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by perrygeo 10 days ago
Friction is the mechanism by which mammalian brains acquire skills. This is as close to proven as we get in cognitive neuroscience; without a struggle, we literally don't learn. This is not a controversial statement. The only way to improve our cognitive skills is to intentionally add friction - aka practice. Use it or lose it.

This isn't necessarily anti-AI. Imagine a tool that could quiz you, provide context for decisions, and make sure you're up to date on your knowledge of the codebase - instead of just writing code for you. IOW an AI-based system could intentionally add the right kind of friction to improve understanding.

1 comments

Agreed, an LLM could be scaffolded on your deficits and with enough time, empower your learning and growth arc far better than you or any other human could outline a bespoke learning framework for a particular subject.