The "Learned Helplessness" of AI | Hacker News Reader

The "Learned Helplessness" of AI

himanshusinghbisht.substack.com

22 pointsgilfoyle_76 comments

I'm gonna phrase this terribly.

People said the exact same thing about web searches, and I think there's a lot of devs who would instant search for every issue they hit.

Isn't this just better web search?

On the other hand, it definitely feels like it might be too big a step in the spoon feeding direction.

Writing code without AI feels like art, and writing it with AI feels like painting a wall: get it done quickly, cheaply, and good enough that people don't see issues.

It's the art part of engineering that's being lost, AI has no appreciation of elegance. It has no empathy for cognitive overhead of bad code or poor-fit design patterns.

Cognitive Debt is the phrase to Google btw.

But should code be art? As much as there are '100s of ways to skin a cat', it is also deterministic at the end of the day. It either does, or does not, do what it was designed to do.

Sculptors can turn clay into wonderful pottery. Masons can turn it to brick. Both have their purposes, and it is wrong to assume everyone with a ball of clay is looking to make pottery.

I understand at the moment, part of the 'art' of code is ease of legibility, being concise, well documented, following standards, etc. But when I need a quick script to automate a process I've done 100 times, I personally can fumble around in python for an hour or two, or give the current trendy LLM a few shots and get to the same result. For me, I am happy to do it "quickly, cheaply, and good enough that people don't see issues." Even things like iOS Shortcuts, Home Assistant automations, etc.

I wouldn't build a start-up based on vibed code, though. I get the extents

imo it feels like art because there are an infinite number of needs to keep in mind when writing code and everyone prioritizes them differently. Even when the output is the same, different implementations will have different effects elsewhere: performance, legibility, security, type safety, error prone, etc.

So I would say "it either does, or does not, do what it was designed to do" isn't the full picture. I'm not sure it needs to truly be art though.

I would argue that your 2 first examples are exceedingly apt. Sure, sculptors can turn clay into works of art and masons can build cathedrals. However, a potter can throw a basic jug to hold wine that doesn't have any care out into it besides being functional, and a mason can build a retaining wall.

These second examples aren't any less valuable, they solve real problems and improve people's lives. However, they aren't really art. Writing code is the same thing. I'm not creating art when I hack together yet another CRUD app that is basically plumbing together existing modules with a tiny bit of logic sprinkled on top, but it improves how our business functions and makes the employees who use the software more productive. That isn't art, but it's useful.

There is code out there that is art. But most programmers aren't writing it. We're writing the boring everyday stuff. Very few masons built cathedrals, but building a retaining wall is useful too.

>Isn't this just better web search?

It's basically any technology. The whole point of technology is essentially to reduce friction.

I have something ranging from learned helplessness to total indifference about taking care of horses, or how to appropriately pitch a tent to survive a cold night, because modernity doesn't require me to care about these things.

what a low effort post. the whole content is this:

Read in the Substack app Open app The "Learned Helplessness" of AI we're losing our ability to think himanshu Nov 19, 2025

Every time you ask ChatGPT to write the difficult logic, prepare a plan, or do something creative, you are doing one thing: outsourcing friction.

And friction is where skill is built.

We are training our brains to believe: If I can’t instantly retrieve the answer, the machine will retrieve it for me.

This isn’t about being productive. This is about being functionally dependent. The moment we loose access to an LLM, we become clueless 3 year olds.

I might be wrong , i’ll write another post about accelerated learning through AI.

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