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Comment by computably | Hacker News Reader

> Did I not become better at raking leaves?

Only in a sense which is obviously not at all what's being discussed. If you hire a personal chef, have you gotten better at cooking? What about a nanny, have you gotten better at raising your children?

Of course automating some cognitive processes can free your time for other, more fulfilling aspects. But there's certainly no guarantee that that's the case.

> People are not calculators - all these simplistic takes are frankly insulting to human capability.

Funny example. Which do you think is more common, people who are innumerate because they believe using a calculator is sufficient, or people who are highly numerate and believe learning arithmetic was a waste of time?

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> If you hire a personal chef, have you gotten better at cooking

Likely yes, as you learn cooking now only by repeatedly cutting carrots the same way you always did but expanding your horizons to new cooking techniques and socializing in the niche will yield much bigger growth.

This Bruce Lee level misconception of "practice the same kick for a thousand times" is extremely outdated perspective on how people actually progress effectively.

So how best to develop a kick with good form? YouTube is a better way? I really cannot relate to what you are trying to express. I practiced music by drills, it is not doing the same thing repeatedly, you get a little better each time.

> So how best to develop a kick with good form?

Same way you learn anything well - with balance and diversity. You kick, go for a walk, rest, watch youtube, get kicked by other people, talk about kicking on a kicking fans forum.

The point is that you can learn faster and be better with AI tools as you can choose when to kick and when you have space for all of those other activities that will still train your kick.

Not only that, but this clearly seems like superior human condition where we get to choose our actions rather than be pigeon-held into kicking 8 hours a day. I'm a better programmer now that I can choose not to refactor python for 3 days even though after that I'd surely learn all library APIs by heart. Instead, I can spend 1 day working on initial refactor somewhat learning the APIs and have LLMs take over the rest while I spend other 2 days on other new tasks.

I think the confusion here is people assuming that if option of not doing thing exists then people will stop doing it and regress which is a real danger but it's one that can be solved for rather easily. I'd be willing to wager that in 5–20 years we'll have more domain experts than fewer.

> Likely yes, as you learn cooking now only by repeatedly cutting carrots the same way you always did but expanding your horizons to new cooking techniques and socializing in the niche will yield much bigger growth.

You are not engaging in good faith. Obviously the point of the argument is that if you hire a personal chef, you are outsourcing the actual cooking and investing little to no time yourself on improving at cooking. Interpreting it as having more freedom to cook, and your contractor providing a service being your friend/teacher, is absurd.

And even in your contrived hypothetical, there's two basic issues. First, mastery can be highly specialized. Second, if you only ever did the trivial and repetitive to begin with, you never intended to improve.

> This Bruce Lee level misconception of "practice the same kick for a thousand times" is extremely outdated perspective on how people actually progress effectively.

This is another straw man. Nobody is promoting this meme that the only thing you need for self-improvement is mindless repetition. That doesn't even make sense, considering the actual topic is thinking for yourself instead of only using AI. The point is you can't get better at something without actually practicing, and "difficult" or "tedious" doesn't equate to "unimportant."

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