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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2026
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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I don’t think so. Not that I’m referring to an academic definition of either term here, but sometimes when I get too far into the habit of reaching for a calculator to do some arithmetic, it gets to a point where I will go through all the motions of picking it up, punching in the numbers and reading the result, and only then do I feel very dumb for not managing to perform (in the occasion) a very basic addition myself. I wouldn’t describe that as ‘learned helpnessness’ in the field of maths; it’s just getting into a habit where I don’t even think about how tractable it is to do in my head. Extend that to a chatbot that purports to answer literally any question and I can see a problem developing.
To me, the difference is that the calculator was never really imposed upon you. It was obviously useful in certain situations (vanishingly few people are interested in calculating a sine or a square root by hand, practically none in doing so on a regular basis). Many of these AI tools are, in fact, being imposed through top-down mandates and interface dark patterns. That sets up the sort of adversarial environment that leads to learned helplessness over time.
Calculators also have a negligible chance of screwing up something basic, and you can in fact learn the right way to input problems into them such that they are guaranteed not to misinterpret you.
There also isnt a big company behind the calculator ran by some fragile egos who will change the results when they get it in their heads that dividing is now woke.
Or who think they are funny so it rounds 68 up to 69.