Comment by pityJuke
9 hours ago
I’ve grown to appreciate this aspect of standard examination as I’ve gotten older. Everyone wants to say “oh, you can just look it up now”, but how can you come up with higher level thinking, when you don’t have the fundamentals in your mind?
To use math as an example, you can always look up formulas. But after more than 1 "layer" of looking up, that quickly becomes impossible. Like, when I had to learn to calculate derivatives and primitives, I could look those things up. But when I got to linear algebra, I couldn't progress until I deeply internalized derivatives and primitives, because looking up formula A only for it to contain unknown formula B just becomes a mess.
Agreed. We've been able to "look it up" for a while. To use math as an example, we've had calculators for a very long time. But when I was in school they didn't let us use calculators until precalc. Now I use calculators even for simple math because I already understand the fundamentals and just need expedience.
Just because one can "look it up" doesn't mean it's necessarily the best thing to do at the moment. But it also doesn't mean that folks who look it up are necessarily losing any higher level thinking, though I concede that many people certainly delude themselves into thinking they understand the fundamentals and thus can use AI as a tool for expedience when they're really using it as a tool for thought.