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Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

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Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#121

Post by voidnap »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #85
softwaredoug wrote: post #32

Druids used to decry that literacy caused people to lose their ability to memorize sacred teachings. And they’re right! But literacy still happened and we’re all either dumber or smarter for it.

Smartphones I think did the most damage. Used to be you had to memorize people's phone numbers. I'm sure other things like memorizing how to get from your house to someone else is also less cognitive when the GPS just tells you every time, instead of you busting out a map, and thinking about your route. I've often found that if I preview a route I'm supposed to take, and use Google Street Maps to physically view key…

The worst part about smart phones is their browser/social media. Technically, even dumb phones like the nokia 3310 had contact lists so you didn't have to memorize phone numbers. And land lines had speed dial. And my family used a phonebook with a rotary dial telephone. It's not like people had memorized as many numbers as they now have stored in their telephones.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#122

Post by mschild »

sdoering wrote: post #111

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time…

Needs more research. Fully agree on that.

That said:

TV very much is the idiot box. Not necessarily because of the TV itself but rather whats being viewed. An actual engaging and interesting show/movie is good, but last time I checked, it was mostly filled with low quality trash and constant news bombardment.

Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to. Simple calculations I do in my head but my ability to do more complex ones diminished. Thats down to me not doing them as often yes, but also because for complex ones I simply whip out my phone.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#123

Post by bowsamic »

sdoering wrote: post #111

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time…

> they've always been wrong before

Were they? It seems that often the fears came true, even Socrates’

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#124

Post by ben_w »

sdoering wrote: post #111

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time…

> 4 months is barely enough time to adapt to a fundamentally new tool

Yes, but also the extra wrinkle that this whole thing is moving so fast that 4 months old is borderline obsolete. Same into the future, any study starting now based on the state of the art on 22/01/2026 will involve models and potentially workflows already obsolete by 22/05/2026.

We probably can't ever adapt fully when the entire landscape is changing like that.

> Previous tools outsourced partial processes - calculators do arithmetic, Google stores facts. LLMs can potentially take over the entire cognitive process from thinking to formulating. That's qualitatively different.

Yes, but also consider that this is true of any team: All managers hire people to outsource some entire cognitive process, letting themselves focus on their own personal comparative advantage.

The book "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" is about Thomas Young, who died in 1829; since then, the sum of recorded knowledge has broadened too much for any single person to learn it all, so we need specialists, including specialists in managing other specialists.

AI is a complement to our own minds with both sides of this: Unlike us, AI can "learn it all", just not very well compared to humans. If any of us had a sci-fi/fantasy time loop/pause that let us survive long enough to read the entire internet, we'd be much more competent than any of these models, but we don't, and the AI runs on hardware which allows it to.

For the moment, it's still useful to have management skills (and to know about and use Popperian falsification rather than verification) so that we can discover and compensate for the weaknesses of the AI.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#125

Post by booleandilemma »

culi wrote: post #108

My friend works with people in their 20s. She recently brought up her struggles to do the math in her head for when to clock in/out for their lunches (30 minutes after an arbitrary time). The young coworker's response was "Oh I just put it into ChatGPT" The kids are using ChatGPT for simple maths...

It's ok this is just the next level of human evolution. We haven't needed to know how to do basic math since the calculator. Nowadays our AIs can read and write for us too. More obsolete skills. We can focus on higher level things now. No more focusing on sparks, we can focus on building something important. We don't have an attention span over 5 seconds anyway thanks to social media. If you don't get where I'm coming from you probably don't have ADHD but that's fine.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#126

Post by zelphirkalt »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #85
softwaredoug wrote: post #32

Druids used to decry that literacy caused people to lose their ability to memorize sacred teachings. And they’re right! But literacy still happened and we’re all either dumber or smarter for it.

Smartphones I think did the most damage. Used to be you had to memorize people's phone numbers. I'm sure other things like memorizing how to get from your house to someone else is also less cognitive when the GPS just tells you every time, instead of you busting out a map, and thinking about your route. I've often found that if I preview a route I'm supposed to take, and use Google Street Maps to physically view key…

About the phone numbers thing: I am now 35yo. Do I still remember the phone number of one of my best friends from primary school back then? Hell yeah, I do! These days though, I am struggling a bit with phone numbers, mostly because I don't even try. If the number is important, I will save it somewhere. Memorizing it? Nahhh... But sometimes my number brain still does that and it seems some weird pattern in the number. Stuff like

"+4 and then -2 and then +6 and then -3. Aha! All makes sense! Cannot repeat the digit differences, and need to be whole numbers, so going to the next higher even number, which is 6, which is 3 when halved!"

And then I am kinda proud my brain still works, even if the found "pattern" is hilariously arbitrary.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#127

Post by boomlinde »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #42

Talking to LLMs reminds me of arguing with a certain flavor of Russian. When you clarify based on a misunderstanding of theirs, they act like your clarification is a fresh claim which avoids them ever having to backpedal. It strikes me as intellectually dishonest in a way I find very grating. I do find it interesting though as the incentives that produce the behavior in both cases may be similar.

"What you said just now isn't true at all and you should reconsider the premise"

"Exactly!"

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#128

Post by canxerian »

My use case for ChatGPT is to delegate mental effort on certain tasks, so that I can pour my mental energy on to things I truly care about, like family, certain hobbies and relationships.

If you are feeling over reliant on these tools then I quickfix that's worked me is to have real conversations with real people. Organise a coffee date if you must.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#129

Post by themk »

nerdsniper wrote: post #27
netsharc wrote: post #21

An obvious comparison is probably the habitual usage of GPS navigation. Some people blindly follow them and some seemingly don't even remember routes they routinely take.

I found a great fix for this was to lock my screen maps to North-Up. That teaches me the shape of the city and greatly enhances location/route/direction awareness. It’s cheap, easy, and quite effective to passively learn the maps over the course of time. My similar ‘hack’ for LLMs has been to try to “race” the AI. I’ll type out a detailed prompt, then go dive into solving the same problem myself while it chews throug…

I actually noticed this as a kid. One of the early GTA games north locked minimaps, and I knew the city well. Later ones did not, and I was always more confused.

I've pretty much always had GPS nav locked to North-Up because of this experience.

Re: Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant

#130

Post by timeon »

softwaredoug wrote: post #32

Druids used to decry that literacy caused people to lose their ability to memorize sacred teachings. And they’re right! But literacy still happened and we’re all either dumber or smarter for it.

This comment sounds like distraction from the topic. Analogy is plausible but is not the real thing.
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