Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

media.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 529 posts

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

#81

Post by imp0cat »

layman51 wrote: post #44
nerdsniper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's a great tip, but I know some people hate that because there is some cognitive load if they rely more on visuals and have to think more about which way to turn or face when they first start the route, or have to make turns on unfamiliar routes. I also wanted to mention that just spending some time looking at the maps and comparing differences in each services' suggested routes can be helpful for developing dire…

    some cognitive load
That's the entire point of it though, to make you more aware of where you are and which way you should go.

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

#82

Post by mannanj »

greggoB wrote: post #36
mannanj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Similar to the mass psychosis we were hearing about during COVID Can you be more specific and/or provide some references? The "demonstrating curiosity about controversial topics" part is sounding like vaccine skepticism, though I don't recall ever hearing that being referred to as any kind of "psychosis".

Noting that it is straw man to connect my argument with vaccine skepticism.

The mass psychosis was that early on in the COVID response, we were hearing so much early advice from people that were ahead of CDC/FDA, things like:

- Masks work (CDC/FDA discouraged, then flip-flopped and took credit for these things) despite it originating from Scott Alexander and skeptic communities like his, I also heard it from Tim Ferriss

- Ivermectin, Mega dosing Vitamins like Vitamin D and C, Povidone Iodine (known disinfectant people use: claimed to be "bleach" by misinformation media) - we know they still have Little to no downside and the psychosis was to label any critical thinking about ideas like nutrition and personal health to help with "COVID" as anti-COVID and anti-vaccine. Psychosis like attack, straw mans, Ad Hominems shutting down critical thinking and curiosity as psychosis

- Asking about "Hey if I got COVID before, that immunity is as robust if not more than vaccine, what evidence supports I need the vaccine?" was shut down despite it being robust and sound questioning to ask. Curiosity was shut down, psychosis was to jump on all questioners as anti-vaccine and vaccine skeptics, calling them murderers often by sensationalist papers.

Does that answer your question, and feel referential for you. Let me know what you are expecting and I can deliver better references. I think you've heard about or are probably familiar with all the examples I used though.(Another psychosis I just thought of: To this day the hostile, discriminatory, lock-step vocal cancel-culture class of opinion that was blindly sent to anyone who questioned mainstream covid policy during that time was so much like the biggest example of psychosis I've ever seen. That wa when I first heard of the term "mass psychosis")

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

#84

Post by kilpikaarna »

orliesaurus wrote: post #17

i think i can guess this article without reading it: ive never been on major drugs, even medically speaking yet using AI makes me feels like i am on some potent drug that eating my brain. what's state management? what's this hook? who cares, send it to claude or whatever

> what's state management? what's this hook? who cares

Incidentally how I feel about React regardless of LLMs. Putting Claude on top is just one more incomprehensible abstraction.

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

#85

Post by giancarlostoro »

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 / unfamiliar parts of my route, I am drastically less likely to get lost, because "oh this looks familiar! I turn right here!"

My wife had a similar experience, she had some college project where they had to drive up and down some roads and write about it, it was a group project, and she bought a map, and noticed that after reading the map she was more knowledgeable about the area than her sister who also grew up in the same area.

I think AI is a great opportunity for learning more about your subjects in question from books, and maybe even the AI themselves by asking for sources, always validate your intel from more authoritative sources. The AI just saved you 10 minutes? You can spend those 10 minutes reading the source material.

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

#86

Post by carterschonwald »

idk, if anything I’m thinking more. The idea that I might be able to build everything I’ve ever planned out. At least the way I’m using them, it’s like the perfect assistive device for my flavor of ADHD — I get an interactive notebook I can talk through crazy stuff with. No panacea for sure, but I’m so much higher functioning it’s surreal. I’m not even using em in the volume many folks claim, more like pair programming with a somewhat mentally ill junior colleague. Much faster than I’d otherwise be.

this actually does include a crazy amount of long form latex expositions on a bunch of projects im having a blast iterating on. i must be experiencing what its almost like not having adhd

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

#87

Post by notrealyme123 »

carterschonwald wrote: post #86

idk, if anything I’m thinking more. The idea that I might be able to build everything I’ve ever planned out. At least the way I’m using them, it’s like the perfect assistive device for my flavor of ADHD — I get an interactive notebook I can talk through crazy stuff with. No panacea for sure, but I’m so much higher functioning it’s surreal. I’m not even using em in the volume many folks claim, more like pair programmi…

I am currently writing a paper and I am thinking exactly the same.

That must be how normal people feel.

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

#88

Post by skrebbel »

carterschonwald wrote: post #86

idk, if anything I’m thinking more. The idea that I might be able to build everything I’ve ever planned out. At least the way I’m using them, it’s like the perfect assistive device for my flavor of ADHD — I get an interactive notebook I can talk through crazy stuff with. No panacea for sure, but I’m so much higher functioning it’s surreal. I’m not even using em in the volume many folks claim, more like pair programmi…

Can you elaborate on how you use AI for this? Do you do it for coding or for “everything?”

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

#89

Post by EagnaIonat »

mannanj wrote: post #82
greggoB wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similar to the mass psychosis we were hearing about during COVID Can you be more specific and/or provide some references? The "demonstrating curiosity about controversial topics" part is sounding like vaccine skepticism, though I don't recall ever hearing that being referred to as any kind of "psychosis".

Noting that it is straw man to connect my argument with vaccine skepticism. The mass psychosis was that early on in the COVID response, we were hearing so much early advice from people that were ahead of CDC/FDA, things like: - Masks work (CDC/FDA discouraged, then flip-flopped and took credit for these things) despite it originating from Scott Alexander and skeptic communities like his, I also heard it from Tim Ferr…

> CDC/FDA discouraged, then flip-flopped and took credit for these things

There is a documentary called "Everything under control". In it they explained why this happened.

Basically they were scared that the public were going to buy out the masks that were needed by medical staff.

> Ivermectin

Same documentary, this was started by Musk. It does nothing and is dangerous.

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

#90

Post by svara »

alt187 wrote: post #66
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.

It's more complex than that. The three pillars of learning are theory (finding out about the thing), practice (doing the thing) and metacognition (being right, or more importantly, wrong. And correcting yourself.). Each of those steps reinforce neural pathways. They're all essential in some form or another. Literacy, books, saving your knowledge somewhere else removes the burden of remembering everything in your head…

> Make them give you problems, instead of ready-made solutions

Yes, this is one of my favorite prompting styles.

If you're stuck on a problem, don't ask for a solution, ask for a framework for addressing problems of that type, and then work through it yourself.

Can help a lot with coming unstuck, and the thoughts are still your own. Oftentimes you end up not actually following the framework in the end, but it helps get the ball rolling.

Post reply on HN