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This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, nov

This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. Where I'm skeptical of this study: - 54 participants, only 18 in the critical 4th session - 4 months is barely enough time to adapt to a fundamentally new tool - "Reduced brain connectivity" is framed as bad - but couldn't efficient resource allocation also be a feature, not a bug? - Essay writing is one specific task; extrapolating to "cognition in general" seems like a stretch Where the study might have a point: Previous tools outsourced partial processes - calculators do arithmetic, Google stores facts. LLMs can potentially take over the entire cognitive process from thinking to formulating. That's qualitatively different. So am I ideologically inclined to dismiss this? Maybe. But I also think the honest answer is: we don't know yet. The historical pattern suggests cognitive abilities shift rather than disappear. Whether this shift is net positive or negative - ask me again in 20 years. [Edit]: Formatting

duskdozer 9mo ago
Not sure "they've always been wrong before" applies to TV being the idiot box and everything after
cimi_ 9mo ago
> The historical pattern suggests cognitive abilities shift rather than disappear. Shift to what? This? https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16dd04 https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...
- darkwater 9mo ago
  What the hell have I just read (or at least skimmed)?? I cannot understand if the author is: a) serious, but we live on different planets b) serious with the idea, tongue-in-check in the style and using a lot of self-irony c) an ironic piece with some real idea d) he is mocking AI maximalists
  - cap11235 9mo ago
    Just ignore the rambling crypto shill.
  - cimi_ 9mo ago
    There was discussion about this here a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458936 Steve Yegge's a famous developer, this is not a joke :) You could say he is an AI maximalist, from your options I'd go with (b) serious with the idea, tongue-in-check in the style and using a lot of self-irony. It is exaggerated, but this is how he sees things ending up eventually. This is real software. If things do end up in glorified kanban boards, what does it mean for us? That we can work less and use the spare time reading and doing yoga, or that we'll work the same hours with our attention even more fragmented and with no control over the outputs of these things (=> stress). I'd really wish that people who think this is good for us and are pushing for this future do a bit better than: 1. More AI 2. ??? 3. Profit
    - adilabba 9mo ago
      hi like this
mschild 9mo ago
Needs more research. Fully agree on that. That said: TV very much is the idiot box. Not necessarily because of the TV itself but rather whats being viewed. An actual engaging and interesting show/movie is good, but last time I checked, it was mostly filled with low quality trash and constant news bombardment. Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to. Simple calculations I do in my head but my ability to do more complex ones diminished. Thats down to me not doing them as often yes, but also because for complex ones I simply whip out my phone.
- richrichardsson 9mo ago
  > Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to I got scared by how awfully my juniour (middle? 5-11) school mathematics had slipped when helping my 9 year old boy with his homework yesterday. I literally couldn't remember how to carry the 1 when doing subtractions of 3 digit numbers! Felt literally idiotic having to ask an LLM for help. :(
  - wiz21c 9mo ago
    On my part, I don't use that carry method at ll. When I have to substract, I substract by chunks that my brain can easily subtract. For example 1233 - 718, I'll do 1233 - 700 = 533 then 533 - 20 = 513 then 513 + 2 = 515. It's completely instinctive (and thus I can't explain to my children :-) ) What I have asked my children to do very often is back-of-the-envelope multiplications and other computations. That really helped them to get a sense of the magnitude of things.
    - n4r9 9mo ago
      I have a two year old and often worry that I'll teach him some intuitive arithmetic technique, then school will later force a different method and mark him down despite getting the right answer. What if it ends up making him hate school, maths, or both?
bowsamic 9mo ago
> they've always been wrong before Were they? It seems that often the fears came true, even Socrates’
- TheOtherHobbes 9mo ago
  Writing didn't destroy memory, it externalised it and made it stable and shareable. That was absolutely transformative, and far more useful than being able to re-improvise a once-upon-a-time heroic poem from memory. It hugely enhanced synthetic and contextual memory, which was a huge development. AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has the potential to be transformative in ways we can't imagine - in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News. Of course we identify with cognition in a way we didn't do with rote memory. But we should possibly identify more with synthetic and creative cognition - in the sense of exploring interesting problem spaces of all kinds - than with "I need code to..."
  - latexr 9mo ago
    > in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News. Perhaps he could. If there’s an argument to be made against writing, social media (including HN) is a valid one.
  - Akronymus 9mo ago
    > AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has the potential to be transformative in ways we can't imagine - in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News. Wouldnt the endgame of externalized cognition be that humans essentially become cogs in the machine?
  - saberience 9mo ago
    It did destroy memory though. I would bet any amount of money that our memories in 2026 are far, far worse than they were in 1950 or 1900. In fact, I can feel my memory is easily worse now than from before ChatGPT's release, because we are doing less hard cognitive work. The less we use our brain's the dumber we get, and we are definitely using our brains less now.
ben_w 9mo ago
> 4 months is barely enough time to adapt to a fundamentally new tool Yes, but also the extra wrinkle that this whole thing is moving so fast that 4 months old is borderline obsolete. Same into the future, any study starting now based on the state of the art on 22/01/2026 will involve models and potentially workflows already obsolete by 22/05/2026. We probably can't ever adapt fully when the entire landscape is changing like that. > Previous tools outsourced partial processes - calculators do arithmetic, Google stores facts. LLMs can potentially take over the entire cognitive process from thinking to formulating. That's qualitatively different. Yes, but also consider that this is true of any team: All managers hire people to outsource some entire cognitive process, letting themselves focus on their own personal comparative advantage. The book "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" is about Thomas Young, who died in 1829; since then, the sum of recorded knowledge has broadened too much for any single person to learn it all, so we need specialists, including specialists in managing other specialists. AI is a complement to our own minds with both sides of this: Unlike us, AI can "learn it all", just not very well compared to humans. If any of us had a sci-fi/fantasy time loop/pause that let us survive long enough to read the entire internet, we'd be much more competent than any of these models, but we don't, and the AI runs on hardware which allows it to. For the moment, it's still useful to have management skills (and to know about and use Popperian falsification rather than verification) so that we can discover and compensate for the weaknesses of the AI.
vladms 9mo ago
> That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. I think a better framing would be "abusing (using it too much or for everything) any new tool/medium can lead to negative effects". It is hard to clearly define what is abuse, so further research is required, but I think it is a healthy approach to accept there are downsides in certain cases (that applies for everything probably).
wartywhoa23 9mo ago
> TV was the "idiot box." TV is the uber idiot box, the overlord of the army of portable smart idiot boxes.
piyuv 9mo ago
None of the examples you provided were being sold as “intelligence”
boesboes 9mo ago
I think that is a VERY false comparison. As you say, LLMs try to take over entire cognitive and creative processes and that is a bigger problem then outsourcing arithmetic
direwolf20 9mo ago
How do we know they were wrong before?
BlackFly 9mo ago
If you realize that what we remember are the extremized strawman versions of the complaints then you can realize that they were not wrong. Writing did eliminate the need for memorization. How many people could quote a poem today? When oral history was predominant, it was necessary in each tribe for someone to learn the stories. We have much less of that today. Writing preserves accuracy much more (up to conquerors burning down libraries, whereas it would have taken genocide before), but to hear a person stand up and quote Desiderata from memory is a touching experience to the human condition. Scribes took over that act of memorization. Copying something lends itself to memorization. If you have ever volunteered extensively for project Gutenberg you can also witness a similar experience: reading for typos solidifies the story into your mind in a way that casual writing doesn't. In losing scribes we lost prioritization of texts and this class of person with intimate knowledge of important historical works. With the addition of copyright we have even lost some texts. We gained the higher availability of works and lower marginal costs. The lower marginal costs led to... Pulp fiction. I think very few people (but I would be disappointed if it was no one) would argue that Dan Brown's da Vinci Code is on the same level as War and Peace. From here magazines were created, even cheaper paper, rags some would call them (or use that to refer to tabloids). Of course this also enabled newspapers to flourish. People started to read things for entertainment, text lost its solemnity. The importance of written word diminished on average as the words being printed became more banal. TV and the internet led to the destruction of printed news, and so on. This is already a wall of text so I won't continue, but you can see how it goes: Technology is a double edged sword, we may gain something but we also can and did lose some things. Whether it was progress or not is generally a normative question that often a majority agrees with in one sense or another but there are generational differences in those norms. In the same way that overuse of a calculator leads to atrophy of arithmetic skills, overuse of a car leads to atrophy of walking muscles, why wouldn't overuse of a tool to write essays for you lead to atrophy of your ability to write an essay? The real reason to doubt the study is because its conclusion seems so obvious that it may be too easy for some to believe and hide poor statistical power or p-hacking.
- darkwater 9mo ago
  I think your take is almost irrefutable, unless you frame human history as the only possible way to achieve current humanity status and (unevenly distributed) quality of life. I also find exhausting the Socrates reference that's ALWAYS brought up in these discussions. It is not the same. Losing the collective ability to recite a 10000 words poem by heart because of books it's not the same thing as stopping to think because an AI is doing the thinking for you. We keep adding automation layers on top of the previous ones. The end goal would be _thinking_ of something and have it materialized in computer and physical form. That would be the extreme. Would people keep comparing it to Socrates?
torben-friis 9mo ago
I think novels and tv are bad examples, as they are not substituting a process. The writing one is better. Here’s the key difference for me: AI does not currently replace full expertise. In contrast, there is not a “higher level of storage” that books can’t handle and only a human memory can. I need a senior to handle AI with assurances. I get seniors by having juniors execute supervised lower risk, more mechanical tasks for years. In a world where AI does that, I get no seniors.
chairmansteve 9mo ago
"Socrates worried writing would destroy memory". He may have been right... Maybe our minds work in a different way now.
- tjr 9mo ago
  Back when I routinely dialed phone numbers by hand (either on a keypad or on a literal dial), I memorized the numbers I called most frequently. Many of those numbers I still have memorized today, years after some of those phone lines have been disconnected. But now? I almost never enter a new phone number anywhere. Maybe someone shares a contact with me, and I tap to add it to my contact list. Or I copy-paste a phone number. Even some people that I contact frequently, I have no idea what their phone number is, because I've never needed to "know" it, I just needed to have it in my contact list. I'm not sure that this is a bad thing, but definitely is a thing. Ah, well, more memory space for other stuff, eh? I suppose. But like what? I could describe other scenarios, in which I used to have more facts and figures memorized, but simply don't any more, because I don't need to. While perhaps my memory is freed up to theoretically store more other things, in practice, there's not much I really "need" to store. Even if no longer memorizing phone numbers isn't especially bad, I'm starting to think that no longer memorizing anything might not be a great idea.
wisty 9mo ago
Soapbox time. They were arguably right. Pre literate peole could memorise vast texts (Homer's work, Australian Aboriginal songlines). Pre Gutenberg, memorising reasonably large texts was common. See, e.g. the book Memory Craft. We're becoming increasingly like the Wall E people, too lazy and stupid to do anything without our machines doing it for us, as we offload increasing amounts onto them. And it's not even that machines are always better, they only have to be barely competent. People will risk their life in a horribly janky self driving car if it means they can swipe on social media instead of watching the road - acceptance doesn't mean it's good. We have about 30 years of the internet being widely adopted, which I think is roughly similar to AI in many ways (both give you access to data very quickly). Economists suggest we are in many ways no more productive now than when Homer Simpson could buy a house and raise a family on a single income - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox Yes, it's too early to be sure, but the internet, Google and Wikipedia arguably haven't made the world any better (overall).
- CuriouslyC 9mo ago
  Brains are adaptive. We're not getting dumber, we're just adapting to a new environment. Just because they're less fit for other environments doesn't make it worse. As for the productivity paradox, this discounts the reality that we wouldn't even be able to scale the institutions we're scaling without the tech. Whether that scaling is a good thing is debatable.
  - discreteevent 9mo ago
    > Brains are adaptive. They are, but you go on to assume that they will adapt in a good way. Bodies are adaptive too. That didn't work out well for a lot of people when their environment changed to be sedentary.
    - ahoka 9mo ago
      Yes, that's like saying I'm not weak, just my muscles are adapted to the couch.
lr4444lr 9mo ago
Were any of the prior fears totally wrong?
raincole 9mo ago
> "they've always been wrong before" In my opinion, they've almost always been right. In the past two decades, we've seen the less-tech-savvy middle managers who devalued anything done on computer. They seemed to believe that doing graphic design or digital painting was just pressing a few buttons on the keyboard and the computer would do the job for you. These people were constantly mocked among online communities. In programmers' world, you have seen people who said "how hard it could be? It's just adding a new button/changing the font/whatever..." And strangely, in the end those tech muggles were the insightful ones.
Sxubas 9mo ago
What does not get used, atrophies. Critical thinking, forming ideas, writing, etc, those are too stuff that can atrophy if not used. For example, a lot of people can't locate themselves without a GPS today. To be frank I see it really similar to our muscles: don't want to lose it? Use it. Whether that is learning a language, playing an instrument or the task llms perform.
clydethefrog 9mo ago
I agree with Socrates and too many people have the wrong memory of him, making his prediction come true. There was a great philosophical book last year, Open Socrates [1], that explains his methods and ideas are the opposite direction of how most people use AI. Socrates believed we can only get closer to knowledge through the process of open, inquisitive conversation with other beings who are willing to refute us and be refuted in turn. He claimed ideas can only be expressed and shared in dialogue & live conversation. The one-direction communication of all the media since books have lacked this, and AI's version of dialogue is sycophancy and statistical common patterns instead of fresh ideas. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/books/review/open-socrates-agnes-callard.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/books/review/open-socrate...
- FeteCommuniste 9mo ago
  I'm sure you could train an AI to be skeptical/critical by default. The "you're absolutely right!" AIs are probably always going to be more popular, though.
ZpJuUuNaQ5 9mo ago
>TV was the "idiot box." Still is.
carlosjobim 9mo ago
> This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. What do you mean? All of them were 100% right. Novels are brain softening, TV is an idiot box, and writing destroys memory. AI will destroy the minds of people who use it much.
alt187 9mo ago
It's more complex than that. The three pillars of learning are theory (finding out about the thing), practice (doing the thing) and metacognition (being right, or more importantly, wrong. And correcting yourself.). Each of those steps reinforce neural pathways. They're all essential in some form or another. Literacy, books, saving your knowledge somewhere else removes the burden of remembering everything in your head. But they don't come into effect into any of those processes. So it's an immensely bad metaphor. A more apt one is the GPS, that only leaves you with practice. That's where LLMs come in, and obliterate every single one of those pillars on any mental skill. You never have to learn a thing deeply, because it's doing the knowing for you. You never have to practice, because the LLM does all the writing for you. And of course, when it's wrong, you're not wrong. So nothing you learn. There are ways to exploit LLMs to make your brain grow, instead of shrink. You could make them into personalized teachers, catering to each student at their own rhythm. Make them give you problems, instead of ready-made solutions. Only employ them for tasks you already know how to make perfectly. Don't depend on them. But this isn't the future OpenAI or Anthropic are gonna gift us. Not today, and not in a hundred years, because it's always gonna be more profitable to run a sycophant. If we want LLMs to be the "better" instead of the "worse", we'll have to fight for it. Yes, I wrote this comment under someone else's comment before, but it seems to apply to yours even better.
TomasBM 9mo ago
Your criticism of this study is roughly on point, IMO. It's not badly designed by any means, but it's an early look. There are already similar studies on the (cognitive) effects of LLMs on learning, but I suspect this one gets the attention because it's associated with the MIT brand. That said, these kinds of studies are important, because they reveal that some cognitive changes are evidently happening. Like you said, it's up to us to determine if they're positive or negative, but as is probably obvious to many, it's difficult to argue for the status quo. If it's a negative change, teachers have to go back to paper-and-pen essay writing, which I was personally never good at. Or they need to figure out stable ways to prevent students from using LLMs, if they are to learn anything about writing. If it's a positive change, i.e., we now have more time to do "better" things (or do things better), then teachers need to figure out substitutes. Suddenly, a common way of testing is now outdated and irrelevant, but there's no clear thing to do instead. So, what do they do?
jama211 9mo ago
Well said
abustamam 9mo ago
> TV was the "idiot box." To be fair, I think this one is true. There's a lot of great stuff you can watch on TV, but I'd argue that TV is why many boomers are stuck in an echo chamber of their own beliefs (because CNN or fox news or whatever opinion-masquerading-as-journalism channel is always on in the background). This has of course been exacerbated by social media, but I can't think of many productive uses of TV other than sesame Street and other kids shows.
biztos 9mo ago
To be fair, writing did destroy memory. It's just that in the very long summer of writing, which may now be coming to an end thanks to AI, we have considered the upside more than worth it.
lofaszvanitt 9mo ago
What study? Try it yourself.

duskdozer 9mo ago

Not sure "they've always been wrong before" applies to TV being the idiot box and everything after

cimi_ 9mo ago

> The historical pattern suggests cognitive abilities shift rather than disappear. Shift to what? This? https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16dd04 https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-town-4f25ee16d...

darkwater 9mo ago
What the hell have I just read (or at least skimmed)?? I cannot understand if the author is: a) serious, but we live on different planets b) serious with the idea, tongue-in-check in the style and using a lot of self-irony c) an ironic piece with some real idea d) he is mocking AI maximalists
- cap11235 9mo ago
  Just ignore the rambling crypto shill.
- cimi_ 9mo ago
  There was discussion about this here a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458936 Steve Yegge's a famous developer, this is not a joke :) You could say he is an AI maximalist, from your options I'd go with (b) serious with the idea, tongue-in-check in the style and using a lot of self-irony. It is exaggerated, but this is how he sees things ending up eventually. This is real software. If things do end up in glorified kanban boards, what does it mean for us? That we can work less and use the spare time reading and doing yoga, or that we'll work the same hours with our attention even more fragmented and with no control over the outputs of these things (=> stress). I'd really wish that people who think this is good for us and are pushing for this future do a bit better than: 1. More AI 2. ??? 3. Profit
  - adilabba 9mo ago
    hi like this

mschild 9mo ago

Needs more research. Fully agree on that. That said: TV very much is the idiot box. Not necessarily because of the TV itself but rather whats being viewed. An actual engaging and interesting show/movie is good, but last time I checked, it was mostly filled with low quality trash and constant news bombardment. Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to. Simple calculations I do in my head but my ability to do more complex ones diminished. Thats down to me not doing them as often yes, but also because for complex ones I simply whip out my phone.

richrichardsson 9mo ago
> Calculators do do arithmetic and if you ask me to do the kind of calculations I had to do in high school by hand today I wouldnt be able to I got scared by how awfully my juniour (middle? 5-11) school mathematics had slipped when helping my 9 year old boy with his homework yesterday. I literally couldn't remember how to carry the 1 when doing subtractions of 3 digit numbers! Felt literally idiotic having to ask an LLM for help. :(
- wiz21c 9mo ago
  On my part, I don't use that carry method at ll. When I have to substract, I substract by chunks that my brain can easily subtract. For example 1233 - 718, I'll do 1233 - 700 = 533 then 533 - 20 = 513 then 513 + 2 = 515. It's completely instinctive (and thus I can't explain to my children :-) ) What I have asked my children to do very often is back-of-the-envelope multiplications and other computations. That really helped them to get a sense of the magnitude of things.
  - n4r9 9mo ago
    I have a two year old and often worry that I'll teach him some intuitive arithmetic technique, then school will later force a different method and mark him down despite getting the right answer. What if it ends up making him hate school, maths, or both?

bowsamic 9mo ago

> they've always been wrong before Were they? It seems that often the fears came true, even Socrates’

TheOtherHobbes 9mo ago
Writing didn't destroy memory, it externalised it and made it stable and shareable. That was absolutely transformative, and far more useful than being able to re-improvise a once-upon-a-time heroic poem from memory. It hugely enhanced synthetic and contextual memory, which was a huge development. AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has the potential to be transformative in ways we can't imagine - in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News. Of course we identify with cognition in a way we didn't do with rote memory. But we should possibly identify more with synthetic and creative cognition - in the sense of exploring interesting problem spaces of all kinds - than with "I need code to..."
- latexr 9mo ago
  > in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News. Perhaps he could. If there’s an argument to be made against writing, social media (including HN) is a valid one.
- Akronymus 9mo ago
  > AI has the potential to do something similar for cognition. It's not very good at it yet, but externalised cognition has the potential to be transformative in ways we can't imagine - in the same way Socrates couldn't imagine Hacker News. Wouldnt the endgame of externalized cognition be that humans essentially become cogs in the machine?
- saberience 9mo ago
  It did destroy memory though. I would bet any amount of money that our memories in 2026 are far, far worse than they were in 1950 or 1900. In fact, I can feel my memory is easily worse now than from before ChatGPT's release, because we are doing less hard cognitive work. The less we use our brain's the dumber we get, and we are definitely using our brains less now.

ben_w 9mo ago

> 4 months is barely enough time to adapt to a fundamentally new tool Yes, but also the extra wrinkle that this whole thing is moving so fast that 4 months old is borderline obsolete. Same into the future, any study starting now based on the state of the art on 22/01/2026 will involve models and potentially workflows already obsolete by 22/05/2026. We probably can't ever adapt fully when the entire landscape is changing like that. > Previous tools outsourced partial processes - calculators do arithmetic, Google stores facts. LLMs can potentially take over the entire cognitive process from thinking to formulating. That's qualitatively different. Yes, but also consider that this is true of any team: All managers hire people to outsource some entire cognitive process, letting themselves focus on their own personal comparative advantage. The book "The Last Man Who Knew Everything" is about Thomas Young, who died in 1829; since then, the sum of recorded knowledge has broadened too much for any single person to learn it all, so we need specialists, including specialists in managing other specialists. AI is a complement to our own minds with both sides of this: Unlike us, AI can "learn it all", just not very well compared to humans. If any of us had a sci-fi/fantasy time loop/pause that let us survive long enough to read the entire internet, we'd be much more competent than any of these models, but we don't, and the AI runs on hardware which allows it to. For the moment, it's still useful to have management skills (and to know about and use Popperian falsification rather than verification) so that we can discover and compensate for the weaknesses of the AI.

vladms 9mo ago

> That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. I think a better framing would be "abusing (using it too much or for everything) any new tool/medium can lead to negative effects". It is hard to clearly define what is abuse, so further research is required, but I think it is a healthy approach to accept there are downsides in certain cases (that applies for everything probably).

wartywhoa23 9mo ago

> TV was the "idiot box." TV is the uber idiot box, the overlord of the army of portable smart idiot boxes.

piyuv 9mo ago

None of the examples you provided were being sold as “intelligence”

boesboes 9mo ago

I think that is a VERY false comparison. As you say, LLMs try to take over entire cognitive and creative processes and that is a bigger problem then outsourcing arithmetic

direwolf20 9mo ago

How do we know they were wrong before?

BlackFly 9mo ago

If you realize that what we remember are the extremized strawman versions of the complaints then you can realize that they were not wrong. Writing did eliminate the need for memorization. How many people could quote a poem today? When oral history was predominant, it was necessary in each tribe for someone to learn the stories. We have much less of that today. Writing preserves accuracy much more (up to conquerors burning down libraries, whereas it would have taken genocide before), but to hear a person stand up and quote Desiderata from memory is a touching experience to the human condition. Scribes took over that act of memorization. Copying something lends itself to memorization. If you have ever volunteered extensively for project Gutenberg you can also witness a similar experience: reading for typos solidifies the story into your mind in a way that casual writing doesn't. In losing scribes we lost prioritization of texts and this class of person with intimate knowledge of important historical works. With the addition of copyright we have even lost some texts. We gained the higher availability of works and lower marginal costs. The lower marginal costs led to... Pulp fiction. I think very few people (but I would be disappointed if it was no one) would argue that Dan Brown's da Vinci Code is on the same level as War and Peace. From here magazines were created, even cheaper paper, rags some would call them (or use that to refer to tabloids). Of course this also enabled newspapers to flourish. People started to read things for entertainment, text lost its solemnity. The importance of written word diminished on average as the words being printed became more banal. TV and the internet led to the destruction of printed news, and so on. This is already a wall of text so I won't continue, but you can see how it goes: Technology is a double edged sword, we may gain something but we also can and did lose some things. Whether it was progress or not is generally a normative question that often a majority agrees with in one sense or another but there are generational differences in those norms. In the same way that overuse of a calculator leads to atrophy of arithmetic skills, overuse of a car leads to atrophy of walking muscles, why wouldn't overuse of a tool to write essays for you lead to atrophy of your ability to write an essay? The real reason to doubt the study is because its conclusion seems so obvious that it may be too easy for some to believe and hide poor statistical power or p-hacking.

darkwater 9mo ago
I think your take is almost irrefutable, unless you frame human history as the only possible way to achieve current humanity status and (unevenly distributed) quality of life. I also find exhausting the Socrates reference that's ALWAYS brought up in these discussions. It is not the same. Losing the collective ability to recite a 10000 words poem by heart because of books it's not the same thing as stopping to think because an AI is doing the thinking for you. We keep adding automation layers on top of the previous ones. The end goal would be _thinking_ of something and have it materialized in computer and physical form. That would be the extreme. Would people keep comparing it to Socrates?

torben-friis 9mo ago

I think novels and tv are bad examples, as they are not substituting a process. The writing one is better. Here’s the key difference for me: AI does not currently replace full expertise. In contrast, there is not a “higher level of storage” that books can’t handle and only a human memory can. I need a senior to handle AI with assurances. I get seniors by having juniors execute supervised lower risk, more mechanical tasks for years. In a world where AI does that, I get no seniors.

chairmansteve 9mo ago

"Socrates worried writing would destroy memory". He may have been right... Maybe our minds work in a different way now.

tjr 9mo ago
Back when I routinely dialed phone numbers by hand (either on a keypad or on a literal dial), I memorized the numbers I called most frequently. Many of those numbers I still have memorized today, years after some of those phone lines have been disconnected. But now? I almost never enter a new phone number anywhere. Maybe someone shares a contact with me, and I tap to add it to my contact list. Or I copy-paste a phone number. Even some people that I contact frequently, I have no idea what their phone number is, because I've never needed to "know" it, I just needed to have it in my contact list. I'm not sure that this is a bad thing, but definitely is a thing. Ah, well, more memory space for other stuff, eh? I suppose. But like what? I could describe other scenarios, in which I used to have more facts and figures memorized, but simply don't any more, because I don't need to. While perhaps my memory is freed up to theoretically store more other things, in practice, there's not much I really "need" to store. Even if no longer memorizing phone numbers isn't especially bad, I'm starting to think that no longer memorizing anything might not be a great idea.

wisty 9mo ago

Soapbox time. They were arguably right. Pre literate peole could memorise vast texts (Homer's work, Australian Aboriginal songlines). Pre Gutenberg, memorising reasonably large texts was common. See, e.g. the book Memory Craft. We're becoming increasingly like the Wall E people, too lazy and stupid to do anything without our machines doing it for us, as we offload increasing amounts onto them. And it's not even that machines are always better, they only have to be barely competent. People will risk their life in a horribly janky self driving car if it means they can swipe on social media instead of watching the road - acceptance doesn't mean it's good. We have about 30 years of the internet being widely adopted, which I think is roughly similar to AI in many ways (both give you access to data very quickly). Economists suggest we are in many ways no more productive now than when Homer Simpson could buy a house and raise a family on a single income - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox Yes, it's too early to be sure, but the internet, Google and Wikipedia arguably haven't made the world any better (overall).

CuriouslyC 9mo ago
Brains are adaptive. We're not getting dumber, we're just adapting to a new environment. Just because they're less fit for other environments doesn't make it worse. As for the productivity paradox, this discounts the reality that we wouldn't even be able to scale the institutions we're scaling without the tech. Whether that scaling is a good thing is debatable.
- discreteevent 9mo ago
  > Brains are adaptive. They are, but you go on to assume that they will adapt in a good way. Bodies are adaptive too. That didn't work out well for a lot of people when their environment changed to be sedentary.
  - ahoka 9mo ago
    Yes, that's like saying I'm not weak, just my muscles are adapted to the couch.

lr4444lr 9mo ago

Were any of the prior fears totally wrong?

raincole 9mo ago

> "they've always been wrong before" In my opinion, they've almost always been right. In the past two decades, we've seen the less-tech-savvy middle managers who devalued anything done on computer. They seemed to believe that doing graphic design or digital painting was just pressing a few buttons on the keyboard and the computer would do the job for you. These people were constantly mocked among online communities. In programmers' world, you have seen people who said "how hard it could be? It's just adding a new button/changing the font/whatever..." And strangely, in the end those tech muggles were the insightful ones.

Sxubas 9mo ago

What does not get used, atrophies. Critical thinking, forming ideas, writing, etc, those are too stuff that can atrophy if not used. For example, a lot of people can't locate themselves without a GPS today. To be frank I see it really similar to our muscles: don't want to lose it? Use it. Whether that is learning a language, playing an instrument or the task llms perform.

clydethefrog 9mo ago

I agree with Socrates and too many people have the wrong memory of him, making his prediction come true. There was a great philosophical book last year, Open Socrates [1], that explains his methods and ideas are the opposite direction of how most people use AI. Socrates believed we can only get closer to knowledge through the process of open, inquisitive conversation with other beings who are willing to refute us and be refuted in turn. He claimed ideas can only be expressed and shared in dialogue & live conversation. The one-direction communication of all the media since books have lacked this, and AI's version of dialogue is sycophancy and statistical common patterns instead of fresh ideas. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/books/review/open-socrates-agnes-callard.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/books/review/open-socrate...

FeteCommuniste 9mo ago
I'm sure you could train an AI to be skeptical/critical by default. The "you're absolutely right!" AIs are probably always going to be more popular, though.

ZpJuUuNaQ5 9mo ago

>TV was the "idiot box." Still is.

carlosjobim 9mo ago

> This reminds me of the recurring pattern with every new medium: Socrates worried writing would destroy memory, Gutenberg's critics feared for contemplation, novels were "brain softening," TV was the "idiot box." That said, I'm not sure "they've always been wrong before" proves they're wrong now. What do you mean? All of them were 100% right. Novels are brain softening, TV is an idiot box, and writing destroys memory. AI will destroy the minds of people who use it much.

alt187 9mo ago

It's more complex than that. The three pillars of learning are theory (finding out about the thing), practice (doing the thing) and metacognition (being right, or more importantly, wrong. And correcting yourself.). Each of those steps reinforce neural pathways. They're all essential in some form or another. Literacy, books, saving your knowledge somewhere else removes the burden of remembering everything in your head. But they don't come into effect into any of those processes. So it's an immensely bad metaphor. A more apt one is the GPS, that only leaves you with practice. That's where LLMs come in, and obliterate every single one of those pillars on any mental skill. You never have to learn a thing deeply, because it's doing the knowing for you. You never have to practice, because the LLM does all the writing for you. And of course, when it's wrong, you're not wrong. So nothing you learn. There are ways to exploit LLMs to make your brain grow, instead of shrink. You could make them into personalized teachers, catering to each student at their own rhythm. Make them give you problems, instead of ready-made solutions. Only employ them for tasks you already know how to make perfectly. Don't depend on them. But this isn't the future OpenAI or Anthropic are gonna gift us. Not today, and not in a hundred years, because it's always gonna be more profitable to run a sycophant. If we want LLMs to be the "better" instead of the "worse", we'll have to fight for it. Yes, I wrote this comment under someone else's comment before, but it seems to apply to yours even better.

TomasBM 9mo ago

Your criticism of this study is roughly on point, IMO. It's not badly designed by any means, but it's an early look. There are already similar studies on the (cognitive) effects of LLMs on learning, but I suspect this one gets the attention because it's associated with the MIT brand. That said, these kinds of studies are important, because they reveal that some cognitive changes are evidently happening. Like you said, it's up to us to determine if they're positive or negative, but as is probably obvious to many, it's difficult to argue for the status quo. If it's a negative change, teachers have to go back to paper-and-pen essay writing, which I was personally never good at. Or they need to figure out stable ways to prevent students from using LLMs, if they are to learn anything about writing. If it's a positive change, i.e., we now have more time to do "better" things (or do things better), then teachers need to figure out substitutes. Suddenly, a common way of testing is now outdated and irrelevant, but there's no clear thing to do instead. So, what do they do?

jama211 9mo ago

Well said

abustamam 9mo ago

> TV was the "idiot box." To be fair, I think this one is true. There's a lot of great stuff you can watch on TV, but I'd argue that TV is why many boomers are stuck in an echo chamber of their own beliefs (because CNN or fox news or whatever opinion-masquerading-as-journalism channel is always on in the background). This has of course been exacerbated by social media, but I can't think of many productive uses of TV other than sesame Street and other kids shows.

biztos 9mo ago

To be fair, writing did destroy memory. It's just that in the very long summer of writing, which may now be coming to an end thanks to AI, we have considered the upside more than worth it.

lofaszvanitt 9mo ago

What study? Try it yourself.