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Comment by donsupreme | Hacker News Reader

Many analog to this IRL:

1) I can't remember the last time I write something meaningfully long with an actual pen/pencil. My handwriting is beyond horrible.

2) I can't no longer find my way driving without a GPS. Reading a map? lol

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If you were a professional writer or driver, it might make sense to be able to do those things. You could still do without them, but they might make you better in your trade. For example, I sometimes drive with GPS on in areas I know very well, and the computer provided guidance is not the best.

I think the sweet spot is always keeping north up on the GPS. Yes it takes some getting used to, but you will learn the lay of the land.

> I can't remember the last time I write something meaningfully long with an actual pen/pencil. My handwriting is beyond horrible.

That's a skill that depends on motor functions of your hands, so it makes sense that it degrades with lack of practice.

> I can't no longer find my way driving without a GPS. Reading a map? lol

Pretty sure what that actually means in most cases is "I can go from A to B without GPS, but the route will be suboptimal, and I will have to keep more attention to street names"

If you ever had a joy of printing map quest or using a paper map, I'm sure you still these people skill can do, maybe it will take them longer. I'm good at reading mall maps tho.

Mental skills (just like motor skills) also degrade with time. I can’t remember how to do an integral by hand anymore. Although re-learning would probably be faster if I looked it up.

Please don't think of this as moving the goal post, but back to maps and GPS: you're still doing the navigation (i.e. actual change in direction), just doing it with different tools.

The last time I dealt with integrals by hand or not was before node.js was announced (just a point in time).

Sure, you can probably forget a mental skill from lack of practicing it, but in my personal experience it takes A LOT longer than for a motor skill.

Again, you're still writing code, but with a different tool.

> I'm sure you still these people skill can do,

I wonder if you’d make this kind of mistake writing by hand

I would, it's an ADHD thing for me.

On 2) I've combatted this since long before AI by playing a game of "get home without using GPS" whenever I drive somewhere. I've definitely maintained a very good directional sense by doing this - it forces you to think about main roads, landmarks, and cardinal directions.

I don't like having location turned on on my phone, so it's a big motivator to see if I can look at the map and determine where I need to go in relation to familiar streets and landmarks. It's definitely not "figure out a road trip with just a paper map" level wayfinding, but it helps for learning local stuff.

I couldn't imagine operating without a paper and pen. I've used just about every note taking app available, but nothing commits anything to memory like writing it down. Of course, important writings go into the note app, but I save time inputting now and searching later if I've written things down first.

> find my way driving without a GPS. Reading a map? lol

Most people would still be able to. But we fantasize about the usefulness of maps. I remember myself on the Paris circular highway (at the time 110km/h, not 50km/h like today), the map on the driving wheel, super dangerous. You say you’d miss GPS features on a paper map, but back then we had the same problems: It didn’t speak, didn’t have the blinking position, didn’t tell you which lane to take, it simplified details to the point of losing you…

You won’t become less clever with AI: You already have Youtube for that. You’ll just become augmented.

Nobody is debating the usefulness of GPS versus a paper map. Obviously the paper map was worse. The point is precisely that because GPS is so much better than maps, we delegate all direction-finding to the GPS and completely lose our ability to navigate without it.

A 1990s driver without a map is probably a lot more capable of muddling their way to the destination than a 2020s driver without their GPS.

That's the right analogy. Whether you think it matters how well people can navigate without GPS in a world of ubiquitous phones (and, to bring the analogy back, how well people will be able to program without an LLM after a generation or two of ubiquitous AI) is, of course, a judgment call.

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