Post #968849
2026-04-06 14:28 UTC
Every physics textbook ever written comes with exercises at the end of each chapter, and every physics professor who has ever stood in front of a lecture hall has said the same thing: you cannot learn physics by watching someone else do it. You have to pick up the pencil. You have to attempt the problem. You have to get it wrong, sit with the wrongness, and figure out where your reasoning broke. Reading the solution manual and nodding along feels like understanding. It is not understanding. Every student who has tried to coast through a problem set by reading the solutions and then bombed the exam knows this in their bones. We have centuries of accumulated pedagogical wisdom telling us that the attempt, including the failed attempt, is where the learning lives. And yet, somehow, when it comes to AI agents, we've collectively decided that maybe this time it's different.
-- excerpted from https://ergosphere.blog/posts/the-machines-are-fine/
Replies (1)
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@feoh@oldbytes.space 2026-04-06 21:23
@dashdsrdash It's a HUGE problem and is honestly one of my biggest fears around AI. Not skynet BS. Skill rot. Good paying jobs USED to be one (primary?) incentive for why people spent their adult lives skill building. What happens when you take away that incentive and the bean counters decide that funding skill building is a waste of money? You wind up with a wasteland is what happens. Worse, it may take a generation for this to become clear enough to penetrate their pointy heads.