139
People who use AI are actual NPCs
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
139 points (81.7% liked)
Showerthoughts
44366 readers
878 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
don't forget that frequent LLM use erodes patience and skills. even with the training ethics and environmental ethics set aside, they make you measurably dumber.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
This kinda gets philosophy-of-cognative-science-ey, but it kinda smells like "measuring a fish by its tree climbing ability". Or maybe like goodharts law.
There are many different kinds of smart, is the kind of smart they're measuring the one that will be relevant?
Again, I don't want to carry too much water for AI, but I also don't want to propagate arguments that also apply to other tools I like. Consider: externalizing memory. Without the tool you used to capture that memory, you're completely unable to function. Dependency on it reduces your ability to remember things yourself. By many measures, it makes your dumber and less productive. But I wouldn't personally consider taking notes to be detrimental.
So I want to be very careful when we make claims that externalizing some aspect of our cognition makes us worse somehow.
Books and calculators externalise skills that we see as tedious, like memorisation and calculation. LLMs externalise skills that we value in and of themselves, like decision making, art, and socialisation.
Would you rather live with people who can't memorise dates and perform arithmetic? Or people who can't make a decision or write a beautiful story?
These other things were also once valued.
Do you want to create a society where storytelling isn't valued?
I am pretty sure if you asked people with knowledge if they want a society where accumulating knowledge is no longer an exceptional trait, they would have also said “no”. When I was a kid we were still told using calculators is bad; yet having calculators everywhere meant we could suddenly solve bigger issues at a larger scale.
Lots of technological progress has brought significant change. And no doubt all of them also brought big issues with them. But ultimately all of them helped us advance further.
I also don’t like that my (work) life changes considerably due to LLMs. But that cat is out of the bag. Now I can only try to adjust accordingly or I will simply be left behind.
Everyone I know who uses LLMs is becoming a more boring person. I don't use LLMs because I don't want to turn out like them.