this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
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Okay look, some of the math I do on a daily basis is like 5 levels above basic addition (it looks like I've written a whole ass sentences of gibberish) but like what if they changed it? I'd rather be sure that 2+2 still equals 4 than be wrong and the thing I'm working on ends up making expensive sounds.
There's also just removing the cognitive load of having to process this information. You're allowed to look up the answer (that's what a calculator and the slide rule do).
Using the tools you have to speed up your work doesn't make you a worse engineer than those in the past. You're building off their work so you don't have to constantly literally reinvent the wheel.
The issue is that the floor on confidence in knowledge is now basically nothing.
Why is it that 8th graders in 1990 could do solid algebra and polynomials on paper and not need help? Nothing about the math has changed.
Slide rules do not do basic math, that's a poor comparison. People that did higher math on slide rules only used it for part of the problem dealing with logarithms, and that was a shorthand for larger approximation tables in books. That's necessary help. Solving for 2+2 is not. That's for little children that count on their fingers. If you're not in the "WTF?" camp, you're part of the problem.
I'm not confident you're participating in good faith here but, on the off-chance you are; I'm not sure I take your point.
Can you substantiate your initial claim? "The floor on confidence in knowledge is now basically nothing" seems too broad a statement to meaningfully defend.
Even if we assume you're talking about US 8th graders you'll have to be more specific. The US has seen degraded academic performance across the board but the degree varies by State (and often again by County).
What's "necessary help" is up for debate as well. There's a hint of something I can agree with here though. I do agree that, for certain vocations, it's important for individuals to have firm graps on the fundamentals. Programmers ought to be able to code without IDEs and Mathematicians work problems without calculators. I don't agree that the common use of good tools by those professionals results in the brain-drain bogeyman you seem to be shadow boxing.
What am I meant to be alarmed about, exactly?
No, I'm here in good faith.
Being alarmed, I suppose, would be the subjective assessment that this isn't too far off from all the cognitive decline correlated to excessive use of AI. It's an extrapolation, sure, but similar.
It's lovely to think that a phone will always be right on us all, for the rest of our lives. IRL, shit happens. Sometimes people just dug a calf out of a pond, their phone got soaked, and they still need to divide 250 lbs of fertilizer by 10 barrels and not be seized by indecision because there's not a cell phone around.