I mean it can also depend on scale. I use hundreds of sub-agent instances to do analysis that I just would not be able to do in a reasonable timeframe. That is a TON of thinking done for me.
e.g. By using a cryptography library / algorithm someone else has written, I don't need to think about it (although someone has done the thinking, I hope!). Or by using a high level language, I don't need to think about how to write assembly / machine code.
Or with a tool like a spell-checker: since it checks the document, you don't have to worry about spelling mistakes.
What upsets is the imbalance between "tasks which previously required some thought/effort can now be done effortlessly". -- Stuff like "write out a document" used to signal effort had been put into it.
In my opinion it's entirely comparable to anything else that augments human capability. Is it a good thing that I can drive somewhere instead of walking? It can be. If driving 50 miles means I get there in an hour instead of two days, it can be a good thing, even though it could also be a bad thing if I replace all walking with driving. It just expands my horizon in the sense that I can now reach places I otherwise couldn't reasonably reach.
Why can't it be the same with thinking? If the machine does some thinking for me, it can be helpful. That doesn't mean I should delegate all thinking to the machine.
Those are all things many people outsource their thinking to other people with.
For some work, similar to the philosophy example of GP, LLMs can help with depth/quality. Is additive to your own thinking. -> quality approach
For other things. I take a quantity approach. Having 8 subagents research, implement, review, improve, review (etc) a feature in a non critical part of our code, or investigate a bug together with some traces. It’s displacing my own thinking, but that’s ok, it makes up for it with the speed and amount of work it can do. —> quantity approach.
It’s become mostly a matter of picking the right approach depending on the problem I’m trying to solve.