I really think the effects of LLMs on thinking is the exact same as a calculator. It shortcuts some forms of thinking to open up other forms of thinking.

My thinking has increased with the use of LLMs, not decreased, most likely because LLMs take the edge off of grind work like reading a lot of noise to capture the 1% signal, formulating accurate statements for abstract ideas, and bringing together various domains that are beyond your area of expertise.

Now will you make mistakes? Sure, but you would have made the same mistakes at a slower pace without LLMs anyways. Or more accurately, you just wouldn’t do the research or apply domains not in your area of expertise, and your thinking would be a lot more narrow.

The strawman is thinking that banning LLMs will induce rigorous thinking. Just like banning calculators does not make everyone good at math.

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

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nicolapede 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>> 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.

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wenc 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Pure math people probably don’t reach for calculators. But engineers do all the time. Back of the envelope guesstimating is bread and butter.

The modern equivalent of a calculator is Excel.

	▲	Jensson a day ago \| parent [-]
		> Back of the envelope guesstimating is bread and butter. And that is not done with calculators, that is done quickly in your head by having practiced a lot of calculations manually. This is why engineer students still practice manual calculation in college in most places.

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tartoran 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Calculators are taken for granted but many mathematicians use computers extesively in their careers.

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bombela 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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.

	▲	ljosifov a day ago \| parent [-]
		It's possible to not use Google for search. I switched to Perplexity many months ago. Almost never come back to Google. No one is forcing me to use a worse option, when a better one exists. Just use something else - easy.