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Comment by wussboy | Hacker News Reader

We know that relying heavily on Google Maps makes you less able to navigate without Google Maps. I don't think there's research on this yet, but I would be stunned if the same process isn't at play here.

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Whatever your mind believes it doesn’t need to hold on to that what is expensive to maintain and run, it’ll let go of. This isn’t entirely accurate from a neuroscience perspective but it’s kinda ballpark.

Pretty much like muscles decay when we stop using them.

Sure, but sticking with that analogy, bicycles haven’t caused the muscles of people that used to go for walks and runs to atrophy either – they now just go much longer distances in the same time, with less joint damage and more change in scenery :)

To extend the analogy further, people who replace all their walking and other impact exercises with cycling tend to end up with low bone density and then have a much higher risk of broken legs when they get older.

Well, you still walk in most indoor places, even if you are on the bike as much as humanly possible.

But if you were to be literally chained to a bike, and could not move in any other way than surely you would "forget"/atrophy in specific ways that you wouldn't be able to walk without relearning/practicing.

Oh, but they do atrophy, and in devious ways. Though the muscles under linear load may stay healthy, the ability of the body to handle the knee, ankle, and hip joints under dynamic and twisting motion does atrophy. Worse yet, one may think that they are healthy and strong, due to years of biking, and unintentionally injure themselves when doing more dynamic sports.

Take my personal experience for whatever it is worth, but my knees do not lie.

Sure, only cycling sounds bad, as does only jogging. And thousands of people hike the AT or the Way of St. James every year, despite the existence of bicycles and even cars. You've got to mix it up!

I believe the same holds true for cognitive tasks. If you enjoy going through weird build file errors, or it feels like it helps you understand the build system better, by all means, go ahead!

I just don't like the idea of somehow branding it as a moral failing to outsource these things to an LLM.

Yeah, but what's going to happen with LLMs is that the majority will just outsource thinking to the LLM. If something has a high visible reward with hidden, dangerous risks, people will just go for the reward.

Ok Socrates, let’s go back to memorizing epic poems.

>> Whatever your mind believes it doesn’t need to hold on to that what is expensive to maintain and run, it’ll let go of. This isn’t entirely accurate from a neuroscience perspective but it’s kinda ballpark.

>> Pretty much like muscles decay when we stop using them.

> Sure, but sticking with that analogy, bicycles haven’t caused the muscles of people that used to go for walks and runs to atrophy either ...

This is an invalid continuation of the analogy, as bicycling involves the same muscles used for walking. A better analogy to describe the effect of no longer using learned skills could be:

  Asking Amazon's Alexa to play videos of people
  bicycling the Tour de France[0] and then walking
  from the couch to the your car every workday
  does not equate to being able to participate in
  the Tour de France[0], even if years ago you
  once did.

0 - https://www.letour.fr/en/

Thanks for putting the citation for the Tour de France. I wouldn't have believed you otherwise.

> Thanks for putting the citation for the Tour de France. I wouldn't have believed you otherwise.

Then the citation served its purpose.

You're welcome.

> Whatever your mind believes it doesn’t need to hold on to that what is expensive to maintain and run, it’ll let go of. This isn’t entirely accurate from a neuroscience perspective but it’s kinda ballpark.

A similar phenomena occurs when people see or hear information and whether they record it in writing or not. The act of writing the percepts, in and of itself, assists in short-term to long-term memory transference.

I know that I am better at navigating with google maps than average people, because I navigated for years without it (partly on purpose). I know when not to trust it. I know when to ignore recommendations on recalculated routes.

Same with LLMs. I am better with it, because I know how to solve things without the help of it. I understand the problem space and the limitations. Also I understand how hype works and why they think they need it (investors money).

In other words, no, just using google maps or ChatGPT does not make me dumb. Only using it and blindly trusting it would.

Yeah this definitely matches my experience and guess what? Google maps sucks for public transit and isn't actually that good for pedestrian directions (often pointing people to "technically" accessible paths like sketchy sidewalks on busy arterial roads signed for 35mph where people go 50mph). I stopped using Google maps instinctually and now only use it for public transit or drives outside of my city. Doing so has made me a more attentive driver, less lazy, less stressed when unexpected issues on the road occur, restored my navigation skills, and made me a little less of, frankly, an adult man child.

Applying all of this to LLMs has felt similar.

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