ask you to point Africa on the map within 3 seconds without using your phone or you're fired?

> Knowledge of random shit or trivia has no value anymore in developed societies where every worker

Yeah I mean if your entire existence revolves around your job and what your boss thinks of you we're in for a weird discussion... Life has more to offer than 50 year of work and 15 years of retirement. What a strange and sad way to envision life. Cultivating your mind and knowledge, as well as your body, should be way up in the list of things we have to focus on, you might want to check the etymology (if you know what that means, it's not a very useful term in the workplace) of "education"

> Now you can be a car owner without knowing how to change the oil or how a clutch works. That was not the case 50 or so years ago.

Nice, that's definitely what we want, monkeys pushing buttons without any ideas of what's going on under the hood. Why would you want to know why the earth is round, what gravity is, why braking distances are longer in rain, how ABS works, what is engine braking, why you can't stomp on the brakes for 30min straight while driving down a mountain road, ... People smoke their clutches all the time, run on bald tires, use summer tires in winter, pour oil in their coolant tank.

What's the point of being ultra specialised in a niche field, or even worse, profession, if you're a complete dummy in life

edit: and also, most people aren't even specialised, so now you get the worst of both world

>What a strange and sad way to envision life.

What an entitled and 'holier than though' view. When you can't afford rent, groceries, education or medical bills due to inflation, and don't have a support network or family, what use is it to the Average Joe to be "enlightened" on random shit like pointing Africa on the map.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs (shelter, food, sex, relationships) will always take priority for most individuals over learning random pub-quiz trivia.

Knowing where Africa is located is "enlightenment"... this forum keeps on giving

All the problems you listed come from the same root, and LLMs won't solve them

> Maslow's hierarchy of needs (shelter, food, sex, relationships) will always take priority for most individuals over learning random pub-quiz trivia.

Time to plug in your brain and ponder why the top economies of the world aren't able to provide basic human needs while generating more wealth than ever before, once again, same root as above, once again, LLMs won't solve any of that.

We could have AGI and immortality tomorrow, as long as we keep the free for all ultra individualistic profit seeking capitalistic system it's not going to change jack shit.

> random pub-quiz trivia.

> Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Wow slow down cowboy, "maslow's hierarchy" IS random pub-quiz trivia, get that off your brain real quick, you wouldn't want to become enlightened do you ?

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