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Completely agree. From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive. I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardco
by don_neufeld 1y ago
Completely agree.
From all of my observations, the impact of LLMs on human thought quality appears largely corrosive.
I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. In some class they only allow students to turn in work that was done in class, under the direct observation of the teacher. There has also been a significant increase in “on paper” work vs work done on computer.
Lest you wonder “what does this guy know anyways?”, I’ll share that I grew up in a household where both parents were professors of education.
Understanding the effectiveness of different methods of learning (my dad literally taught Science Methods) were a frequent topic. Active learning (creating things using what you’re learning about) is so much more effective than passive, reception oriented methods. I think LLMs largely are supporting the latter.
- zdragnar 1y agoAnyone who has learned a second language can tell you that you aren't proficient just by memorizing vocabulary and grammar. Having a conversation and forming sentences on the fly just feels different- either as a different skill or using a different part of the brain. I also don't think the nature of LLMs being a negative crutch is new knowledge per se; when I was in school, calculus class required a graphing calculator but the higher end models (TI-92 etc) that had symbolic equation solvers were also banned, for exactly the same reason. Having something that can give an answer for you fundamentally undermines the value of the exercise in the first place, and cripples your growth while you use it.
- skydhash 1y agoSame with drawing which is easy to teach, but hard to master because of the coordination between eyes and hand. You can trace a photograph, but that just bypass the whole point and you don’t exercise any of the knowledge.
- flysand7 1y agoAnother case in point is that memorizing vocabularies and grammar, although could seem like an efficient way to learn a language, is incredibly unrewarding. I've been learning japanese from scratch, using only real speech to absorb new words, without using dictionaries and anything else much. The first feeling of reward came immediately when I learned that "arigatou" means thanks (although I terribly misheard how the word sounded, but hey, at least I heard it). Then after 6 month, when I could catch and understand some simple phrases. After 6-7 years I can understand about 80% of any given speech, which is still far, but I gotta say it was a good experience. With LLM's giving you ready-made answers I feel like it's the same. It's not as rewarding because you haven't obtained the answer yourself. Although it did feel rewarding when I was interrogating an LLM about how CSRF works and it said I asked a great question when I asked whether it only applies to forms because it seems like fetch has a different kind of browser protection.
- layer8 1y agoHow much hours would you estimate did you watch (I assume it was video, not just audio) in those years? What kind of material? Just curious.
- flysand7 1y agoMostly anime. Surprisingly, not that much, I think somewhere in the ballpark of 100 titles. In the beginning I was also watching some grammar tutorials on YouTube to get started with grammar quicker (Otherwise convergence on solution would be too slow). Contrary to what I said I actually did use dictionaries, but the point I was trying to make is rather than memorizing phrases in advance, I used it to translate something I thought I heard.
- BlueTemplar 1y agoIf you used subtitles over audio then why would you avoid dictionaries too ? Purely for the reward of treating it as a puzzle ? (Since you would have to figure out which word corresponds to a which concept in a phrase.)
- JackFr 1y agoWell I can extract a square root by hand. We all had to learn it and got tested on it. No one to day learns that anymore. The vast, vast majority have no idea and I don’t think people are dumber because of it. That is to say, I think it’s not cut-and-dried. I agree you need to learn something, but something’s it’s okay use a tool.
- smcleod 1y agoI very much agree with your sentiment here. I tried to encapsulate that to some degree when writing something (perhaps poorly?) recently actually - https://smcleod.net/2025/03/the-democratisation-paradox-what-history-teaches-us-about-ai/ https://smcleod.net/2025/03/the-democratisation-paradox-what...
- zdragnar 1y agoComparing extracting a square root my hand is rather different in scope than reducing / simplifying equations entirely. The TI-92 could basically do all of your coursework for you up to college level, if memory serves. The real question isn't "is it okay to use a tool" but "how does using a tool affect what you learn". In the cases of both LLMs and symbolic solving calculators, I believe the answer is "highly detrimental".
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- drdeca 1y agoHuh? While I essentially never have need to compute a square root by hand (unless it is a perfect square of course), shouldn’t one know how one would?
- radlad 1y agoWhy should one? Perhaps they should if it's relevant to their work, daily routine, or interests. But if they have no need for it?
- mattigames 1y ago
- fennecbutt 1y agoFeels different, comes naturally, without conscious thought, just like we don't focus on beating our hearts. And agree about learning by practicing a skill being best. But you and I both know the school system has worked on rote memorisation for hundreds of years at least and still is now.
- makeitdouble 1y ago> the higher end models (TI-92 etc) that had symbolic equation solvers were also banned I'm surprised it was a problem in the first place. Don't equation solving exercises require you to leave intermediary steps, and you can't just put a "x=5" as a one liner answer ?
- nbernard 1y agoI don't remember if it was the case for the TI-92+, but some calculators can show the intermediate steps, or at least some of them.
- max51 1y agoWe used TI-Nspire CX CAS at my university but it was banned in the first half of the calculus 1 course. It would really make no sense to allow you to bring one to an exam where many questions are one liners, or close to it (eg. "find the derivative of f(x)=7x^5+10"). IIRC, they also banned it in a calc 2 exam. Almost all other courses allowed them and they exams where designed for it (eg. 8 big problems instead of 2).
- genewitch 1y agoYeah and I'm of the age when teachers in all grades would say "you're not going to carry around a calculator your whole adult life" Hilarious miscalculation.
- socalgal2 1y agoI am waiting for the day (maybe it's already here) when I can talk to an LLM to practice my 2nd language. It can correct everything I say, it can talk forever, it can challenge me to use new grammar or vocabularly. Note: I can speak all day in my 2nd language with friends but I wouldn't give a business presentation nor could I explain, as a native, how something technical works. If I watch a TV show I might understand 30%-99% but the more lawyers/military/goverment/science parts there are the more it's beyond my current level. Getting exposure there is hard. Talking to friends just means more practice with what I already know but an LLM could help me practice things outside that area.
- edanm 1y agoFor many languages, this is already something you can do.
- avaika 1y agoThis reminds me how back in my school days I was not allowed to use the internet to prepare research on some random topics (e g. history essay). It was the late 90s when the internet started to spread. Anyway teachers forced us to use offline libraries only. Later in the university I was studying engineering. And we were forced to prepare all the technical drawings manually in the first year of study. Like literally with pencil and ruler. Even though computer graphics were widely used and we're de facto standard. Personally I don't believe hardcore ban will help with any sort of thing. It won't stop the progress either. It's much better to help people learn how to use things instead of forcing them to deal with "old school" stuff only.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- don_neufeld 1y agoI was expecting some response like this, because schools have “banned” things in the past. While this is superficially similar, I believe we are talking about substantially different things. Learning (the goal) is a process. In the case of an assignment, the resulting answer / work product, while it is what is requested, is critically not the goal. However, it is what is evaluated, so many confuse it with the goal (“I want to get a good grade”) Anything which bypasses the process makes the goal (learning) less likely to be achieved. So, I think it is fine to use a calculator to accelerate your use of operations you have already learned and understand. However, I don’t think you should give 3rd graders calculators that just give them the answer to a multiplication or division when they are learning how those things work in the first place. Similarly, I think it’s fine to do research using the internet to read sources you use to create your own work. Meanwhile, I don’t think it’s fine to do research using the internet to find a site where you can buy a paper you can submit as your own work. Right now, LLMs can be used to bypass a great deal of process, which is why I support them not being used. It’s possible, maybe even likely that we’ll end up with a “supervised learning by AI” approach where the assignment is replaced by “proof of process”, a record of how the student explored the topic interactively. I could see that working if done right.
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- johnisgood 1y agoYou can learn a lot from LLMs though, same with, say, Wikipedia. You need curiosity. You need the desire to learn. If you do not have it, then of course you will get nowhere, LLMs or no LLMs.
- azinman2 1y agoNever underestimate laziness, or willingness to take something 80% as good for 1% of the work. So most are not curious. So what do you do for them?
- johnisgood 1y agoYou have to somehow figure out the root cause of the laziness, or if it really is laziness, and not something else, e.g. a mental health issue. Plus, many kids fail school not because of laziness, but because of their toxic environment.
- Swizec 1y ago> if it really is laziness, and not something else, e.g. a mental health issue. Kids optimize. When I was in high school I was fully capable of getting straight F's in a class I didn't care about and straight A's in a class I enjoyed. Why bother learning chemistry when you could instead spend that time coding cool plugins and websites in PHP that thousands of internet strangers are using? I really did build one of the most popular phpBB plugins and knew I was gonna be a software engineer. Not that my chemistry professor cared about any of that or even understood what I'm talking about.
- johnisgood 1y agoWhat you just described is irrelevant to what we are discussing. As for what you said, yeah, I got 1s (Fs) because I was too busy coding and reading books on philosophy, as a 14 years old.
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- hammock 1y ago> I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. What does that mean, I’m curious? The schools and university I grew up in had a “single-sanction honor code” which meant if you were caught lying or cheating even once you would be expelled. And you signed the honor code at the top of every test. My more progressive friends at other schools who didn’t have an honor code happily poo-pooed it as a repugnantly harsh old fashioned standard. But I don’t see a better way today of enforcing “don’t use AI” in schools, than it.
- garrickvanburen 1y agoI don’t see the problem. I’m not sure how LLMs output is indistinguishable from Wikipedia or World Book. Maybe? and if the question is “did the student actually write this?” (which is different than “do they understand it?” there are lots of different ways to assess if a given student understands the material…that don’t involve submitting typed text but still involve communicating clearly. If we allow LLMs- like we allow calculators, just how poor LLMs are will become far more obvious.
- hammock 1y agoIf LLMs are allowed then sure. However, when LLMs are explicitly banned from use, is the case I am talking about.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoOral presentation without notes and a live Q&A would be some ways…
- bccdee 1y agoDo you really not see the problem? A student who pastes an essay prompt into an input box and copies out the response has learned nothing. Even direct plagiarism from Wikipedia would typically need to be reworked; there will rarely be a Wikipedia page corresponding to your teacher's specific essay prompt. Students are also poor writers. Often LLM-generated essays can be spotted in elementary school because they write too well for that grade level. A good student will surpass a chatbot, but not if they use it as a crutch while it's still a stronger writer than they are.
- mr_toad 1y ago> I’m very glad my kid’s school has hardcore banned them. Schools will ban anything they think of as sinister.
- BobbyTables2 1y agoIronically, states now use AI to grade student essays in standardized tests. English teachers even recommend grammarly.. Students are given a “prompt” for writing. I wish other schools had the conviction you describe…
- guyfhuo 1y ago> Students are given a “prompt” for writing Students were always given a “prompt” for writing. That’s why tech companies used that term; rather than the other way around.
- raincole 1y ago> Students are given a “prompt” for writing. What do you think "prompt" mean? Or you're saying the students are asked to mimic AI's style?
- GeoAtreides 1y ago> states now use AI to grade student essays in standardized tests. citation needed
- BrawnyBadger53 1y agoThis was already happening a decade ago lol. Happened to me at least.