Books also cause loss of skills.
One effect of widespread books is we don’t have poets like Homer. We don’t develop the memorization skills like they did in the past.
And that’s ok.
We can use the bandwidth for other stuff.
One effect of widespread books is we don’t have poets like Homer. We don’t develop the memorization skills like they did in the past.
And that’s ok.
We can use the bandwidth for other stuff.
Like fighting on social media...
Seriously, what was the other stuff that we used our bandwidth for when the books caused the loss of skills.
We have lost Homer, but what have we gained? A million social-media warriors?
Now future is to replace those with machines. No more human input. Just endless amount machines fighting with other machines...
Books encode skill.
I’m not a hater. LLMs on search is the best research tool I’ve ever used because it’s read everything and can find minutia buried in places it would take me a long time to find.
But there’s a huge difference between using it to assist focus, or as a study aide, and offloading the whole act of thinking itself.
Socrates would have been against LLMs, and for good reason. Writing isn't unequivocally bad, but it is simply not a substitution for real dialogue and thought. We use books as a means by which to have more things to discuss with humans. LLMs can supplant the desire to even have dialogue with others, which is perhaps the more insidious thing.
It's something we all learn in freshman english class. But it comes up over and over again because the general idea is true. You have to temper the unbridled optimism that comes with any new technology by contemplation of what may be lost. Otherwise we're spinning in circles.