Yeah, my primary concern is I'm part of a community of ~350 people who games together, and while there's probably some folks in there who could swing a server, right now discord isn't costing us anything and does everything we want (chat, voice, streaming, etc). If we were to consider moving we would probably need a reasonably beefy server and some software with all of those features, and right now that just doesn't seem feasible.
Replace 'stop remembering things' with 'remember fewer things' at your own leisure if it makes you happy, I'm exaggerating slightly to make a point.
My argument is not that we will stop practising critical thinking altogether, but that we will not need to practise it as often.
And mine is that as far as I know we have no evidence (or at least nothing more than anecdotal evidence at best) for that because society has only gotten more complex, not less, and requires more thought, memory, etc to navigate it. Now instead of remembering which cow was sick last week and which field I'm going to plant tomorrow I have to remember shit like how to navigate a city that's larger than the range in which most people traveled their entire lives, I have to figure out what this weird error my PC just threw means, I have to calculate the risk-vs-reward of trying to buy a house now or renting for a year to save up for a better down payment and improve my credit, etc. These are just examples, pick your own if you don't like them.
Less practise always makes you worse at something. I do not need evidence for that as it is obvious.
Now who's being reductive? I'm not asking for evidence that less practice makes you worse at something, I'm asking for evidence that labor-saving devices result in people doing less labor (mental or otherwise), because I think that's a lot less obvious.
I have seen how today’s students are using it instead of using their brains
This is a bad example because learning is a different matter. People using it instead of learning will not learn the subject matter as well as those who don't, obviously. But it's a lot less obvious in other fields/adult life. Will I be less good at code because I use an LLM to generate some now and then? Probably not, both because I've been coding off and on for 30 years, but also because my time instead is spent on tackling the thornier problems that AI can't do or has difficulty with, managing large projects because AI has a limited memory window, etc.
We teach critical thinking in schools for a reason, because it’s something that does not always come naturally, and these students are getting AI to do the work for them instead of learning how to think.
That's debatable, though I guess it depends on where you're from and what the schools are like there. They certainly didn't teach critical thinking when I was in (US public) school, I had to figure that shit out largely on my own. But that's beside the point. Shortcutting learning is bad, I agree. Shortcutting work is a lot more nebulous and uncertain in the absence of that evidence I keep asking for.
Damn, I've been thinking about checking it out, but if it doesn't do voice at all (and I would also really like streaming) it's just not worth it to me. Text chat is nice, but I spend 2-3 hours evenings hanging out in voice with friends and I don't want to lose that. Messing with two separate apps is just not worth it atm, so I'ma keep steadfastly ignoring Discord's bullshit until Matrix is where I need it to be to switch. Although then the problem will be getting everyone else to switch, of course.
I listen attentively to pretty much anything Cory Doctorow says about the internet and technology, he's been consistently insightful as hell on the subject. His books are also pretty good.
I don't trust a particular source. I sorta trust GroundNews to at least show me the bias and give me less-overtly-biased alternatives. Otherwise I am more trustful in general (but don't fully trust) investigative journalism orgs like ProPublica, independent journalists like Ken Klippenstein, etc.
Anything crypto related is a scam. It's just a question of whether you luck out and get off of the pump-and-dump ride in time. The rich people who only see it as a financial instrument for speculation are counting on people holding on for even greater profits so that they can be left holding the bag.
Social media makes it easier to fearmonger and spread hatred, no doubt
I hate to break it to you though; I grew up during the Cold War and propaganda was literally everywhere before the invention of the internet. Perhaps you've heard of the Red Scare?
No, fear and hatred lead to things like MAGA and the rise of Nazis. Social media makes it easier to fearmonger and spread hatred, no doubt, but it is by no means the cause of those things.
The people who were used to the oral tradition were right. Memorising things is good for your memory.
Except people didn't stop memorizing things. I went to school in the 1970s - unarguably a long-ass time after we stopped using the oral tradition as the primary method to transmit culture) and I was memorizing shit left and right. I still remember those multiplication tables, 'in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue', etc 40-odd years later.
No, I don’t think people will stop thinking altogether (please don’t be reductive like this lmao)
Sorry, I thought it was pretty clear that I was expressing skepticism at the idea that anyone actually thinks this.
But people did get worse at remembering things.
If you have evidence that suggests that people got worse at remembering things between, say, ancient Greece and the Industrial Revolution I'd love to see it.
We know that using tools makes us worse at whatever the tool automates, because without practice you become worse at things.
Likewise if you have evidence that people stopped thinking with the invention of books, the calculator, computers, the internet, etc, don't be shy about it.
because without practice you become worse at things.
You assume that offloading some mental processes to AI means we will stop practicing them. I argue that we'll just use the capabilities we have for other things. I use ChatGPT to help me worldbuild, structure my writing projects, come up with thematically-consistent names, etc, for example, but it's not writing for me and I still come up with names and such all the time.
People said it about fucking writing; 'If you don't remember all this stuff yourself to pass it on you will be bad at remembering!' No you won't, you will just have more space to remember other more important shit.
This is a bad example because going from using a dishwasher to washing dishes is not a big leap in effort required. I doubt many of the people who get to do intellectual work in offices instead of doing back-breaking labor all day on a farm because of technology would agree that going back to that would improve their quality of life. Some of them would certainly find that to be a 'richer experience' too, if not for the lack of healthcare and air conditioning.
Do you believe in love after love?