[drusepth]

This is absolutely something to potentially be worried about, but one thing I never see highlighted in critiques of AI-assisted cognition is that some elements of physiology may not actually be biologically necessary if they can be fully supplanted by some replacement (in this case, new tools). I can't traverse as much land on foot as my ancestors did (my muscles are weaker, my endurance is less, etc), but I can travel even further than they could by car/plane/etc.

Nothing about the nature of evolution implies our current cognitive processing is ideal/sacred and shouldn't ever change.

[strogonoff]

Comparing LLMs to movement aids is an interesting analogy. Imagine a world in which they are similarly prescribed to people who legitimately need them to function, and withheld from the general public to keep people healthy and keeping public spaces nice to use.

Setting aside medical movement aids for a moment, I am reminded of places where people commonly ride various kinds of scooters on sidewalks. There is a particular feeling of unfairness when you are pitted against essentially a small vehicle zipping past you with little warning, easily going double your speed without any physical effort from the rider. I remember seeing people in Seoul, especially older people, being startled by and occasionally having to almost jump out of the way of this sort of traffic having the right of way. I won’t lie, I like that riding those things is illegal where I am now.

Let’s talk about medical movement aids, though.

The analogy gets interesting here. Unlike the various scooters, these aids are normally restricted to average walking speed, though I imagine “jailbreaking” them is probably a thing, too.

On flip side, I know for a fact that there are places where perfectly able people are known to ride purported medial movement aids (just for the kicks or in protest). Is this a bad thing? Who is to say whether one is disabled or not anyway? If one is physically able but buys this machine, should one have the freedom to drive around on the sidewalk? Why don’t we just do it by default? What about a flipped world where everybody drives a movement aid everywhere and only special people (Olympian athletes, weirdos, etc.) ever walk?

[lexandstuff]

> I can't traverse as much land on foot as my ancestors did, but I can travel further by car/plane/etc

Which is partially how we found ourselves in the midst of an obesity epidemic.

[ToValueFunfetti]

Only either indirectly or extremely partially. Everybody was driving by the 40s in the US but the obesity epidemic didn't start until the late 70s. Really, obesity is an example of exactly what the GP was talking about- our evolved relationship with food is not inherently good, and it's better for us to change our behaviors than to abandon our advancements and return to the food-scarce world we're adapted to.

[jplusequalt]

>our evolved relationship with food is not inherently good, and it's better for us to change our behaviors than to abandon our advancements and return to the food-scarce world we're adapted to.

So are you arguing we should change our relationship with human intelligence? What does that even mean?

[ToValueFunfetti]

My intent was to argue that the obesity epidemic is not a supporting analogy for their point. I didn't mean to imply that the problems with it analogize back to AI.