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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

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 :)

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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 ...

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.

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.

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.

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