>But the cognitive dissonance I feel when I think about what this means over a longer time horizon is really painful.

Excluding work (where granted, some companies are dictating the use of llms) and trying not to sound uncaring or disrespectful, but have you thought about not using llms for everything and using the old grey cells? Not having answers to every whimsical thought might be a good thing.

It's very easy to relax the brain (and be lazy tbh) with llms and it's scary to think what will happen in the next 4 years in terms of personal cognitive ability (or as a society).

e.g. I've noticed (and probably most have here) that the world is full of zombies glued to their phones. Looking over their shoulder (e.g. on a train, yeah it's a bit rude but I'm the curious type), they are doom scrolling or playing waste-time games (insert that boomer meme in Las Vegas with slot machines [0]). I try to use my phone as little as possible (especially for dog walks) and feel better for it, allowing me to daydream and let boredom take over.

Maybe I'm fortunate to be able to do this (gen-x: having grown up before cell phones/internet), but worth stating in case anyone wants to try.

[0]: https://tenor.com/view/casino-oldpeople-oldpeopleonslots-slo...

There is evidence that LLM usage is actually making people dumber. I'm not sure if they've figured out the cause/effect or not but that's enough evidence for me to avoid them if I can. They can be useful for some stuff but I found myself offloading my thinking a little too frequently.

Anyways if we do get to the point where you need to use LLMs to write code, I can make a decision then, but for now I don't feel the need to adopt agentic workflows and I think the people who don't will be better cognitively positioned in the future.