Comment on Are We Living in a Golden Age of Stupidity? - Slashdot
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I could say anything is a crutch that removes the burden from our minds. Calculators remove the burden of doing basic math and map apps remove the burden of maintaining a mental map. Both of these can result in a person who can’t independently do basic calculations or navigate and won’t understand the methodology behind the calculations. Now if this is a problem is open to debate.
batmaniam@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is a great conversation because I’m one of those people who’s terrible at arithmetic, but quite good at math. As in: I can look at a function, visualize it in 3D space, see what different max, mins and surfaces are dominated by what terms etc, but don’t ask me to tally a meal check. I’d be useless at applying any math without a calculator.
Similarly, there’s a lot of engineers out there that use CAD extensively that would probably not be engineers if they had to do drafting by hand.
The oatmeal did a comic that distilled this for me where they talked about why they didn’t like AI “art”. They made the point that in making a drawing, there are a million little choices made reconciling what’s in your head with what you can do on the page. Either from the medium, what you’re good at drawing, whatever, it’s those choices that give the work “soul”. Same thing for writing. Those choices are where learning, development, and style happen, and what generative AI takes away.
That helped crystalize for me the difference between a tool and autocomplete on steroids.