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Comment by saulrh | Hacker News Reader

That's exactly why I like Glass so much. Humans aren't the only things that have memories, as demonstrated by dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants, and dogs. Humans aren't the only things that can process data, as demonstrated by computers. The thing that is unique to humans is the ability to think, to make high-level abstract decisions. By doing all of the menial labor for me - memorization and basic number crunching and mechanical information retrieval - tools like Google Glass let me concentrate on that decisionmaking. They let me concentrate on being human.

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I would argue that without a foundation of basic knowledge and facts you will be unable to do advanced abstract thinking. Knowing something and being able to look it up are not the same thing.

"I would argue that without a foundation of basic knowledge and facts you will be unable to do advanced abstract thinking."

What does that even mean?

It would be analogous to saying that without knowing algebra you'd be hard-pressed to solve problems in calculus.

I'm not sure what that has to do with thinking. Is there an absence of thinking when solving algebra that only kicks in when solving calculus?

No, it means that you need to know algebra to be able to think about calculus, not merely having access to an algebra book. Everyone can have access to algebra information, that doesn't mean everyone can solve calculus, as proved by reality.

It means that even with easy access to all the necessay information you can't build a rocket if you don't know how to do it.

You can learn how to do it, but that just means transferring the information from the outside into your brain.

You are not able to meaningfully reason (think) about a topic if you don't know anything about it and I show you the Wikipedia page. Easy access to data is useful if you know what to do with it.

I don't see how this argument detracts from glass in anyway. Doesn't it just make a better case for them?

Where did I mention Glass?

The OP said that having easy access to information allows him to "be human" and think. I'm arguing that is not nearly enough.

A large part of what I do when I program is recognising patterns and deciding when to apply certain methods. Without knowing the patterns and the methods to apply, I'd get nowhere.

When I write, I rely on a knowledge of words and how they relate to my mental abstractions to be able to formulate sentences from them.

Pretty much everything we do rely extremely extensively on facts and knowledge we need to acquire and remember.

Not knowing or remembering details is fine. I rely extensively on documentation and searches to write code, for example. But you need to know what to look for and what to search for.

Well, perhaps you are right and this is the ultimate natural selection. And maybe we will be free to perform other activities that are much more relevant to our existence. But the brain is a well-oiled machine, and the less you use it the rusty it gets. If the glasses tell you exactly where to go all the time, we will lose spacial orientation perhaps. If the glass makes all the math for us, we will lose our computation abilities.

Furthermore, this will make you highly dependent on a device that could ran out of battery or connection. How will you perform computation that you need for decision making then? Let's take it further, why go to universities when Google Glass tells me what I need to know?

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