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If your job for 30 years is to move bags of cement 50 miles each day, is it not more productive to use a truck than your legs? Even if you use the truck so muc

by snarfy 2y ago

If your job for 30 years is to move bags of cement 50 miles each day, is it not more productive to use a truck than your legs? Even if you use the truck so much you could not move a bag of cement with your legs anymore due to atrophy? You could make the same argument about most tools. Do calculators rot the brain?

yoyohello13 2y ago
> Do calculators rot the brain? Yes, they unequivocally make people worse at mental math. Now whether that's bad or not is debatable. Same with any tool, it's about tradeoffs and only you can determine whether the tradeoffs make sense for you.
- BuckRogers 2y ago
  >they unequivocally make people worse at mental math. Now whether that's bad or not is debatable. Not debatable because as long as calculators exist and are available, nothing is lost. You can put that mental energy towards whatever is relevant. There's nothing special about math that elevates doing it in your own mind more valuable than other tasks. Any of us that do software for a living understand that mental work is real work and you are limited in your capacity per day. If your boss wants to pay you to do longhand division instead of getting projects done, I'd call that man a liar. The people that make these arguments that we "lose" something are usually academics or others that aren't actually in the trenches getting things done. They think we're getting weaker mentally or as a society. I'm physically tired at the end of the day, and I sit at a desk. I'll do math when the calculators are gone, I have a lot of tasks and responsibilities otherwise.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > Not debatable because as long as calculators exist and are available, nothing is lost. This is a vacuous argument. Of course nothing is lost if we are never in the situation where the downsides of calculator reliance are apparent. Nobody said otherwise. The point is that people do find themselves in those situations, and then struggle to do math because they've never developed the skill.
    - BuckRogers 2y ago
      Skills have to be maintained. You don't remember everything for life. I highly doubt anyone that uses a calculator on a regular basis was never taught how to do math by hand. I was taught of course, I'm not only old but I went to university, but I would still need refreshers to really do anything of any complexity. I don't think it's a vacuous argument, it's just reality. I can use a calculator as long as one is available, but if I'm lost in the woods, I'm still going to need a refresher because calculators are too plentiful to maintain advanced math skills.
jchw 2y ago
> Do calculators rot the brain? I don't know if I'd agree with the phrasing that it rots the brain, but broadly I would expect that if you rely on it for arithmetic your mental arithmetic will atrophy over time. Unfortunately though it may not be such an exaggeration after all. It's probably too early to say, but there is definitely mounting evidence that some of these useful tools are literally, genuinely rotting our brains. https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decline https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decl... Even if we just take this at face value and assume it's accurate though, it's still not immediately clear what to actually do with this knowledge.
- gspencley 2y ago
  > Unfortunately though it may not be such an exaggeration after all. It's probably too early to say, but there is definitely mounting evidence that some of these useful tools are literally, genuinely rotting our brains. > https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decl https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decl... I think you may have fallen into a bit of confirmation bias there. The article you linked to words itself like so: "According to research published in the journal PLOS One, navigating with a map and compass might help stave off cognitive decline and symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s Disease." This means that the study found that there may be positive benefits to cognitive health when one routinely engages in navigation related activities using a compass and a map. That is a very very VERY different statement than: "Using Google Maps causes cognitive decline." In order to demonstrate any kind of causality between using Maps and cognitive decline, you would have to start with an additional premise that everyone engaged in navigation using a compass and map on such a regular basis that the switch represents a switch to a less healthy lifestyle. I think that statement is specious at best. I'm old enough to remember living without Google Maps. And the amount of time that I reached for a paper map and a compass was so infrequent that Google Maps represented something new for me more than it represented something different. That is to say, it wasn't replacing something I did regularly so much as it gave me a reason to start using any kind of a "map" in the first place. Most people I know would say the same thing. We had some maps skills when we needed them ... but we tried to avoid needing them more often than not. So yeah, the study might have merit. But I don't think it suggests what you think it suggests.
w0m 2y ago
> Do calculators rot the brain? According to my math teachers in high school - yes.
trelane 2y ago
Relevant to this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power PDF of the story: https://archive.org/download/TheFeelingOfPower/The%20Feeling%20of%20Power.pdf https://archive.org/download/TheFeelingOfPower/The%20Feeling...
vunderba 2y ago
This is a poor analogy. The real danger of LLMs lie in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer, rather than taking even the briefest of moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of manipulating the problem in your head—critical thinking—is ultimately a CRAFT. The only way to become better at it is by practicing it in a deliberate, disciplined fashion. However if you ultimately believe that critical reasoning isn't worth cultivating, then I suppose we're at an impasse.

by snarfy 2y ago

yoyohello13 2y ago

> Do calculators rot the brain? Yes, they unequivocally make people worse at mental math. Now whether that's bad or not is debatable. Same with any tool, it's about tradeoffs and only you can determine whether the tradeoffs make sense for you.

BuckRogers 2y ago
>they unequivocally make people worse at mental math. Now whether that's bad or not is debatable. Not debatable because as long as calculators exist and are available, nothing is lost. You can put that mental energy towards whatever is relevant. There's nothing special about math that elevates doing it in your own mind more valuable than other tasks. Any of us that do software for a living understand that mental work is real work and you are limited in your capacity per day. If your boss wants to pay you to do longhand division instead of getting projects done, I'd call that man a liar. The people that make these arguments that we "lose" something are usually academics or others that aren't actually in the trenches getting things done. They think we're getting weaker mentally or as a society. I'm physically tired at the end of the day, and I sit at a desk. I'll do math when the calculators are gone, I have a lot of tasks and responsibilities otherwise.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > Not debatable because as long as calculators exist and are available, nothing is lost. This is a vacuous argument. Of course nothing is lost if we are never in the situation where the downsides of calculator reliance are apparent. Nobody said otherwise. The point is that people do find themselves in those situations, and then struggle to do math because they've never developed the skill.
  - BuckRogers 2y ago
    Skills have to be maintained. You don't remember everything for life. I highly doubt anyone that uses a calculator on a regular basis was never taught how to do math by hand. I was taught of course, I'm not only old but I went to university, but I would still need refreshers to really do anything of any complexity. I don't think it's a vacuous argument, it's just reality. I can use a calculator as long as one is available, but if I'm lost in the woods, I'm still going to need a refresher because calculators are too plentiful to maintain advanced math skills.

jchw 2y ago

> Do calculators rot the brain? I don't know if I'd agree with the phrasing that it rots the brain, but broadly I would expect that if you rely on it for arithmetic your mental arithmetic will atrophy over time. Unfortunately though it may not be such an exaggeration after all. It's probably too early to say, but there is definitely mounting evidence that some of these useful tools are literally, genuinely rotting our brains. https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decline https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decl... Even if we just take this at face value and assume it's accurate though, it's still not immediately clear what to actually do with this knowledge.

gspencley 2y ago
> Unfortunately though it may not be such an exaggeration after all. It's probably too early to say, but there is definitely mounting evidence that some of these useful tools are literally, genuinely rotting our brains. > https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decl https://www.fatherly.com/news/gps-google-maps-cognitive-decl... I think you may have fallen into a bit of confirmation bias there. The article you linked to words itself like so: "According to research published in the journal PLOS One, navigating with a map and compass might help stave off cognitive decline and symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s Disease." This means that the study found that there may be positive benefits to cognitive health when one routinely engages in navigation related activities using a compass and a map. That is a very very VERY different statement than: "Using Google Maps causes cognitive decline." In order to demonstrate any kind of causality between using Maps and cognitive decline, you would have to start with an additional premise that everyone engaged in navigation using a compass and map on such a regular basis that the switch represents a switch to a less healthy lifestyle. I think that statement is specious at best. I'm old enough to remember living without Google Maps. And the amount of time that I reached for a paper map and a compass was so infrequent that Google Maps represented something new for me more than it represented something different. That is to say, it wasn't replacing something I did regularly so much as it gave me a reason to start using any kind of a "map" in the first place. Most people I know would say the same thing. We had some maps skills when we needed them ... but we tried to avoid needing them more often than not. So yeah, the study might have merit. But I don't think it suggests what you think it suggests.

w0m 2y ago

> Do calculators rot the brain? According to my math teachers in high school - yes.

trelane 2y ago

Relevant to this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power PDF of the story: https://archive.org/download/TheFeelingOfPower/The%20Feeling%20of%20Power.pdf https://archive.org/download/TheFeelingOfPower/The%20Feeling...

vunderba 2y ago

This is a poor analogy. The real danger of LLMs lie in their seductive nature - over how tempting it becomes to immediately reach for the nearest LLM to provide an answer, rather than taking even the briefest of moments to quietly ponder the problem on your own. That act of manipulating the problem in your head—critical thinking—is ultimately a CRAFT. The only way to become better at it is by practicing it in a deliberate, disciplined fashion. However if you ultimately believe that critical reasoning isn't worth cultivating, then I suppose we're at an impasse.