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by rainsford 379 days ago
But how important is the core knowledge if it isn't necessary to achieve the outcomes people actually value? People only cared about map reading skills to the extent that it got them where they want to go. Once GPS became a thing, especially GPS on mobile phones, getting them where they want to go via map reading became irrelevant. Yes, there are corner cases where map reading or general direction finding skills are useful, but GPS does a vastly better and quicker job in the large majority of cases so our general way-finding experience has improved.

This is especially true because the general past alternative to using GPS to find some new unfamiliar place wasn't "read a map" it was "don't go there in favor of going some place you already knew" in a lot of cases. I remember the pre-GPS era, and my experience in finding new stuff is significantly better today than it was back then.
2 comments
j_w 379 days ago
Using map reading skills as a proxy for this is a bit of a strawman. People who use GPS habitually have worse navigational and spatial awareness skills.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-62877-0

If you habitually use a calculator for all arithmetic, could the result not be similar? What if you reach to an LLM for all your coding, general research, etc.? These tools may vastly speed up some workflows, but your brain is a muscle.

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palata 378 days ago
I think you're missing the point, which is to say "those tools make us more productive, but less knowledgeable".

And you answer by saying "it's okay to be less knowledgeable (and hence depend on the tool), as long as you are more productive". Which is a different question.

But to me it's obviously not desirable: if AI allows people to completely lose all sense of critical thinking, I think it's extremely dangerous. Because whoever controls the AI controls those people. And right now, look at the techbros who control the AIs.

So the original question is: is it the case that AI reduces the skills of the people who use them? The calculator and the GPS are examples given to suggest that it doesn't sound unlikely.

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