Books also cause loss of skills.

One effect of widespread books is we don’t have poets like Homer. We don’t develop the memorization skills like they did in the past.

And that’s ok.

We can use the bandwidth for other stuff.

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qsera a day ago | parent | next [-]

>We can use the bandwidth for other stuff.

Like fighting on social media...

Seriously, what was the other stuff that we used our bandwidth for when the books caused the loss of skills.

We have lost Homer, but what have we gained? A million social-media warriors?

	▲	Ekaros 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think some of them might even value social-media trolls in some ways... At least there is lot of honest dishonest work there... Now future is to replace those with machines. No more human input. Just endless amount machines fighting with other machines...

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coffeefirst a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But they don’t. Seriously, do you read?

Books encode skill.

I’m not a hater. LLMs on search is the best research tool I’ve ever used because it’s read everything and can find minutia buried in places it would take me a long time to find.

But there’s a huge difference between using it to assist focus, or as a study aide, and offloading the whole act of thinking itself.

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plastic-enjoyer a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I swear to god, people heard the story about how Socrates was against books and reurgitate this as argument against any critical view on AI usage. If this is the level of reasoning people have, nothing will be lost when cognitive skills decline through AI usage anyway.

	▲	semilin a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There's an irony to people repeating this claim without even having read the Phaedrus. If they had, they'd understand that the concern with writing was that it was not able to respond as a human in dialogue. One could think that LLMs are an improvement in this regard, but for the fact that LLMs are actually autonomous sophists. Socrates would have been against LLMs, and for good reason. Writing isn't unequivocally bad, but it is simply not a substitution for real dialogue and thought. We use books as a means by which to have more things to discuss with humans. LLMs can supplant the desire to even have dialogue with others, which is perhaps the more insidious thing.
	▲	joquarky 13 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.
	▲	ramesh31 a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		>I swear to god, people heard the story about how Socrates was against books and reurgitate this as argument against any critical view on AI usage. It's something we all learn in freshman english class. But it comes up over and over again because the general idea is true. You have to temper the unbridled optimism that comes with any new technology by contemplation of what may be lost. Otherwise we're spinning in circles.
	▲	begemotz a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		claude told me to say it.