You used to be required to memorize a bare minimum number of phone numbers to survive. Now, you’re lucky if people know their spouse’s and their own.
Cognitive offloading results in an atrophy of the skill and retention. There is a similar phenomena with people who watch 1000 tutorial videos but never implement anything or do it themselves. This is not “deep learning”, and its entertainment masquerading as productivity.
GPS is undeniably the same, and it’s easily observable between generations. AI LLM search queries are already resulting in a disturbing amount of people accepting what is presented non-critically. These people are sadly atrophying whatever critical analysis skills they had to vet information and links.
I grew up with rotary phones, and I only knew about 2 numbers then. My notes about these numbers have just moved from a piece of paper pinned onto the wall.
At a demographic level, I am near certain you’re right on the money. But you are not an interchangeable part, identical to all the others in your bin. Neither is anyone else.
There are people who can use these tools to enhance their abilities. That’s how I use GPS navigation: to get me there the first time, and on trips to larger cities to avoid traffic. No amount of skill on my part is going to tell me that I need to turn onto a side street because there was an accident 10km further up the road.
So there’s nuance here. We can possibly have our cake and eat it too.
How many phone numbers can you remember?
You used to be required to memorize a bare minimum number of phone numbers to survive. Now, you’re lucky if people know their spouse’s and their own.
Cognitive offloading results in an atrophy of the skill and retention. There is a similar phenomena with people who watch 1000 tutorial videos but never implement anything or do it themselves. This is not “deep learning”, and its entertainment masquerading as productivity.
GPS is undeniably the same, and it’s easily observable between generations. AI LLM search queries are already resulting in a disturbing amount of people accepting what is presented non-critically. These people are sadly atrophying whatever critical analysis skills they had to vet information and links.
I grew up with rotary phones, and I only knew about 2 numbers then. My notes about these numbers have just moved from a piece of paper pinned onto the wall.
At a demographic level, I am near certain you’re right on the money. But you are not an interchangeable part, identical to all the others in your bin. Neither is anyone else.
There are people who can use these tools to enhance their abilities. That’s how I use GPS navigation: to get me there the first time, and on trips to larger cities to avoid traffic. No amount of skill on my part is going to tell me that I need to turn onto a side street because there was an accident 10km further up the road.
So there’s nuance here. We can possibly have our cake and eat it too.