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Comment by dingnuts | Hacker News Reader

> That's more or less accepted today.

Bullshit! You cannot do second order reasoning with a set of facts or concepts that you have to look up first.

Google Search made intuition and deep understanding and encyclopedic knowledge MORE important, not less.

People will think you are a wizard if you read documentation and bother to remember it, because they're still busy asking Google or ChatGPT while you're happily coding without pausing

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I am 100% certain people said the same thing about arithmetic and calculators and now mental arithmetic skill is nothing more than a curiosity.

I encourage you to reconsider.

Mental math is essential for having strong numerical fluency, for estimation, and for reasoning about many systems. Those skills are incredibly useful for thinking critically about the world.

To a certain point. Basic arithmetic is important but the ability to calculate large square roots or multiply multi-digit numbers is not very relevant when you can trivially calculate them on your phone in seconds.

Being able to do basic math in your head is valuable just in terms of basic practicality (quickly calculating a tip or splitting a bill, doubling a recipe, reasoning about a budget...), but this is a poor analogy anyway because 3x2 is still 3x2 regardless of how you get there whereas creative work produced by software is worthless.

That's simply not true. I use mental arithmetic skill every day. It's irritating or funny when you come across someone who struggles with it, depending on the situation.

Obviously basic levels are needed but the ability to say multiply 4 digit numbers in your head is totally superfluous. Theres a parallel to software engineering there.

> Google Search made intuition and deep understanding and encyclopedic knowledge MORE important, not less.

Not to mention discernment and info literacy when you do need to go to the web to search for things. AI content slop has put everybody who built these skills on the back foot again, of course.

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