someuser484848

I see what you mean - it wasn't intended to be a parallel to mechanical calculators.

However, the title implies that they were a trick - otherwise why is the "confidence trick" 400 years old?

I feel like this kind of imprecise use of language is what makes it difficult to interact with LLMs in a meaningful way - perhaps that is the reason the author seems to dismiss the value of them.

What? The comparison to the confidence trick from 400 years ago already stops at the second point? Why call this article that way if you are not going to bring up any parallels beyond... the extremely weak link of "building trust".

You have not actually made clear how mechanical calculators were a scam.

Ironically, this article feels like it was written by an LLM. Just a baseless opinion.