LLMs as a Cognitive Virus • Hacker News Board

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#31

Post by FailMore » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

Because I am LLM Dependent I got distracted reading the article and made my LLM summarise it to me in a few slides. For those in a rush/interested in LLM summary slop:

https://smalldocs.org/s/scB6O8KiZEmLWgK855A1vt#k=yiw8FB_G5Ld...

I do agree that we are on a pathway to losing much. If you focusing on maximising LLM-powered productivity you basically lose the learning that used to naturally happen when doing actual work. At the company I work for the focus is on productivity, and it's easy in many ways (less mental workload and I receive more praise) to go with it instead of fight it.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#32

Post by IshKebab » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

cyanydeez wrote: post #28

Murfalo wrote: post #19

I love this line of thinking but the framing comes across to me as a bit inflammatory and uncharitable. Just about anything involved in the exchanged of ideas can be viewed as a virus! That is because, when viewed from an evolutionary biology perspective, ideas are the cognitive equivalent of genes (in fact, this is where the term meme comes from). There's a whole field, evolutionary memetics, dedicated to this. Cult…

Memes are what we are talking about.

Dawkins memes.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#33

Post by Avicebron » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #23

Avicebron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contagion probably is more accurate.

Well, a meme is contagious, but it doesn't do the same work a virus can at altering the structure of its host.

I'm actually not too sure about that, viruses have their own mechanisms of infiltrating the host and replicating inside of it. But so do ideas.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#34

Post by pixl97 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:50 PM UTC

qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

>Ok... but are automobiles also a virus?

Yes.

>Because we've become dependent on them?

Because we're burning the planet down with them.

>Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage?

Yes, because in places we do people enjoy higher qualities of life and happiness. Along with things like health improvement from doing more excersize.

>What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

Moreso we've become dependent on eating processed junk over the past 50 years and gotten fat as shit.

So yea, maybe think a little more deeply about your analogies?

>What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#35

Post by dvt » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

I just don't see that the main thrust of their argument, (oversimplified) "humans will become so dependent on AI, they'll become dumb," holds any water. I mean even from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence is (by far) our most valuable competitive advantage. Arguing that "cognitive offloading" (their term) will have runaway effects is reaching to say the least.

It's like saying that moving from manual-labor-intensive agrarian societies to industrial ones will make us weak and meek. In fact, it's had the opposite effect: humans, on average, are healthier and live longer than ever in human history.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#36

Post by qarl2 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #34

qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

>Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Yes. >Because we've become dependent on them? Because we're burning the planet down with them. >Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? Yes, because in places we do people enjoy higher qualities of life and happiness. Along with things like health improvement from doing more excersize. >What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cookin…

Don't straw man me. My question was not about processed food. My question was about cooking food.

Is cooking food a virus? Should we facilitate reversibility in our food cooking?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#37

Post by FailMore » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

Hmm maybe it always feels "different" to every generation going through automation of something previously un-automated, but don't you feel that to some extent this is different.

Humans have been the dominant species because of our ability to think, not our ability to get from A to B in any particular way/cook food. If we abstract ~the bulk of our thinking to LLMs, don't we lose something as a species which makes us more vulnerable... Or is it always the case during an automation?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#38

Post by pmg101 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

qarl2 wrote: post #16

Ok... but are automobiles also a virus? Because we've become dependent on them? Should we also facilitate reversibility in our automobile usage? What about cooking food? We've become entirely dependent on cooking food.

Jared Diamond explores this in his book Collapse.

The core idea being that each time humanity was going to exceed the carrying capacity of its environment, we invented a new technology which increased the headroom. Obviously this ratchet only goes in one direction. The only way to go backwards is collapse.

But... It's worked so far?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#39

Post by 01100011 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

dvt wrote: post #35

I just don't see that the main thrust of their argument, (oversimplified) "humans will become so dependent on AI, they'll become dumb," holds any water. I mean even from an evolutionary standpoint, intelligence is (by far) our most valuable competitive advantage. Arguing that "cognitive offloading" (their term) will have runaway effects is reaching to say the least. It's like saying that moving from manual-labor-inte…

Haven't read the article but I think in some limited timeframes it's true. I'm already turning over a lot of my thinking to LLMs. Not so much of a problem if I own the LLM but when big tech can just turn off the tap when they want or skew the results it seems a bit dangerous. It's possibly less dangerous for me, being old already, but seems quite risky for younger folk.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#40

Post by iforgotmypasswo » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

I feel the premise of this research is wrong, or at least the synopsis phrasing. Smart people like learning. Now we just learn more interesting things.

Weekend me before LLMs: Maybe I’ll chip away at that dependency injection library I’ve been working on. If I spend most of the day I could improve the user facing test framework.

Weekend me after LLMs: Let’s continue work to get Claude Code running in WebXR on a Quest 3 with app architecture modeled as a 3d construct. We’ve got deepgram hooked up for a better voice to text experience, but giving Claude a voice was a waste of time. Claude, continue to teach me about 3d rendering as related to our current challenges matching the fidelity of the built in browser.