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by criddell 432 days ago
You can argue whatever you want to argue.

I make my living with my brain so I do worry about the downsides of removing boredom and mental struggle from my days.

2 comments

Me too.

There is another side to this, which is maybe we don’t need to know a lot of things.

It was true with search engines already, but maybe truer with LLMs. That thing you’re querying probably doesn’t actually matter. It’s neurotic digging and searching for an object you will never use or benefit from. The urge to seek is strong but you won’t find the thing you’re searching for this way.

You might learn more by just going for a walk.

It's almost certainly going to be bad, and almost certainly going to be unavoidable.

I can't spell for shit anymore. Ever since auto correct became omnipresent in pretty much all writing fields, my brain just kinda ditched remembering how to spell words.

buuuttt

Manual labor has been obsolete for at least 100 years now for certain classes of people, and fitness is still an enormous recreational activity people partake in. So even in an AI heavy society, I still strongly suspect there will be "brain games" that people still enjoy and regularly play.

We aren't talking about something like spelling or digging a hole. We're talking about a fundamental cognitive skill: reading eight short paragraphs of text and extracting meaning from it.
> eight short paragraphs of text

Fair point. But they are heavily metaphor-laden paragraphs.

Textual interpretation is a highly subjective activity. Entire careers consist of interpreting, reinterpreting, and discussing texts that others have already interpreted. Film critics, book reviewers, political pundits, TV anchors, podcasters, etc.

'In 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution. "Too early to say," he replied'

I had my own sense of what the "coquina" metaphor stood for. I wanted to see other peoples' interpretations. Turns out my interpretation was wrong.

> I can't spell for shit anymore.

This is increasingly happening to me every day. Hope the alien overlords don't have spelling tests (as their version of IQ tests) to separate the serfs from the field-masters.