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Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

arxiv.org

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Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#81

Post by dr_dshiv »

delusional wrote: post #67
dr_dshiv wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prompting involves more than an insignificant amount of writing.

But it is not at all the same _type_ of writing. Most of the prompts I've seen and written are shorter, less organized, and most importantly not actually considered a piece of writing. When you are writing a prompt you are considering how the machine will "interpret" it and what it will spit back, you're not constructing and argument. Vagueness or dialectics in a prompt will often just confuse the machine. Hitting th…

Prompting is prewriting — which is very important and often neglected. With it, you are:

* Describing the purpose of the writing

* Defining the format of the writing

* Articulating the context

You are writing to figure out what you want.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#82

Post by gnabgib »

namaria wrote: post #78
Frummy wrote: post #4

I can’t believe riding a horse and carriage wouldn’t make you better at riding a horse. Sure a horserider wouldn’t want to practice the wrong way, but anyone else just wants to get somewhere

Horse riding was invented much later than carriages, and it revolutionized warfare.

Can you point at some references? Horse riding started around 3500 BC[0], while horse carriages started around 100BC [1], oxen/buffalo drawn devices around 3000 BC[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrianism

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#83

Post by lelele »

pilif wrote: post #35
jsrozner wrote: post #13

I wouldn't call it "accumulation of cognitive debt"; just call it cognitive decline, or loss of cognitive skills. And also DUH. If you stop speaking a language you forget it. The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Anybody remember the couple studies on the use of google maps for navigation? One was "Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation"; another rep…

> The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Why do I still know how to optimize free conventional memory in DOS by configuring config.sys and autoexec.bat? I haven’t done this in 2 decades and I’m reasonably sure I never again will

Agreed. We remember many things that don't serve us anymore.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#84

Post by Kiyo-Lynn »

When I write with AI, it feels smooth in the moment, but I’m not really thinking through the ideas. The writing sounds fine, but when I look back later, I often can’t remember why I phrased things that way.

Now I try to write my own draft first, then use AI to help polish it. It takes a bit more effort upfront, but I feel like I learn more and remember things better.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#85

Post by nothrabannosir »

esafak wrote: post #8
Todd wrote: post #5

This is called cognitive offloading. Anyone who’s spent enough time working with coding assistants will recognize it.

Or working as an engineering manager. It's the inevitable consequence of working at a different level of abstraction. It's not the end of the world. My assembly is rusty too...

If LLMs were as reliable as compilers we wouldn’t be checking in their output, and I’d be happy to forget all programming lore.

The “skill domain” with compilers is the “input”: that’s what I need to grok , maintain , and understand . With LLMs it’s the “output”.

until that changes, you’re playing a dangerous game letting those skills atrophy.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#86

Post by namaria »

gnabgib wrote: post #82
namaria wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horse riding was invented much later than carriages, and it revolutionized warfare.

Can you point at some references? Horse riding started around 3500 BC[0], while horse carriages started around 100BC [1], oxen/buffalo drawn devices around 3000 BC[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrianism [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage

From the article [0] you linked:

"However, the most unequivocal early archaeological evidence of equines put to working use was of horses being driven. Chariot burials about 2500 BC present the most direct hard evidence of horses used as working animals. In ancient times chariot warfare was followed by the use of war horses as light and heavy cavalry."

Long discussion in History Exchange about dating the cave paintings mentioned in the wikipedia article above:

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/68935/when-did-h...

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#87

Post by flomo »

pilif wrote: post #35
jsrozner wrote: post #13

I wouldn't call it "accumulation of cognitive debt"; just call it cognitive decline, or loss of cognitive skills. And also DUH. If you stop speaking a language you forget it. The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Anybody remember the couple studies on the use of google maps for navigation? One was "Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation"; another rep…

> The brain does not retain information that it does not need. Why do I still know how to optimize free conventional memory in DOS by configuring config.sys and autoexec.bat? I haven’t done this in 2 decades and I’m reasonably sure I never again will

Probably because there was some reward that you felt at the time was important (most likely playing a DOS game).

I did this for a living at a large corp where I was the 'thinkpad guy', and I barely remember any of the tricks (and only some of the IBM stuff). Then Windows NT and 95 came out and like whoo cares... This was always dogshit. Because I was always an Apple/Unix guy and that was just a job.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#88

Post by stephen_g »

namaria wrote: post #75

[flagged]

Really? You claim that praising an analogy would never happen in normal conversation before 2022? Seems fairly normal to potentially start with "that's a good way of putting it, but [...]" since forever...

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#89

Post by rohansingh »

audunw wrote: post #71
barrenko wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My nickel - we are in the primary stages of being given something like the famed "bicycle for the mind", an exoskeleton for the brain. At first when someone gives you a mech, you're like "woah, cool", let's see what it can do. And then you zip around, smash rocks, buildings, go try to lift the Eiffel. After a while you get bored of it (duh), and go back to doing what you usually do, utilizing the "bicycle" for the ki…

“Bicycle for the mind” analogy is actually really good here. Since bicycles and other transportation technology has made us increasingly weak, which has a negative impact on physical health. At this point it has reached such a critical point that people are taking seriously the fact that we need physical exercise to be in good health. My company recently introduced 60 minutes a week of activity during work hours. It’…

> bicycles ... has made us increasingly weak

This is pretty difficult for me to buy. Cycling has been shown time & again to be a great way to increase fitness.

Re: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task

#90

Post by gnabgib »

namaria wrote: post #86
gnabgib wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point at some references? Horse riding started around 3500 BC[0], while horse carriages started around 100BC [1], oxen/buffalo drawn devices around 3000 BC[1]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestrianism [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carriage

From the article [0] you linked: "However, the most unequivocal early archaeological evidence of equines put to working use was of horses being driven. Chariot burials about 2500 BC present the most direct hard evidence of horses used as working animals. In ancient times chariot warfare was followed by the use of war horses as light and heavy cavalry." Long discussion in History Exchange about dating the cave paintin…

Well exactly.. a millennium after being ridden (3500BC) they were used as beasts of burden (2500BC).. rather the opposite of your claim.
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