Compare it with the invention of writing:

> To [Thamus] came Thoth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Thoth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, this, said Thoth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Thoth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves.

-- Plato, Phaedrus

We've been having this same conversation for over 2,000 years now. And while I actually think Thamus is probably correct, it doesn't change the reality that we are now using reading and writing for everything.

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