netdevphoenix 1 day ago

Unlikely. Reading the explanation involves memorising it temporarily and at best understanding what it means at a surface level. Figuring it out on your own also involves using and perhaps improving your problem solving skills in addition to understanding the explanation at a deeper level. I feel LLMs will be for our reasoning skills what writing was for our memory skills.

Plato might have been wrong about the ills of cyberization cognitive skill such as memory. I wonder if two thousand years later from then, we will be right about the ills of cyberization of a cognitive skill such as reasoning

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namaria 1 day ago

> Reading the explanation involves memorising it temporarily and at best understanding what it means at a surface level.

I agree. I don't really feel like I know something unless I can go from being presented with a novel instance of a problem in that domain and work out a solution by myself, and also explain that to someone else - not just happen into a solution.

> Plato might have been wrong about the ills of cyberization cognitive skill such as memory.

How so? From the dialogue where he describes Socrates discussing writing I get a pretty nuanced view that lands pretty much where you did above: access to writing fosters a false sense of understanding when one can read explanations and repeat them but not actually internalize the reasoning behind it.