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My "Are you presuming most people are stupid?" test

submitted by jger15+(OP) on 2025-06-24 18:31:15 | 39 points 132 comments
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45. rizzom+lf[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-24 19:39:41
>>sunrun+dd
> Is there something here about the role of (and lack of in this case) deliberate and intentional practice?

Something like 50% of college graduates in the US are considered functionally illiterate, despite an enormous number of opportunities for intentional practice; and despite presumably knowing, at least somewhat, of the benefit of attaining more advanced literacy. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10928755

When I think of poor drivers, I think their incentives to become a good driver are much higher. After all, their own lives and the lives of their loved ones are at risk.

73. djoldm+yj[view] [source] 2025-06-24 20:03:12
>>jger15+(OP)
The referenced study is quite the doozy:

> We assigned participants to three groups: LLM group, Search Engine group, Brain-only group ... to write an essay. We recruited a total of 54 participants...

> We used electroencephalography (EEG) to record participants' brain activity in order to assess their cognitive engagement and cognitive load, and to gain a deeper understanding of neural activations during the essay writing task. We performed NLP analysis, and we interviewed each participant after each session. We performed scoring with the help from the human teachers and an AI judge (a specially built AI agent).

> We discovered a consistent homogeneity across the Named Entities Recognition (NERs), n-grams, ontology of topics within each group. EEG analysis presented robust evidence that LLM, Search Engine and Brain-only groups had significantly different neural connectivity patterns, reflecting divergent cognitive strategies. Brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support...

And then: "...in this study we demonstrate the pressing matter of a likely decrease in learning skills based on the results of our study."

I'm not sure "likely decrease in learning skills" is quite right here.

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872v1

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80. jahews+km[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-24 20:21:37
>>qsort+Kf
That people over-estimate the size of minority groups is a well known research finding [1]

As for the 53% stat, dude just go to Walmart and talk to regular people [2]

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-think-mino...

[2] https://youtube.com/shorts/e8s9-Qnx-_0?feature=shared

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97. csa+lU[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-25 01:04:24
>>maverw+Bp
> For me, at least the PB and the J sound like „basically pure sugar“.

As a side note, there is good peanut butter that is just roasted peanuts and salt. It’s pretty damn healthy — much more balanced and healthier than most breads or jellies.

Here is one that is very common in the US:

https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-organic-peanut-but...

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100. jrflow+231[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-25 02:52:06
>>andyma+Hg
> a billion people are using an app that adds absolutely nothing to their lives each week

I like this reasoning. If something is popular it is objectively good. For example 21.7% of adults on earth use tobacco, so it must be good then.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.PRV.SMOK?name_desc=f...

Except for TikTok, which is bad because people share their experiences of chat bots not being very good on there.

As an aside, “dumb” is subjective, though if we had to put a label on it, “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” sounds like it could be something?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

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101. jrflow+v41[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-25 03:13:15
>>andyma+Cv
> I can use ChatGPT to alphabetize a long list for me.

Trying to imagine using enough energy to boil two liters of water(1)(2) to sort a list instead of typing

sort list.txt

which is a command that works pretty much the same on Windows(3), Linux/Bash(4), macOS (5) and does not have any risk of hallucinating at all, and the only reason I could imagine myself doing that was if for some reason, using enough energy to boil two liters of water to sort a list made me feel good. Like I would only do that if I got some sort of rush out of it or if it made people on the internet think that I am smart.

1 https://ai-basics.com/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-really-us...

2 https://eatwithus.net/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-boil-1...

3 https://www.windows-commandline.com/sort-command/

4 https://thelinuxcode.com/bash_sort_command/

5 https://ss64.com/mac/sort.html

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102. andyma+Eb1[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-25 05:11:21
>>jrflow+v41
Sorry the energy comment is ridiculously out of context. I've written a deep dive on how small that number is. Do you complain when YouTube videos or video games use similar amounts of energy? Your laptop uses the same energy every 3 minutes. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...
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121. andyma+DU2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-25 18:27:49
>>bpt3+3v2
Basically everything I think is here, I think this is all pretty simple and straightforward: https://open.substack.com/pub/andymasley/p/ai-can-be-bad-ove...

If you bought a hammer and never used it, so it never actually improved yourself, would you say the hammer itself isn't "useful"?

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123. bpt3+N73[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-06-25 19:52:20
>>andyma+DU2
> Basically everything I think is here, I think this is all pretty simple and straightforward: https://open.substack.com/pub/andymasley/p/ai-can-be-bad-ove...

It's very clear that you're way more interested in avoiding any serious discussion of your position, because the entire premise of that article (anyone questioning why you use chatGPT is saying all chatbots are completely useless, and that a meaningful number of people you interact with are making that claim) is a strawman unless you primarily interact with people who are technologically illiterate.

I suppose that is straightforward and simple, but probably not in the way you intended.

> If you bought a hammer and never used it, so it never actually improved yourself, would you say the hammer itself isn't "useful"?

I have no idea why you think ridiculous analogies like convey your thoughts clearly, but to answer your question: No I would not say the hammer isn't useful, because it has a use and just I didn't take advantage of its utility.

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