Before pervasive GPS, it took me very little time to actually learn and internalize a route. Now it takes a lot longer to remember it when you're constantly guided. Same exact thing is happening with guided reasoning we get with LLMs
Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
231–240 of 308 posts
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#232As technology gets more impressive, we internalize less knowledge ourselves.
There is a "plato" story on how he laments the invention of writing because now people don't need to memorize speeches and stuff.
I think there is a level of balance. Writing gave us enough efficiencies that the learned laziness made us overall more effective.
The internet in 2011 made us a bit less effective. I am not gonna lie; I spent a lot more time being able to get resources, whereas I would have to struggle on my own to solve a problem. You internalize one more than the other, but is it worth the additional time every time?
I worry about current students learning through LLMs just like I would worry about a student in 2012 graduating in physics when such a student had constant access to wolfram alpha.
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cars do not strictly have higher capabilities than horses. GP was pointing out that horses can think. On a particularly well-trained horse, you could fall asleep on it and wake up back at your house. You can find viral videos of Amish people still doing this today.
Ah, good point. Then the global warming point applies, but in a much less trivial way. There is turbulence in any big directed change. Better overall new tech often creates inconveniences, performs less well, than some of the tech it replaces. Sometimes only initially, but sometimes for longer periods of time. A net gain, but we all remember simpler things whose reliability and convenience we miss. And some old tech…
The issue is more than just a local cold snap. When the fundamental graph you’re basing a theory on is wrong it’s worth rejecting the theory.
The total computing power of life on earth the fact it’s fallen over the last 1,000 years. Ants alone represent something like 50x the computing power of all humans and all computers on the planet and we’ve reduced the number of insects on earth more than we’ve added humans or computing power.
The same is true through a great number of much longer events. Periods of ice ages and even larger scale events aren’t just an afternoon even across geological timescales.
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
SOCRATES: Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to God? PHAEDRUS: No, indeed. Do you? SOCRATES: I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men? PHAEDRUS: Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you…
“The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.” Alberto Moravia, London Observer, 14 Oct. 1979
It’s a pretty interesting point.
If a large fraction of the population can’t even hold five complex ideas in their head simultaneously, without confusing them after a few seconds, are they literate in the sense of e.g. reading Plato?
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#235I'm certainly of two minds on this. On one hand, this reminds me of how all of the kids were going to be completely helpless in the real world because "no one carries a calculator in their pocket". Then calculators became something ~everyone has in their pocket (and the kids ended up just fine). On the other hand, I believe in the value of "learning to learn", developing media literacy, and all of the other positives…
I was taught to not use calculators on exams and homework and that’s why I am able to do math in my head today. I have recently seen GenZ perplexed by card games with addition and making change. For millennials, this is grade school stuff.
Sure, there's obviously a scale.
I'm not about to divide 54,432 by 7.6, even though I was taught how to. I'll pull out my phone.
On the other end, I'm not going to pull out my phone to figure out I owe you $0.35.
I think the point I was trying to make still stands.
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#236I've been calling this out since OpenAI first introduced ChatGPT. The danger in ubiquitously available LLMs, which seemingly have an answer to any question, isn’t necessarily their existence. The real danger lies in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer rather than taking a few moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of…
I recognize this problem, but I find in my own uses of ChatGPT it actually allows me to overcome my laziness rather than making it worse. I'll have a problem that I want to work on but getting started is difficult. Asking ChatGPT is almost frictionless, the next thing I know I'm working on the project, 8 hours go by and I'm done. When I get stuck on some annoying library installation, ChatGPT solves if for me so I do…
There's something magical about ChatGPT giving you a mostly-wrong answer.
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#237Before pervasive GPS, it took me very little time to actually learn and internalize a route. Now it takes a lot longer to remember it when you're constantly guided. Same exact thing is happening with guided reasoning we get with LLMs
I have different experience. It took me some time to make a rote and write down all turns. Now getting from location A to B is a lot easier. Take a look at proposed rote and make some corrections. Meanwhile I spend time thinking about something else. So, GPS doesn't make me stupid or forgetful. It's just a tool which makes me more productive. The same almost true for LLM, except getting the right answer isn't always easy or possible. But overall on coding small utilities it's very helpful. For reasoning models I still need to find the right tasks. May be more complex utilities. Or the one I can't get from 4o yet: red-black tree with custom memory management and custom 'pointers' in data objects (small integers). While custom allocators are supported by std, the implementation still keeps native pointers, which locks it in memory.
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
“The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.” Alberto Moravia, London Observer, 14 Oct. 1979
It’s a pretty interesting point. If a large fraction of the population can’t even hold five complex ideas in their head simultaneously, without confusing them after a few seconds, are they literate in the sense of e.g. reading Plato?
What makes an "idea" atomic/discrete/cardinal? What makes an idea "complex" vs simple or merely true? Over what finite duration of time does it count as "simultaneously" being held?
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my take as well. There was a story a couple days ago about a neural network built on a single photonic chip. I fed the paper to ChatGPT and was able to use it to develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding of what the chip actually delivered, how it operated, the fundamental operating principles of core components and how it could be integrated into a system. The fact that I now have a tire…
> (hallucination caveats notwithstanding) This is a pretty big caveat to the goal of > develop a much more meaningful and comprehensive understanding Which is still my biggest issue with LLMs. The little I use of them, the answers are still confidently wrong a lot of the time. Has this changed?
I agree in general but the way this has worked for me in practice is that I approach things hierarchically up and down. Any specific hallucinations tend to come out in the wash as the same question is asked from different layers of abstraction.
Re: Metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative AI on learning motivation
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have accounts from the ancient Greeks of the old-school's attitude towards writing. In the deep past, they maintained an oral tradition, and scholars were expected to memorize everything. They saw writing/reading as a crutch that was ruining the youth's memory. We stand now at the edge of a new epoch, reading now being replaced by AI retrieval. There is concern that AI is a crutch, the youth will be weakened. My o…
> In the deep past, they maintained an oral tradition, and scholars were expected to memorize everything. They saw writing/reading as a crutch that was ruining the youth's memory. Could you share a source for this? The research paper I found has a different hypothesis; it links the slow transition to writing to trust, not an "old-school's attitude towards writing". Specifically the idea that the institutional trust r…
I don't think these hypotheses are in tension. The notion that some scholars, like Plato, distrusted writing based on epistemological theories--the nature of truth and knowing--is well attested. The paper you linked is a sociological description that seeks to better explain the evolution of the institutionalization of writing. Why people behave a certain way, and why they think they behave that way (i.e. their rationalizations), are only loosely related, and often at complete odds.