this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Isn't that the same guy that plays Michael Bolton in Office Space?
For those wondering: Scruffy, Roberto, and WERNSTROM
I just asked ChatGPT if this is true. It told me no and to increase my usage of AI. So HA!
relying on AI makes people stupid?
Who knew?
Anyone who doubts this should ask their parents how many phone numbers they used to remember.
In a few years there'll be people who've forgotten how to have a conversation.
I don't see how that's any indicator of cognitive decline.
Also people had notebooks for ages. The reason they remembered phone numbers wasn't necessity, but that you had to manually dial them every time.
And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, [writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.
βa story told by Socrates, according to his student Plato
The other day I saw someone ask ChatGPT how long it would take to perform 1.5 million instances of a given task, if each instance took one minute. Mfs cannot even divide 1.5 million minutes by 60 to get get 25,000 hours, then by 24 to get 1,041 days. Pretty soon these people will be incapable of writing a full sentence without ChatGPT's input
Edit to add: divide by 365.25 to get 2.85 years. Anyone who can tell me how many months that is without asking an LLM gets a free cookie emoji
I want a free cookie emoji!
I didn't ask an LLM, no, I asked Wikipedia:
The mean month-length in the Gregorian calendar is 30.436875 days.
Edit: but since I already knew a year is 365.2425 I could, of course, have divided that by the 12 months of a year to get that number.
So,
1041 Γ· 30.436875 β 34 months and...
0.2019343313 Γ 30.436875 β 6 days and...
0.146249999987 Γ 24 β 3 hours and...
0.509999999688 Γ 60 β 30 minutes and...
0.59999998128 Γ 60 β 35 seconds and...
0.9999988768 Γ 1000 β 999 milliseconds and
0.9999988768 Γ 1000000 β 999999 nanoseconds
34 months + 6d 3h 30m 35s 999ms 999999 ns (or we could call it 36s...)
Edit: 34 months is better known as 2 years and 10 months.
πͺ
You got as far as nanoseconds so here's a cupcake for extra credit too π§
Thank you, you really didn't have to. That cupcake is truly the icing and it's almost too much! I'll give you this giant egg of unknown origin: π₯ in return, as long as you promise to use it for baking and making some more of those cupcakes for whoever else needs or deserves one within the next few days, hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds and 999999 bananoseconds π
Rough estimate using 30 days as average month would be ~35 months (1050 = 35Γ30). The average month is a tad longer than 30 days, but I don't know exactly how much. Without a calculator, I'd guess the total result is closer to 34.5. Just using my own brain, this is as far as I get.
Now, adding a calculator to my toolset, the average month is 365.2425 d / 12 m = 30.4377 d/m. The total result comes out to about 34.2, so I overestimated a little.
Also, the total time is 1041.66... which would be more correctly rounded to 1042, but has negligible impact on the redult.
Edit: I saw someone else went even harder on this, but for early morning performance, I'm satisfied with my work
πͺ
Pirat gave me an egg emoji, so I baked some more cupcake emojis. Have one for getting it so close without even using a calculator π§
I hope your weekend is as awesome as you are
I swear the companies hard code solutions for weird edge cases so their investors are fooled into believing that their LLMs are getting smarter.
You forgot doing the years, which is a bit trickier if we take into account the leap years.
According to the Gregorian calendar, every fourth year is a leap year unless it's divisible by 100 β except those divisible by 400 which are leap years anyway. Hence, the average length of one year (over 400 years) must be:
365 + 1β4 β 1β100 + 1β400 = 365.2425 days
So,
1041 / 365.2425 β 2.85 years
Or 2 years and...
0.850161194275 Γ 365.2425 β 310 days and...
0.514999999987 Γ 24 β 12 hours and...
0.359999999688 Γ 60 β 21 minutes and...
0.59999998128 Γ 60 β 36 seconds
1041 days is just about 2y 310d 12h 21m 36s
Wtf, how did we go from 1041 whole days to fractions of a day? Damn leap years!
Had we not been accounting for them, we would have had 2 years and...
0.852054794521 Γ 365 = 311.000000000165 days
Or simply 2y 311d if we just ignore that tiny rounding error or use fewer decimals.
Engineers be likeβ¦
1041/365 =2,852
.852*365=310.980
Thus 2 y 311 d. Or really, fuck it 3 y
Edit. #til
The lemmy app on my phone does basic calculator functions.
Or really, fuck it 3 y
Seems about right! But really, it often seems pretty useful to me, since it removes a lot of unnecessary information thoughout a content feed or thread, though I usually still want to be able to see the exact date and time when tapping or hovering over the value for further context.
Edit: However, the lemmy client I use, Eternity, shows the entire date and time for each comment instead of the age of it, and I'm fine with that too, but unsure what I actually prefer...
The lemmy app on my phone does basic calculator functions.
Which client and how?
I already have seen a massive decline personally and observationally (watching other people) in conversation skills.
Most people now to talk to each other like they are exchanging internet comments. They don't ask questions, they don't really engage... they just exchange declaratory sentences. Heck most of the dates I went on the past few years... zero real conversation and just vague exchanges of opinion and commentary. A couple of them went full on streamer, like just ranting at me and randomly stopping to ask me nonsense questions.
Most of our new employees the past year or two really struggle with any verbal communication and if you approach them physically to converse about something they emailed about they look massively uncomfortable and don't really know how to think on their feet.
Before the pandemic I used to actually converse with people and learn from them. Now everyone I meet feels like interacting with a highlight reel. What I don't understand is why people are choosing this and then complaining about it.
Theyβll have forgotten how to remember anything.
That doesn't require a few years, there are loads of people out there already who have forgotten how to have a conversation
Especially moderators, who typically are the polar opposite nog the word. You disagree with my factually incorrect statement? Ban. Problem solved. You disagree with my opinion? Ban.
Similarly I've seen loads of users on Lemmy (and before or reddit) that just ban anyone who asks questions or who disagrees.
It's so nice and easy, living in a echo chamber, but it does break your brain
I could remember so many phone numbers nowadays I just click their names on my rectangle, the future sucks and is weakening us !
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Thank you for providing a better Source and editing the post!
Been vibe coding hard for a new project this past week. It's been working really well but I feel like I watched a bunch of TV. Like it's passive enough like I'm flipping through channel, paying a little attention and then going to the next.
Where as coding it myself would engage my brain and it might feel like reading.
It's bizarre because I've never had this experience before.
Are history teachers wasting their time?
16 hours after posting it I am editing this post (as well as the two other cross-posts I made of it) to link to MITβs page about the study instead.
Better late than never. Good catch.
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