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Douglas Adams really put it best:

> “I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies,” writes Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt.

> 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

> 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

> 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

you need not stick to any level. Some things that always have been are still bad (slavery is an obvious example now dated enough to be uncontrolversial). Some new things are bad and others good at any age.

don't grow up too set in your ways to not learn the new. But do grow up fast/young to get some cynicism for everything. now that I'm in my 50s the first is important but when younger the later was important.

I chuckled when I read this. Being 55 I tend to think this is true. But I realized when looking back the things I accepted when growing up, even though they were normal, I now notice that they have had a detrimental effect on society.

So, Although age tends to have this effect on how we see the world, and some of it probably not to worry about. I think there is part of this awareness that has some wisdom and is trying to protect our species..

That's probably true to some extent, but I'm not completely on board.

> 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

Television and calculators were in the world when I was born, but I never viewed them as "natural". TV always seemed to be a way to distract yourself from the world.

> 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

I was happy to get on board with the WWW, the web browser, and widespread email usage. Those were revolutionary technologies with immense values. On the other hand, I'm still not on board with text messaging, phone scrolling, or social media. If I could, I'd eliminate social media from society.

> 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

I'm over 50 and a strong believer in the value of the LLM. It's a work tool that I can use at work and put away when I'm at home (or not, depending on my mood). It's new and exciting and revolutionary and a move in the right direction for humanity.

The last probably doesn't apply to many here. We're all jonesing for the next cool tech thing.

The problem is that you're likening fundamentally unlike things. AI isn't like a microwave or an automatic car or a power tool. It does not augment you. As I said elsewhere: AI is not a bicycle for the mind, it's an easy chair. You will lose more than you ever gain.

Dubious. Ai psychosis is the opposite. It’s about being empowered to explore ideas much further but with a maladaptive tool designed to be an appeaser by reinforcement learning.

Im hearing a lot of opinion, but nothing convincing.

All knowledge started as someone's opinion. The goal isn't to avoid opinions, it's to stress-test them. That's exactly what HN is for.

If I'm not mistaken, this was Socrates' exact perspective on writing.

>Socrates' exact perspective on writing

Again, writing replacing memorization is not a good 1:1 comparison to AI replacing technical understanding. Someone still needs to understand what is written and act upon that knowledge. That requires skill and experience in the domain they're working within.

However, a person using an AI does not need to understand the underlying problem to get results. A person can ask Claude Code to write them a web app dashboard without having ever learned JS/CSS/HTML. It does not require them to have skills within a domain.

Also, we need to be honest with ourselves. Human brains did not evolve for the instant gratification of modern technology. We've already seen what technology has done to our attention spans. I am concerned over what further reliance on technology, particularly AI, will do to our brains.

> However, a person using an AI does not need to understand the underlying problem to get results. A person can ask Claude Code to write them a web app dashboard without having ever learned JS/CSS/HTML. It does not require them to have skills within a domain.

This perspective is funny to me because of how much the modern web is already built around web developers refusing to use CSS and PHP. The giving up of the skills happened before the automation.

This is purely a matter of perception. Cooking a meal is a deeply intellectual process. If I buy a meal from a restaurant, yes I am losing a skill. But if making a hollandaise is not a skill I ever need in my life, it's not really a practical loss.

AI is taking problems and putting them in a drawer so we never have to think about it again. Matches de-intellectualized making a fire. A washing machine de-intellectualized doing laundry. These are now solved problems.

Our brainpower spent on them is effectively worth nothing. The only reason we need to learn to make a fire from scratch is for the intellectual satisfaction or for emergency situations. The same reason we would choose to work on the problems that AI can now solve.

It only a loss if you think the skill and ability you are losing is intrinsically valuable, and the only thing you are going to replace it with is leisure.

> making a hollandaise is not a skill I ever need in my life

I know you just wanted to poke at the analogy, but if you like hollandaise, it's one of the easiest and most rewarding sauces to make at home! Restaurant hollaindaise is usually terrible

Agreed.

(Though it's not as easy as a béchamel, and yet I still see people buy jarred alfredo sauces. You can literally make an amazing alfredo sauce with pantry ingredients in less time than it takes to boil the noodles! Why would anyone buy an alfredo sauce!?)

Although this more or less is my point. If people are willing to give up these incredibly high reward, low effort skills - how much more uphill is the battle to make people code and process data?

> Why would anyone buy an alfredo sauce!?

Ignorance aside, jarred sauces are sorta shelf stable, and I have occasionally run out of butter and milk.

>It only a loss if you think the skill and ability you are losing is intrinsically valuable

What about the skill of learning itself? I would suggest that's one of the most important skills humans have evolved. The more integrated AI becomes in our societies, the more it will automate away potential opportunities for learning. I can forsee a world tightly integrated with AI where people are not only physically sedentary, but mentally as well.

As we progress further into the future, we need more educated people than ever to tackle the exponentially increasing complexities of our society. But AI presents an obstacle that many will never cross due to how to convenient it is to skip the messy work of understanding.

Also, this problem is not unique to AI. It existed before the GPTs and Claude's of the world. But it's a problem of scale, and every company on the Earth right now is trying to scale AI up as fast as possible.

Here's a practical example: I am using AI to help me with my garden. It's been amazing - it helps me identify plants, identify soil issues, what fertilizer to use and what days to apply it, etc.

What exactly did AI take from me? Spending hours of research on Google and Youtube to glean little incomplete bits and pieces? Calling a yard service?

It's also clearly obvious when AI gives bad or incorrect advice - I am still trying different things and watching for the results.

Coding is a outlier example where AI can just do the work semi-competently without anyone checking it. But I think it speaks more to the nature of coding itself - coding is a means to an end and for most people not an actual pursuit in itself.

>What exactly did AI take from me? Spending hours of research on Google and Youtube to glean little incomplete bits and pieces? Calling a yard service?

An opportunity for a deeper understanding of gardening? If you spend hours researching on gardening and come away with an incomplete understanding of what you were attempting to do, I'm not sure that's immediately the fault of the research available. It could be that you just didn't do a good job searching for the necessary information.

In this way, AI can be a boon. It helps figure out what you actually want to know in the moment. But I think it would be a step to far to say that a smattering of specific questions can replace the sturdy foundation povided by a typical education--e.g. through apprenticeship, books, etc.

>It's also clearly obvious when AI gives bad or incorrect advice

Is it? Isn't this a __core__ problem that researchers around the world are trying to solve? Also, __how__ could you make such a statement unless you already possessed the knowledge ahead of time to make such a judgment? I think it's hard to know if something is bad advice by looking at just cause and effect. It could be that you just lack the understanding to put the advice into practice.

> It could be that you just didn't do a good job searching for the necessary information.

How can you? The existing resources are terrible.

> But I think it would be a step to far to say that a smattering of specific questions can replace the sturdy foundation povided by a typical education--e.g. through apprenticeship, books, etc.

I am not going to go through a college program for my own garden. And I have books! But unless you can read a tiny and perform a small research project, you are not going to know how all of the plants in your specific garden in your specific region in your specific weather are going to behave.

The best I could do is hire an expert - but again I am learning less by hiring it out.

> Also, __how__ could you make such a statement unless you already possessed the knowledge ahead of time to make such a judgment?

"Use X to kill the moss". It didn't kill the moss. I will now use AI to find a list of alternative things to try to kill the moss, and learn what works in my garden.

The idea that AI is going to make people stop learning I don't think is born out in practice. It might make some people stop researching as an activity though.

Now you're getting it! The modern way of life which prioritizes convenience and production destroys human connection. Making sauce is pointless; let's go one step further and make every other thing you might do equally pointless. Welcome to the hellscape! It's surprisingly comfortable.

The other extreme is also a hellscape. Work and suffering is the only thing of value. Let's make pyramids to bring people together and show off our collective wealth.

> "It only a loss if you think the skill and ability you are losing is intrinsically valuable..."

I'm fascinated by the AI bros putting hollandaise sauce and making fires on the same level as creating production software. One hopes that it is because they create only very simple software, making the analogy less invalid than it would be for more complex software. If not, the implication is that loss of the reasoning and cognitive ability needed to build foundational software like libraries and frameworks is not important to them.

The only thing that separates homo sapiens from other species is the sapience. Diminishing or atrophying one's own cognitive abilities is the same as climbing down the evolutionary ladder.

I mean, doesn't the fact that people rely on these libraries and frameworks without thinking it itself prove the value of intentionally compartmentalizing off skills?

No one is arguing that everyone needs to build programs ground up from assembly. So what's the magic difference between using a framework and asking a computer to write out the for-loops for me?

If you have to ask, you'll never know.

> Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave? Do you buy food from a grocery store? Do you own power tools?

None of these things allow you to turn your brain off while the machine does the work.

I still have to DRIVE the car and all the thinking that goes with that. It's not a robotaxi.

I still have to acquire and prep the food I am microwaving. It's not a replicator.

I still have to know what I want to eat before grocery shopping and prepare the food. It's not a take out restaurant.

I still have to know how to use the power tools to carefully shape something into a fine piece of furniture and not a pile of splintered firewood. Power tools can't operate on their own unless aliens (see Maximum Overdrive.)

These are better analogies:

Do you take a taxi or public transport? Those let you turn your brain off while someone or something does the driving work.

Do you go to a restaurant where you can pick what you want, turn your brain off and wait for a delicious (or not) meal?

Do you order takeout where you can order what you want form the comfort of your home, turn your brain off and enjoy the meal when it arrives? Then reheat the leftovers in the microwave.

Do you use a fabrication service where you send them a drawing, turn your brain off, and they ship you an assembled thing?

All of your examples involve you sitting and waiting. That doesn't seem like an apt analogy for what AI can do. You don't have to sit there and come up with other things to do while the AI does the work.

When AI works (and technology in general) that's kind of what it's like. You'll never perceive that you are not doing the work anymore because you won't perceive the work.

> All of your examples involve you sitting and waiting. That doesn't seem like an apt analogy for what AI can do.

I just read a blog post or comment (honestly cant keep track of all this AI hype) about someone who literally did just that. They told and AI to build an app then went out and painted their fence or something, came back and had an app.

This is what people want from AI. They want take-out software.

> I want to shake these people by the shoulders... Do you use a microwave?

Microwaves aren't doing active problem solving though. It seems what the author is trying to say is they enjoy problem solving and they find coding a rewarding and creative experience. Sure microwaves saved at-home cooks might enjoy zapping a frozen dinner, but the author is a chef who enjoys writing their own recipes and cooking from scratch. AI isn't just the microwave, it's also the chef.

> None of us have "lost" the ability to go backwards if we really wanted

This absolutely isn't true. Using google maps quickly makes people poorer at navigation - skills need to be practiced. The author thinks letting AI into their kitchen to cook for them will change themself cognitively and make them lazy and lose their skills. And that would be true.

What it sounds like you're getting at but never said is there might be newer skills on the other side that are even more rewarding, which may be true. But if history is any indication, there will be no shortage of folks who like things the old way and want to use their meat brains to provide bespoke goods and services that AI can't.

This is an insane claim:

> The entire point of civilization and society is that we are all "addicted" to technology and progress.

Technology is like much of material reality, in that we can think whatever the hell we like about its various forms, especially so if we’re surrounded by it.

It’s not insane. They are correct that is the point of civilization which carries information from generation to generation outside the oral tradition in a systematic organized reliable way.

The point of civilisation, however loose that idea may be, if it’s anything at all, is determined by people.

Technology exists today in a way that feels like it could be defining its own path in a sense, but much like oral tradition, neither are large enough concepts to describe civilisation.

Or for the memetics fans out there, the point of people, if it's anything at all, is determined by civilization..

Technodeterminism is a common feeling in paradigm shifting moments. Don’t forget who is at the helm of the change.

The line is fine. Even if I use GPS a lot, I still try to keep my ability to interpret maps and find my way.

Same with calculators, even when today are dirt cheap, are not allowed in school, and being able to do math without it is a valuable skill.

So maybe there are like 2 groups of things: one where using it you are losing nothing, some where you lose some valuable ability.

It's quite difficult to tell exactly the extent your life depends on technology.

How different do you think your life would be if the combine harvester did not exist?

Combines have been had modern ai image recognition cameras (same technology as a llm) in the base model for a few years now.

Excellent point on the automatic car.

I love driving a manual transmission. But I also understood why it was so hard for me to find a new Jeep Wrangler with a manual transmission a few years ago.

I think of themselves as very practical - I drive a manual, I fix my own cars, I do my own house projects, I cook my own meals.

Which is part of the reason these anti-AI screeds fall on deaf ears for me. My generation has willingly abandoned all of these legitimately useful hard-skills But there's also nothing preventing you from picking and choosing what you care about.

What's wrong with choosing to care about coding manually then?

I'm not actually against manual coding. I just think people need to be honest about about why it's valuable.

I don't work on my own car because I believe that everyone should fix their own cars. But I think enough people should be knowledgeable and have these skills in society - if for no other reason than to keep mechanics and automakers and dealerships honest. I am not personally upset if you work on your own used car or take it to your dealership.

I am against the idea that everyone should somehow be against AI coding.

The automatic transmission gives us more dexterity for... what exactly? Fiddling with the dash, reaching for something in the back seat, texting? The best case human has much more control but the average case seems worse off.

I'd say most automatics give you less direct control over the engine. I always feel like I'm having to tease a gear shift out of the car when I'm driving an automatic. Until very recently, the typical car couldn't see the traffic light changing or the hills ahead so it couldn't possibly change gears as effectively as a competent driver.

Agreed, this is the aspect of the AI criticism I find strange too. We should want to be targeted in how we use it, just as how a practical fusion reactor wouldn't replace solar in every situation. Not reject it outright.

We should be using these capabilities to allow ourselves to work on harder problems. In science, there are a lot of tasks that require a low, but non-zero amount of intelligence and aren't really the most interesting part of science. Many of these tasks limit how much work can actually be done. Automate them, and you can dramatically increase your capabilities and focus on the actual science work.

> "We should want to be targeted in how we use it ... We should be using these capabilities to allow ourselves to work on harder problems."

Yes, people should do those things but we also know that's not what's going to happen to the average developer or the public in general. We are already seeing AI generated nonsense PRs, AI cheating on homework and interviews, AI generated documents and emails containing hallucinations, etc. that points toward a future where people abdicate reasoning and critical thinking instead.

> I don’t want to give up my brain and become lazy and not think for myself anymore.

My brain gets sharper with working with AI, but then again, it often seems covertly foolish to me, so I argue with it a lot and plan more before working with it.

Interesting that your thought process is failing in the same way that llms fail, which is though faulty analogies.

> Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave? Do you buy food from a grocery store? Do you own power tools

Which of these is behind a subscription paywall and owned by another party that would cut off your access immediately?

These comparisons make little sense, which is the problem with comparisons. They are soundbites from enthusiasts who don't know or understand how this technology will actually affect or shape us, but feel entitled enough to misinform the rest of us.

I don't want any machine doing my thinking for me. This is why I am in favor of banning traffic lights. Why should I trust a machine to tell me when it's safe to stop and when it's safe to go? Plus, we could employ police officers to stand in the middle of the intersection and direct traffic, thus contributing further to employment.

;)

> The entire point of civilization and society is that we are all "addicted" to technology and progress.

I'm not addicted in any way to an automatic car. I prefer an automatic car, because it's easier to drive than a manual car. There have been numerous studies already into the problematic nature of AI addiction, and calling it simply "progress" is denuding the experiences of tons of people who have been harmed, up to and including dying, as a result of too much AI use.

> But the invention of the plow did not, in fact, make us lazier or stop using our brain.

No but industrial farming practices are not an unalloyed good either.

> But none of us have "lost" the ability to go backwards if we really wanted.

I mean, we kind of have in a few ways, at least insofar as the AI boom is concerned. I can't have a version of Windows that doesn't have copilot in it. I can't have Microsoft Office without Copilot. I can't have Photoshop without generative AI features. Like, say what you will about the AI doomsayers and yes, even this one I think is overstating it a bit? But the AI push is relentless. It's everywhere, in every product, all the time. Last time I was at Home Depot I saw an AI powered microwave for fucks sake.

And, that's not to say there are no problems at which LLMs are good solutions, but it isn't this many. I use Claude to generate code, usually boiler-plate type stuff or to help me solve problems, and it's legitimately quite good. Conversely, generated images and video have always, always looked like absolute shit to me. Generated music is... okay? But as a consumer I barely have a way to choose a non-AI future if that's what I want.

> You can finally ask a computer to think and solve problems, and it will!

Sometimes. Other times it tries for awhile and gives up. Other times it makes some shit up that would solve your problem, and Omnissiah be with you if you follow those instructions. Other times you argue with it for 10 goddamn minutes because it doesn't comprehend your instructions.

> If somebody finally came out with a fusion reactor tomorrow I would half expect people to suddenly come out and say "Oh, I don't think I can support this. What about the soul of solar panels? I think cheap electricity is going to make things too easy."

That is flatly ridiculous. LLMs do a lot of interesting things, that I will grant, but they are not the problem solver you're pitching them as, and certainly nothing like a Fusion reactor.

> Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave? Do you buy food from a grocery store? Do you own power tools?

The answer to these questions could easily be no, and life is way better for it.

Hah, I actually only hit 1/4 for that set of questions. I'd prefer to drive an automatic, though, if money wasn't an issue.