Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

> One of her key lessons is that automation tends to de-skill operators

I recently discovered an example of this phenomenon in a completely unrelated area: navigation. About a week ago, I realized that I couldn't remember the exact turns to reach a certain place I started driving to recently, even after having driven there about 3-4 times over a period of a month. Each time I had used Google Maps. When I used to drive pre-Google-Maps, I would typically develop a good spatial model of a route on my third drive. This skill seems to have atrophied now. Even when I explicitly decide to drive without Google Maps, and make mental notes of the turns, my retention of new routes is now much weaker than it used to be. Thankfully, routes I retained before becoming Google Maps dependent, are still there.

Plato on how reading and writing make us more forgetful as we rely on this new technology:

> And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.

I see this copy-pastad everywhere these days but it misses a huge point which is that written things don’t read or understand themselves.

Agreed. Past, unfounded worries about proliferation of new mental labour saving inventions is a real thing, but it's wrong to indiscrimately use the analogy every time a concern about such inventions come up. It reminds me of a certain type of developer who blurts out "premature optimization is the root of all evil" every time someone raises a performance concern at design time (I usually ask such people to complete the second part of that Knuth quote or shut up).

Isn't that exactly what Plato's saying? The books cannot understand themselves, and we rely upon them, and in doing so that changes us.

"Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country."

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