IMO it's not the recording of ideas that is thinking, but rather the act of putting thoughts into language. To me there isn't a big cognitive difference between conversing about a topic (during which you put thoughts into words) and writing about it.

When you speak or write instead of just think, you create something that did not previously exist: new words and sentences. When you write instead of speak, you aren't exactly creating something new — you're often just recording words that just as well could have been spoken. Using an LLM is much closer to the first case. It's creating something that didn't previously exist (an expanded thesis on a brief thought provided by you), and therefore seems to possibly risk the user's ability to think atrophying.

I think this exposes a pattern, but not necessarily on the subject or antithetical to OP's point. I interpret the above passage to implicate that we lose abilities as we adopt tools that can do it for us, but writing specifically stunts our ability to memorize facts. I would argue that this enabled us to spend less mental energy on memorization but on processing information instead, able to do more complex calculations. This doesn't negate OP's point that by using LLM's we give up another kind of ability to a tool, in the case reasoning.

Now whether or not this will in the abstract become leverage for another type of skill or multiplier is to be seen.

Or, from the perspective of memetics, writing has always been using us for everything.

I recommend Havelock's Preface to Plato and Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy

Reading is thinking someone else's thoughts => That is true if you are strictly reading passively. Typically what happens is that reading opens many doors that leads to your own thinking. Of course depends on the type of material you are reading as well. But often reading broadens your thinking relative to just putting your own on paper.

I’d say reading is fine tuning. It changes your weights. That’s the whole point of doing it.

>> But allowing calculators WILL make those who like math reach much deeper into the field than without.

Have you ever run into any mathematician that praised the calculator for his/her career? I’d be really curious to read about that.

Google search has worsened so badly. That right know it's impossible to resist using one of those free for a taste LLM service.

And the feeling is similar to how using Google on the 2004-2014 web was.

It used to be Google would return a huge list or relevant links. Loading all of them was quick. Skimming the content was quick.

Now every search is a massive ad. Every site is slow to load full of ads and useless slop. Slop which was written manually at first, then accelerated with Markov chains, now at light speed with LLMs.

So an LLM is required to filter through the LLM slop to find the tiny bit of real content.

Of course I trust my kids to make the most of the environment they are given, and given that their environment will differ from the one I am adapted for, they will likely surpass me in being well adapted to the environment of the future; it's still my responsibility to prepare them as best as I can for it.

You might put a baby in a pool so it can learn to swim, but you make sure their environment is such that drowning is an impossibility. A child destined to be an Olympian swimmer still requires guidance, even if their natural ability and inclinations outpace both their peers and their elders.

Trusting kids to figure out the unfiltered Internet led to a massive mental health crisis.

Nicolas Carr addresses this issue directly in his book "The Shallows" in which he brilliantly recounted how media has reshaped how humans think and communicate, especially how the word streams of other people increasingly reshaped our collective focus and our ability to focus, which alas, has NOT freed us to think more deeply.

Humans always have and always will use tech as a crutch -- to reduce time and effort (and energy expended). The 'physical enshittification' (PE) that has ensued from using mechanical crutches has made us lazy, fat, and sick. And now _mental_ crutches have arrived, which promise to replace our very thought processes, freeing us from all the annoying cognitive heavy lifting once done by our brains.

IMO, there's every reason to believe that the next step in human evolution will be driven by the continued misuse of tech as crutches, likely leading to widespread _mental_ enshittification (ME) -- doing to our minds what misuse of tech has already done to our culture and to our bodies.

Perhaps mankind can avoid this fate. But only if we insist on _thinking_ for ourselves.