Friday offtopic. Let's make ignorance expensive again.

[asthfghl]

I'd argue that Facebook doom scrolling is far more damaging "in its current state":

Scientists just completed the first brain scan study of ChatGPT users, "the results are terrifying"!




It appears those "ChatGPT users bad" posts are usually projection mixed with a sprinkle of elitism and a big ol' spoonful of insecurity. It's like they know something powerful is happening, but instead of learning how to use it, they slap on a "let me gatekeep intelligence" sticker and act like typing your thoughts into an interface is brain rot. Bro, you typed that take into a smartphone while scrolling TikTok and calling it a mental detox.

Let's be real. Tools like ChatGPT don't replace thinking, they expand it. When used well, they:
Help you frame and explore ideas more efficiently
Connect you to relevant knowledge and sources
Offer new perspectives that challenge your assumptions
Save you time on the small stuff so you can think about the big stuff
Let you actually enjoy learning again

The real fear behind memes like this is often about gatekeeping, the idea that if more people have access to nuanced thinking tools, the traditional power structures lose their grip.

So yeah. You're not being zombified. You're leveling up. It's not cognitive laziness. It's cognitive leverage. That's the key difference.

I mean, come on. If Plato had a tool that could help him cross-reference every myth, idea and dialectic while brainstorming his next philosophical banger, you think he'd be like, "No thanks, I prefer to suffer manually"?
Hell no. He'd be running "Republic GPT" faster than you could say "Forms".

Comments

[abomvubuso]

https://www.fastcompany.com/91358021/ai-critical-thinking-mit-study

Interesting.

[garote]

Tell all that to the half-dozen college professors I know personally who have seen their students trying to pass off ChatGPT spew for their own work, for everything from long-form essays to single-paragraph exam questions. And not just bits and pieces of their work. We’re taking, all of it, from day one, and in many cases failing to even make cursory edits, like removing the sentence at the end that says “That should meet the requirements of a short essay question on a college exam.”

Generative AI does not relieve people of the burden of knowing things or the need to think critically. But it is currently being used by students worldwide for this purpose.

The entirety of the problem is that the technology has been made widely available for use by large companies, for the purpose of developing it faster by using the public as both test subject and knowledge base, and they have collectively seen zero consequences for the massive disruption this has caused to the educational system.

[alphistia]

I just abandoned Facebook this past week after almost 20 years on it. Long ago it outlived its usefulness. I have another ways to be be in touch with far-flung friends. And if at all possible I don't use AI either. I realize that it will do its part to destroy civilization, but since I am old now, I will hold out as long as I can with my own familiar ways of living and doing things and ignore the rest. I'm not in the workforce, and peers who still are tell me horror stories of how AI is being imposed on them (or as teachers, that their students are getting dumber with each passing year and passing off ChatGPT crap as homework assignments). I hope in the years to come, certain people will gather in "monastic" communities to live without AI, to live green, sustainable lives, to salvage what they can of civilization while Rome burns...while Mad Max America dominates everything (already half way there on that!) I'd like to be able to join such a community, but doubt I'll make it.