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Comment by ap99 | Hacker News Reader

This goes with calculator to do basic math, contacts apps to store phone numbers instead of remembering them, and watches to tell time imo.

Sure we could use our brain power with old techniques to do these, but why? I don't want to do any of these. I'd rather use that brain power for other problems.

Same with maps.

I don't want to have to store a bunch of location or routing data in my head.

I think what you're pointing towards is going from having problems to solve to not having any problems to solve.

That's definitely a danger, but right now is still early in the AI era so obviously it'll feel like we went from solving problems to letting the new tool solve them for us.

There are still many problems to solve.

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You are confusing faculty with records. The ability to navigate by sense of direction. The ability to memorize numbers. The ability to think clearly by yourself.

Watcha gonna do if big tech takes away your access to the outsourced brain, dear?

Build one myself and make a ton of money. Or wait for the next guy/company to do it.

Think about what you just said. Oh wait, you can't.

You are not storing these things in your head at the expense of anything else. You’re “training” the existing underutilized capacity in your brain for something useful.

> I'd rather use that brain power for other problems.

Except you won't have the underpinnings to even properly think about other problems. Your brain will be mush.

> I don't want to have to store a bunch of location or routing data in my head.

This is preposterous.

> I don't want to have to store a bunch of location or routing data in my head.

hmmm, given how closely memory is linked to spatial navigation sense, and not just in humans, but in evolutionary terms-- think squirrels remembering where they buried nuts, birds and fish remembering migration routes, ...

suggests the ability to store location/routing is foundational to much of intelligence.

Even simple tasks, typing, for example, depends on my knowing where the keys are. Imagine if your keyboard re-organized its keymap randomly every third keystroke.

I thought that it was discovered that squirrels don't remember where nuts were stored. They just kinda guess and enough of them doing storing and then some make it work on average.

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