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LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

arxiv.org

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101–110 of 241 posts

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#101

Post by sodapopcan »

walt_grata wrote: post #100
simonklitj wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t suppose he was entirely wrong. I would probably be able to recall a lot more (verbatim) if it all had to be stored in me noggin. I think the trade off worthwhile, however.

Im 45, and i can tell you getting a cell phone absolutely destroyed my ability to memorize phone numbers. During the 90s when i was in highschool i has all my friends numbers, parents work numbers, etc... memorized, i only know my parents and wife now. If you don't use a skill, that skill atrophies

...which can come in handy. Sometimes your cellphone battery dies. I still know my parents' numbers from memory (as well as some of my friends' parents' numbers, though that isn't super useful) but I am concerned about it sometimes.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#104

Post by grebc »

ragequittah wrote: post #81
dspillett wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And like a cult to those of us preferring not to engage, for whatever reason, with everyone and their dog telling us that we should (and sometimes getting quite offended, like our refusal to play that game is a personal attack on them for choosing to).

I just find it such a fascinating technology. It's finally fun to be a nerd again! For me it's the same feeling as when I was on the internet in the early '90s and was trying to tell people how useful it would be. I don't hold a grudge against anybody who held out until the iPhone came around or whatever it was that got them to finally realize the usefulness, but I still question why it was so hard to convince so man…

You can find something interesting without brow-beating people about it.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#105

Post by lelanthran »

jjk166 wrote: post #64

"If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks." -Socrates

We see this posted weekly here. Give it a break. It's old and worn out now.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#106

Post by grebc »

qlte wrote: post #78
iforgotmypasswo wrote: post #40

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…

Kinda funny how the "more interesting things" after LLMs example are mostly fiddling with Claude Code itself. Reminds me of when someone says they ship 60k lines of code every day now and when asked for an example, it's a labyrinth of custom CLI tools, skills, MCPs and build pipelines for their OpenClaw setup.

Lots of people are just asking their favourite LLM to rewrite an existing app/library because I’m more productive after spending 3 months writing custom software vs spending 2 hours reading docs and using existing software to achieve some other goal.

Better to make a custom 3d renderer than just use Unity to make a game.

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#107

Post by lelanthran »

iforgotmypasswo wrote: post #40

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…

> Claude, continue to teach me about 3d rendering as related to our current challenges matching the fidelity of the built in browser.

Why? Claude can just do it for you, can't it? If you're using Claude to do these things, why half-ass it?

Re: LLMs as a Cognitive Virus

#109

Post by chrisjj »

qarl wrote: post #50
FailMore wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In cooking food we lose a great deal of our immunity to parasitic infections. Cooking food absolutely does make us more vulnerable to uncooked food. > Or is it always the case during an automation? Obviously. Any time we make a useful discovery and begin using it, we become dependent on using it.

> In cooking food we loose a great deal of our immunity to parasitic infections

... and eliminate many parasites.

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