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Comment by conductr | Hacker News Reader

I’m not noticing the decline in my own abilities any more than I had before using them. I finished undergrad 20 years ago and my once sharp math skills had been severely diminished within only 5-10 years. Just simple arithmetic and percentages that I could rapidly do in my head became dependent on calculators/spreadsheets. For all other trivia type knowledge, my brain has offloaded it to the internet RAM in my pocket. It’s a familiar feeling of when some question comes up and I think “oh, I used to know that, let me look it up”. Maybe I just already hit my personal floor of stupidity before LLMs.

However, I personally feel a huge mental burden of the state of communication. The contemporary version of it where I have a million threads and conversations im juggling at any given time. Emails, voicemail, chat, online, texts, personal, business, home, children, other family, friends, then there’s the variants like Messages, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc. And as overwhelming as it is for me, I’m super under connected than everyone else I know. I quit following most news and all sports, as I just don’t have the bandwidth for it.

My brain was molded preinternet and I feel like it’s reaching its max on the analog to digital conversion. Or at least it’s just a really lossy process.

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Yeah, I'm 45 and I'm like you - no social media, relatively under connected, and still feel swamped constantly by emails and calls and especially texts. They eat up half my productive time every day, and most of them are things I'm looped in on that I don't even need to respond to.

Okay so let's say that's the new cognitive burden. The new escape hatch is "AI". Now you don't need to read your mail or write responses! Let an LLM handle that for you! And now your friends and coworkers will send you AI generated mail anyway, so if you're actually taking the time to read and respond to it yourself you're a chump, right?

Noise machines. Humans are noise machines. Ever try to sleep till noon and notice that everyone else seems like they can't feel alive unless they wake up and make the maximum amount of noise and racket possible? What could be better for a gibbering species of ground dwelling apes than a miraculous machine that gibbers for them, to point back and forth at each other?

> And now your friends and coworkers will send you AI generated mail anyway

This hits close. I realized one of my friends was using AI to message me and I took it kind of hard. It's weird to be worth the effort for them to set up a chat bot to talk to me but not worth the 2-3mins a week to actually read/respond to my messages.

Right now, I just basically ghosted him, but I have teh feeling this is the start of an emerging issue.

Are you sure he is sending automated messages, or used LLM to polish up some writing? Would be a difference to me, but .. still weird.

I'm unconvinced of this "polishing" everyone seems to claim. Whenever someone dumps a load of slop on you, that's always the answer, oh this is totally my own work, but I used AI to "polish" it. Then why is it so clearly crap? What kind of "polishing" makes text bloated and empty?

No, they were too lazy to write and let the machine do it.

Well, I like writing. But I have friends who hate it .. but need to for work. So they enjoy LLM's to make professional drafts out of some notes (technical reports) without all their grammar misstakes etc. No fluff, just the document in a shape the target audience expects.

But if they would do this to me .. I would object. I prefer their authentic ramblings ..

> No fluff, just the document in a shape the target audience expects

I see what you did there

Finally, someone calling this one out. Are there legit english-learners or unskilled communicators out there who sparingly use LLMs to tweak 1-10% their prose here and there? Yes. Does that mean that the vast majority of slop-senders just using it for this "polishing"? No way.

I will make use of Apple's AI writing tools to check my grammer and spelling before hitting send on more important messages, but that is about all the "polishing" I let it do. It always wants to change how I write, which isn't that helpful.

> Whenever someone dumps a load of slop on you, that's always the answer, oh this is totally my own work, but I used AI to "polish" it.

D'you mean this sort of polishing: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/67/af/5c/67af5cb3b3d0953d91d180e52...

Sorry about the Pinterest link, couldn't find a cleaner one.

Not the parent, but I have a teammate who stunned me when, after a long back and forth texting that seemed out of character for them (I can be a fast & long texter, admittedly), sent me a long message that ended:

"If you want, I'll write you a response to 9x39 that follows up on ..."

Bro. Come on. Anyway, weirder things have happened. A chatbot that works like what people do on social media comments would be just be offensive.

No message between friends should ever need “polishing” unless you are trying to deliver really bad news in the softest way possible.

To be honest, especially then I would feel offended.

That's even worse. What could be more cold and impersonal than delivering bad news using an LLM?

Skywriting?

Don't break bad news over text...

I think some people are okay with communication that’s less involved. Like meme-y BSing where everyone involved knows everyone else is putting like 12% of their thinking power into sending a response.

I don’t really enjoy that, so I find having that many threads stressful and annoying.

I just take a hard line and will unilaterally downgrade communications (while politely letting the other party know). I have all my family group chats muted because my mom uses “Send” the way you’d use Enter on a desktop. End of a sentence? Send text. Next bullet point in a list? Send text.

I muted the chats and told her that I want my ringer on in case there’s an emergency, but I got 30 something notifications in 5 minutes during an interview and it’s unfair to the candidate or other people in the meeting. Internally I rationalize it as revoking someone’s ability to make noises on my phone at whim. They can still text me, they just can’t interrupt me anymore.

It helps a lot, even if only temporary. I’ve muted people for a few hours or a couple days before when I’m already stressed and they’re really chatty.

Agree. I mute every group chat and notifications for almost everything. Same reasoning. My wife just talks to me when something reaches a point of me needing to know. Broader holiday planning or group travel planning chatter, it seems like any family gathering requires a minimum of 1000 messages.

My SO does the same and it saves my butt sometimes, but I don't like it. It feels like I'm not really solving the issue and just making it her problem instead of mine, but she has a less strong response to the interruptions.

She's certainly better at it though. I can't manage the interruptions, nor am I good about remembering to create calendar events and what not when events come up.

As an aside to this I mute ALL notifications on my phone. I still get notifications of course, but they never ping or vibrate.

For important threads like calls or messages from important people/group chats, I have my watch vibrate.

Otherwise, I just go through my notifications once I have downtime.

I really like that system! How do you configure that only notifications from certain parties end up on the watch? As far as I can tell I can only filter on application. On iOS I can add “favourites” which get prio for calls and messages in Messages/Mail but not in other apps.

Yeah that's the iffy part tbh. I have a oneplus phone and watch and it is per-app on the watch. So in the app I have to configure which lines of comms are important (so like Signal is how my wife and I communicate so I get watch notifications for that, and I mute other group chats). And because my WhatsApp is pretty noisy, even with muted chats, I just opt not to get notifications on my watch, which has the consequence of me not being able to get WhatsApp call notifications, which honestly isn't the worst thing in the world :)

It's not perfect, but it works for me.

We have to normalize being on silent all the time and making people wait hours for a response. Return to the primordial monkey of 1800s-era high-latency comms.

At first, some people will be offended. "Why didn't you let me ping and buzz you and interrupt you all day? You didn't respond immediately each time :'((". Some people with unrealistic expectations may even stop talking to you entirely.

But eventually (years maybe) they will get overwhelmed too. No one can handle this madness indefinitely. I've seen giga-texters get broken down and turn into lazy texters like me, or at least learn to tolerate my long response intervals and recognize it as a coping mechanism rather than rudeness.

I've told people this for years. The mode of communication reflects the urgency. If you text me, expect a response on the order of 3+ days. If you call, and I recognize the number, it will be more urgent. If I DON'T recognize it, it goes to voicemail and back in the 3+ days queue. If you show up at my door, it is immediate. Even with my wife, she will text while I'm at the grocery to pick up some extra food items, and it doesn't necessarily come through or I'm on silent. I'll get home, and she'll ask where the food is, and I ask why she didn't call if it was timely. I just do NOT check my texts that often, it isn't because I'm deliberately ignoring anyone.

The current trend seems to be switching the priority order of calls and texts among many of us. I feel like a call should be scheduled, preferably 3+ days out, and preferably with an agenda attached. (Same rules I feel about any sort of meeting.) But a direct text (non-group chat, just to me) is a priority. Group chats get that 1-2 days middle ground.

I know that's the trend, but it is backwards to me. Like UDP vs TCP. If you need an immediate answer for something, why send a one-way communication where you have no idea whether the person on the other end A) received it, and B) acted on it. A 15 second phone call accomplishes this, whereas if I text you it could be hours, unless you immediately respond.

Most text message apps have real time read receipts for A and "actively writing" indicators that imply some of B. (The things that we invented for "instant messaging" decades ago are finally mostly back in vogue in text messaging.) Text messages have "reactions" like Thumbs Up that very quickly say "I will action this shortly." For me that's more TCP, the classic ACK receipt then action.

A 15 second phone call probably goes straight to my voicemail and there's no read receipts if I have read the voicemail transcription yet, much less tried to listen to it. It might be hours until I'm in a quiet enough space to try to listen to it, because I don't carry headphones with me most of the time, don't listen to speakerphone in public, and the "phone speaker" on an iPhone is generally hard to hear for me, no matter how I awkwardly position the phone. The transcriptions are usually not good enough to action directly so I do usually need to do that dance of find a way to listen to it. Calls to me are a UDP hole with fewer acknowledgements and a lot of inconvenience.

Unless you've prescheduled a call with me, in which case maybe I do answer and maybe it is quick enough to be a 15 second phone call. But the easiest way to schedule that call with me is going to be to text me "Hey can I call in an hour about X?" and I'll ACK it soon after, and probably then likely spend 45 minutes looking for a quiet place to take a private phone call.

But, yeah, different perspectives for different sorts of people. Phone calls are taxing to me and the real world is a loud place and I don't carry headphones and I like to control the environment in which I try to answer a phone call, but also I find finding such quiet environments stressful enough to want to schedule them ahead of time.

Wouldn't it depend upon context?

If it is an emergency, it is a voice call. It is both immediate and conveys urgency. If it is something that you need to talk through, it is a scheduled voice call. Asynchronous communications may demonstrate respect for a person's time since it does not (need to) interrupt them in the moment, but the inefficiency results in a disrespectful waste of time for bidirectional conversations.

If it is something where you need a simple response by the end of the day, it is a text. If it requires a lengthy response, email. Never expect a lengthy response by the end of the day, or for it to be handled on devices with terrible input methods (like phones).

Anything that isn't covered by those scenarios will be largely dependent on the person.

If it's an emergency I want it in text first because I read faster than I listen to voicemails, and can do so in more spaces/contexts/environments (say, at a loud concert or eating in a restaurant), and I trust a person to write the message better than the voicemail system will transcribe a call. Certain emergency keywords sent in a text will especially alert me faster than a call would. (I have call notifications as practically turned off as possible in current operating systems [way too much phone call spam], but a measured set of notification levels for text notifications.)

I think even for emergency situations the relationship between voice calls and text messages is flipping. Text messages are immediate and can convey urgency. Phone calls are for private, quiet spaces, which take time to find (or schedule). With the death of the private phone booths in public spaces, phone calls are inconvenient to take almost everywhere now outside of one's home, but urgent text messages can be read and even acted upon just about anywhere.

Why are we talking about voicemails in the context of emergencies? If it was an emergency, I'm calling every number I have for someone until they pickup or enough time has passed that I write them off as a flake and find the next person on the list who might be able to help with whatever it is.

I think that's what I'm complaining about, too, but again from a just slightly different perspective. In an emergency I also don't want to take time to "call every number I have for someone". I don't want to worry about safe calling hours or people that prescreen every call/make every call go to voicemail (including myself). I'd much prefer to send a much faster, single text message and they either get it or they don't, and often there's a quick read receipt if they do get it.

Phone calls have so much ceremony and ritual and take so much time to play phone tag, and every single part of that, especially the phone tag, has gotten so much worse because of spammers. Phone calls just don't feel reliable anymore. It's easier to assume you are more likely to hit someone's voicemail than reach them many hours of the day. It's easier to assume people don't even check their voicemail in some cases, because they expect a text message if it was important.

I think we have different definitions of "emergency" if a text message that they may or may not see any time soon is an acceptable solution.

If it is an actual emergency, I need to know that they have received the communication in real time. I'm never leaving someone a voicemail in an emergency situation.

I think it is possibly more we have a different sense of "received the communication and feedback to the communication in real time" and the kinds of feedback we get from the medium. Text messages give immediate feedback quicker when they are received. Especially iMessage and/or RCS you have read receipts and "quick reactions" and "someone is typing bubbles" to text messages for very immediate feedback. If you have enough people in your life that never answer phone calls, the phone is a much slower way to get in touch with someone and it is missing all sorts of useful quick feedback (did it go to voicemail because they are in a bathroom or a loud concert or did it go to voicemail because they are screening calls after 30 spam calls a day got to be too much for them? did they hear the voicemail or hopefully see a transcript of it? are they going to call back or are they going to not see it for another three days or do they not pay attention to voicemail at all and just expect a text?), most of which additional messaging gets moved to text channels today among many of my friends. ("Can I call you in like twenty minutes?" is a somewhat common text message to and from some of my friends who always text before a call.) In a real emergency you should text me to try to call me before you call me if you want the likeliest results that I will pick up any phone call, but most of the time it is probably just faster to include a headline in the text itself and save us both the time and emotional roller coaster of also making a call.

In an emergency, I can often text 15-20 people in the time it takes to try to get a phone call through to a single person. (Especially with the multiplying effects of copy and paste and group chats.) I'm still probably going to follow up with a bunch of people by phone calls after the texts go out, but most of that will be by request ("can you call me when you get a chance?" texts) for details or shared emotion bonding after the key points are already distributed (and possibly some emergency conditions better).

That's funny, I take the exact opposite approach. I prioritize interactions based on how much commitment I expect they'll require, with lesser commitment getting more priority. So a text message I'll usually answer right away. An email or some written reply that requires some redaction I'll postpone to when I can take the time for a thoughtful response. A ring on my buzzer, if I'm not expecting anything or anyone, I'll always ignore; I can't let any dumbass passing by the front of my building rope me into a pointless conversation.

Phone calls don't fit neatly into this scheme because they demand a lot of attention, but it's easy to get out of one if you realize it's not something critical. I generally pick up and the moment I get the slightest whiff of spam, I just hang up.

I am notoriously "bad" at texting. My phone's on silent almost 95% of the time, I don't even have a smartphone so the only way to get to me wirelessly is to call or text. I got really into sending mail last year, specifically postcards.

I have a list of ~10 people I would consider "close", immediate family and good friends, and 5 or 6 more tertiary contacts. I travel fairly frequently, so I had plenty of opportunities for sending postcards. I send cards for obscure holidays just because. The physical process of hand-writing messages is so therapeutic for me. I've probably sent ~250 postcards in the last year and a half.

I have received... 3 physical responses. It has been extremely disappointing, but I continue to send mail because I enjoy the process of writing the cards, and the knowledge that people probably appreciate the mail makes me feel good, so at least I get a little out of it myself.

My mom will occasionally text to say she liked the postcard, but has never bothered to send one back to me.

I would be delighted if more people chose to communicate slowly.

I like this. I don't know what postcard etiquette is, but when I send a postcard it's just to show that I'm thinking of someone while I'm traveling. If the recipient doesn't travel or finds other ways to express that they're thinking or me while traveling (souvenir, etc) I'd consider that social contract fulfilled.

I haven’t sent a postcard in years but I always thought it was a signal that I am having a great time but also you are important enough to me that I want to include you in the only way I can. I certainly never expected a direct response but hoped I might receive a postcard from that friend at some unexpected future time.

I set my phone in do not disturb mode permanently. Only phone calls make it through. When I'm at home, only phone calls from important people make it through.

It improved my life. Not by a huge amount, but enough to be worth it. People learned my responses might take a while. Most people don't care. Those that do.. tough shit

I'm noticing some decline of skills I don't practice regularly and LLM is just one of reasons why one stops practicing. Switching to another area of work gives a comparable decline. If you want sharp skills you have to use them.

True. People don't do it though, because keeping skills sharp and using them takes effort, and we have a predisposition to be as efficient as possible with how we spend our effort; if there's an easier way to do it in our awareness, we will naturally gravitate towards that. LLMs are often a universal crutch or swiss-army-knife that significantly take away workload for many abstract tasks, so all kinds of atrophy in abstract thinking is to be expected.

However, when looking at muscle, once you have it you don't need to use it as much in order to maintain it. I wonder if the same is true for skills; in that case, some kind of regiment where you still use the skill you delegate once a week or so could maybe help with avoiding this loss of skill for most part.

“ However, when looking at muscle, once you have it you don't need to use it as much in order to maintain it”

No.. this depends on how much muscle you have. The appropriate comparison is mass and density of knowledge/understanding vs muscle. There’s not a chance in hell you will retain mass and dense muscle without pushing the body hard. Just in the same way you will not retain very deep understanding of things unless a) you’ve been reciting it for over 10 yrs b) you go back and push the understanding continuously for it to remain as part of your being

Building muscle is much harder than maintaining muscle.

And if you went 3 years without exercising, you'll be able to get your muscles back much quicker than had you never had the muscle before.

It's pretty comparable to skills. You don't need to practice as hard to maintain a skill than you do to build it. And if you let the skill atrophy, it's much easier to recover the skill compared to building it from scratch.

Again you are not understanding the comparison.

I’ve got 20 inch lean arms - I know far more about muscle building and retention than you. I train just as hard to maintain them as I did to get them there.

The people who say “oh it’s easy to maintain” LOL it’s easy to maintain 16 inch arms.

> I know far more about muscle building and retention than you

I am a competitive bodybuilder…

> I train just as hard to maintain them as I did to get them there.

Are you enhanced? Were you enhanced when you built the 20” arms? If so, yes I agree.

Edit: With 20" arms, there's nearly 0% chance you're natural. You can't compare your enhanced experience to naturals.

Chiming into this little tiff to say I think bulk muscle is a bad analogy in the first place. It’s more akin to a muscle memory/skill. Something like golf is a better analogy. If you took any golfer, at any level, and had them refrain from golfing for 3 years. I feel pretty confident asserting they would all perform worse than they had. Their skill is diminished.

They would also likely get that skill back faster than a brand new golfer.

I noticed it myself with cycling. Took 8 years off the bike, when I started up again I was nearly back to my old FTP in about 2 months despite starting from basically zero. Muscle memory is real, where I am now as a returning cyclist would take a pure beginner cyclist at least 4+ months to get to, fitness wise.

That said, you do have to work somewhat hard to maintain. With cycling, just 2 weeks off the bike is enough to see a VO2 max drop of anywhere from 4 to 7%. After just 4 weeks, your glycogen storage capacity decreases and you start rapidly losing fitness. After 2 months, you are basically now out of shape.

Detraining happens faster than most people think. And therein lies the danger with over reliance on LLMs for your cognitive skills. Detraining there happens just as fast, skills atrophy in a matter of weeks, not months or years.

People could also regain some cognitive skill back rather fastr when they worked to regain it. But the issue is, many people just lack the motivation to do so. If you golf or cycle, it's likely a passion or hobby. Most people don't view their cognitive health this way, they view it as work. It's why most people don't read much after their schooling, learning and being smart was only ever an ends to a means (diploma, job, money, etc).

I think part of the problem is also that many people simply work too hard or have too much going on in their lives to have any kind of cognitive energy left for this sort of maintenance work, even when they reason/plan that it is useful. This also seems to be encouraged somehow (by society?), to keep going like a freight train, or maybe it doesn't get discouraged enough (i.e. it doesn't get recognized as a problem).

My experience as a parent to an only-child has shown me there's just zero boredom or tolerance of boredom. Any pause or void needs to be filled with something. Any time my son says "I'm bored" my default response has become "awesome", "you're lucky", "I wish I had time to be bored" along with other quips like "boredom is a life skill". Of course, I see this same phenomenon in adults as well. So my rebuttal is that most people have much more free time than they think, it's just a matter of prioritization.

> And if you went 3 years without exercising, you'll be able to get your muscles back much quicker than had you never had the muscle before.

This very much depends on age. I went on statins about 18 months, which destroyed about 15lbs of muscle over the course of a year (160->145). Along with that muscle loss came about a halving or more of the weights I could lift in any given exercise. I interpreted the "do you have any weakness on this medication" question as inability to function levels of weakness, it wasn't until I showed my training logs to my physician that she asserted that I was having weakness.

It's been a year since I went off them and I'm still lifting barely what I could in high school. I'm exploring some different training plans, but AFAIK, there isn't much research into if different weight/volume breakdowns work better for older guys.

5/3/1 without any extra sets (no bbb,fsl,ssl etc) is pretty well regarded for people with poor recovery. Slow, but steady and low risk.

To maintain the muscle you have, you only need about 1/3rd of your normal workouts. It can be retained with 1-2 workouts per week. I imagine the same would be for something you've learned. If you've already put in the effort to learn it, reviewing it ~1x per week is probably enough. During the accumulation phase though - whether it be muscle or learning a new skill - once a week is definitely not enough.

Yes, this is my experience for muscle at least. I used to work out 3-4 times a week, maybe a little more sometimes. Lately due to circumstances, I've been doing smaller workouts about 1-2 times a week. I've lost some finesse, but my muscle mass has remained roughly the same.

Also like some people hinted at this in sibling threads, I think it's different between purely abstract skills, and skills that involve muscle memory. For instance, I could probably stop using my bicycle for a very long time, and still not unlearn how to use it, or learn it again really quickly. Maybe it is because abstract skills are inherently more complex and require more cognitive effort and connections to knowledge overall, and are therefore more fragile.

Most/all of my university-level math knowledge is gone, atrophied from never having needed to use any of it professionally. I don't even really recall needing it for any of my CS coursework, honestly. It was just required for the degree.

I used linear algebra to implement PageRank in my Information Retrieval class. I also used it extensively in my AI and ML classes. You can't pass a ML class without a good foundation in linear algebra. Not to mention, discrete mathematics is the fundamental building blocks of CS. Surely you were using algorithms and graphs. I hope you computed an algorithm's efficiency with big O notation. I hope you have used probability before.

I’m not noticing the decline in my own abilities

…said every drunk person ever.

That you don't notice it doesn't mean it isn't happening. By the time you notice it, it's too late.

That's why elderly people who are worried about their brains play chess and do puzzles like mad.

I have never heard a recognized elite level anyone stop using their skills and say "I'm not noticing the decline in my own abilities" LOL

Perhaps read the rest of the sentence as it continues with "any more than I had before using them [AI/LLM]". We're all only using these tools for ~2 years at most, so if some people are noticing degradation, I am saying that I haven't yet. And so when you say "That you don't notice it doesn't mean it isn't happening.", I agree. But that's off topic, because we're discussing what we've noticed, not what we haven't noticed.

I don't think it's just you or your age, per your pre-internet comment. People that grew up in this just don't understand why they're overwhelmed. And I don't think they're even aware of what their missing out on in terms of focus or mental acuity.

Good point. I do have context and self awareness that it all seems unhealthy. Feels like a common sense evaluation to me but I can’t properly place myself in a younger generations experience.

There is a massive difference between remembering how to do something and learning how to do it.

I too was and wanted to only blame communication overload. Especially with work the hardest thing in ai times seems to be the overload of stuff/shit to read that is too easy to write.

The reality is I agree with the op and I see the loss of reasoning power in myself. I've been using native Emacs on android for a bit and finally have gotten serious about config for it. I got lazy and had Claude do some of it. Which was great untill things don't work because there's not going to be my crazy ask in the data. It was painful for me to sit down and think through my configuration and the problem but I did it.

I am absolutely torn on the technology still two years after adopting it.

Congrats your getting older. Welcome to the club. Find hobbies and keep them, it doesn’t matter what they are it’s important as we age.

It’s a really lossy process. Mostly due to most humans and all models treating sign meetings as determined at the moment of softmax crystallization. Signs (words included) are no more determined than the speed of light is. It’s all reflexive and we should stop lying to ourselves it can be determined.

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