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tl;dr: I agree. We don't teach slide rules and log tables in school anymore. Calculators and computers have created a huge metacognitive laziness for me, and

by parsimo2010 2y ago

tl;dr: I agree. We don't teach slide rules and log tables in school anymore. Calculators and computers have created a huge metacognitive laziness for me, and I teach calculus and have a PhD in statistics. I barely remember the unit circle except for multiples of pi/4 radians. I can do it in multiples of pi/6 but I'm slower. But guess what? I don't think I'm a worse mathematician because I don't remember these things reflexively. I might be a little slower getting the answer to a trivial problem, but I can still find a solution to a complex problem. I look up integral forms in my pocket book of integrals or on Wolfram Alpha, because even if I could derive the answer myself I don't think I'd be right 100% of the time. So metacognitive laziness has set in for me already. But I think as long as we can figure out how to stop metacognitive laziness before it turns into full-fledged brain-rot, then we'll be okay. We'll survive as long as we can still teach students how to think critically, and figure out how to let AI assist us rather than turn us into the humans on the ship from Wall-E. I'm a little worried that we'll make some short term mistakes (like not adapting our cirriculum fast enough), but it will work out.

mlyle 2y ago
I am not sure calculators have hurt us much on the high end of mathematical ability. But man I cringe when I see 18 year old students reach for a calculator to multiply something by .1.
largbae 2y ago
I think you're right at the edge of explaining why this "laziness" is a good thing. Everything that we have made is built on what we had before, and abstracts away what we had before. 99% of us don't remember how to make even the simplest Assembly program, and yet we unleash billions of instructions per second on the world. Even outside of math and computers, when was the last time you primed a well pump or filled an oil lamp? All of these tasks have been abstracted away, freeing us to focus on ever-more-specialized pursuits. Those that are useful will too be abstracted away, and for the better.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > when was the last time you primed a well pump or filled an oil lamp? All of these tasks have been abstracted away They have not been abstracted away, they have been made obsolete. Significant difference. The danger with LLMs is people will never learn tasks that are still needed.
  - parsimo2010 2y ago
    Your comment exposes how much metacognitive laziness you have in modern society that you didn't realize that people still do these things, just not you. They aren't obsolete tasks, just done at a layer you don't see. I don't have to prime a well pump any more because my house and workplace are hooked into the municipal water system. I don't have to prime a pump because that task has gotten so abstract as to become turning a faucet handle. But engineers at the municipal water plant do have to know how to do this task. Similarly, filling an oil lamp and lighting it is now abstracted for normal people as flipping a light switch (maybe changing a light bulb is a more appropriate comparison). But I actually have filled an oil lamp when I was a kid because we kept "decorative" hurricane lamps in my house that we used when the power went out. The exact task of filling an oil lamp is not common, but filling a generator with fuel is still needed to keep the lights on in an emergency, although it is usually handled by the maintenance staff of apartment buildings and large office buildings.

mlyle 2y ago

I am not sure calculators have hurt us much on the high end of mathematical ability. But man I cringe when I see 18 year old students reach for a calculator to multiply something by .1.

largbae 2y ago

I think you're right at the edge of explaining why this "laziness" is a good thing. Everything that we have made is built on what we had before, and abstracts away what we had before. 99% of us don't remember how to make even the simplest Assembly program, and yet we unleash billions of instructions per second on the world. Even outside of math and computers, when was the last time you primed a well pump or filled an oil lamp? All of these tasks have been abstracted away, freeing us to focus on ever-more-specialized pursuits. Those that are useful will too be abstracted away, and for the better.

nottorp 2y ago
> when was the last time you primed a well pump or filled an oil lamp? All of these tasks have been abstracted away They have not been abstracted away, they have been made obsolete. Significant difference. The danger with LLMs is people will never learn tasks that are still needed.
- parsimo2010 2y ago
  Your comment exposes how much metacognitive laziness you have in modern society that you didn't realize that people still do these things, just not you. They aren't obsolete tasks, just done at a layer you don't see. I don't have to prime a well pump any more because my house and workplace are hooked into the municipal water system. I don't have to prime a pump because that task has gotten so abstract as to become turning a faucet handle. But engineers at the municipal water plant do have to know how to do this task. Similarly, filling an oil lamp and lighting it is now abstracted for normal people as flipping a light switch (maybe changing a light bulb is a more appropriate comparison). But I actually have filled an oil lamp when I was a kid because we kept "decorative" hurricane lamps in my house that we used when the power went out. The exact task of filling an oil lamp is not common, but filling a generator with fuel is still needed to keep the lights on in an emergency, although it is usually handled by the maintenance staff of apartment buildings and large office buildings.