this post was submitted on 19 May 2025

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Critical thinking (slrpnk.net)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Dumb take because inaccuracies and lies are not unique to LLMs.

half of what you’ll learn in medical school will be shown to be either dead wrong or out of date within five years of your graduation.

https://retractionwatch.com/2011/07/11/so-how-often-does-medical-consensus-turn-out-to-be-wrong/ and that's 2011, it's even worse now.

Real studying is knowning that no source is perfect but being able to craft a true picture of the world using the most efficient tools at hand and like it or not, objectively LLMs are pretty good already.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

And yet once they graduate, if the patients are female and/or not white all concerns for those standards are optional at best, unless the patients bring a (preferably white) man in with them to vouch for their symptoms.

Not pro-ai, just depressed about healthcare.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Gotta say, if someone gets through medical school with AI, we're fucked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

We have at most 10 years before it happens. I saw medical AI from google today on hugginface and at least one more.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Did the same apply when calculators came out? Or the Internet?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (3 children)

Except calculators are based on reality and have deterministic and reliable results lol

Edit: holy crap I would never have guessed this statement would make people wanna argue with me. I've never felt that my job is secure from the next generation more than I do now.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

a transformer model is also deterministic, they just typically have noise added to appear "creative" (among other reasons) it is possible to use a fixed rng seed and get extremely deterministic results.

the results will still be frequently wrong but accuracy is a completely different discussion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

You're not wrong so you get an upvote but in the context of this conversation you know people are not using LLM tools with preseeded entropy. Also kind of a moot point because the idea of using some consistent source of entropy in a calculator is competly nonsensical and unnecessary.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah but we heard the same arguments when they came out. Nobody will learn math people will just get dumber. Then we heard the same with the Internet. It's but trustworthy. Wikipedia is all lies. Turns out they were great tools for learning.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Your point is a false equivalence. Just because people said the same thing doesn't mean a calculator and an LLM are equivalent in their accuracy as a tool.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm not talking about accuracy. The Internet isn't accurate and they said the same things about it. Either AI isn't going away. Remain a troglodyte or learn to master it to enhance what you can do. That's how I dealt with it in the past.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Lmao I use LLM powered tools in my work daily, I understand their limitations and stay within them so say what you will. I still think your comparison is dumb.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You can make mistakes with a calculator. It’s more about looking at the results, verifying the data, not just blindly trusting it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Your point has no bearing whatsoever on my statement. You could also misread a ruler but doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the ruler. Given I can reliably read a ruler, then I can 'blindly trust' it assuming it's a well manufactured ruler. If you can't that's definitively a you problem.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I mean it kinda does. If all you do is type numbers into calculator and copy results there’s a chance the result is wrong.

The same way some people use AI, which is wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

My point wasn't that people don't make mistakes they obviously do. My point is that calculators are deterministic machines; to clarify that means if they have the same input they will always have the same output. LLMs are not and do not. So no it's not the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I never said it was the same. I just said you have to be careful with tools you use. It applies to every tool.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You are implying that one must ensure the veracity of the output of a calculator in the same way that one must ensure the veracity of the output of an LLM and I'm saying no, that's strictly not true. If it were than the only way you could use an LLM incorrectly would be to type your query incorrectly. With a calculator that metaphor holds up. With an LLM you could make no mistakes and still get incorrect output.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 days ago

I’m implying that you should be careful when you use tools, and not blindly trust the output.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Even setting aside all of those things, the whole point of school is that you learn how to do shit; not pass it off to someone or something else to do for you.

If you are just gonna use AI to do your job, why should I hire you instead of using AI myself?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This is a ridiculous and embarrassing take on the situation. The whole point of school is to make you a well rounded and critically thinking person who engages with the world meaningfully. Capitalism has white personed that out of the world.

In an economic system in which you must do whatever you can to survive, the rational thing to do is be more efficient. If a boss thinks it can do the job itself, let it do the job itself. Bosses aren’t better versions of workers lmao. They’re parasites.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

If a boss thinks it can do the job itself, let it do the job itself.

How does this disagree with Kolanaki, exactly? You're repeating them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The idiot I replied to? Because they can’t actually do it, that’s the point. If they can then by all means, but they know they can’t, and they were making a ridiculous and condescending point. Bosses should be abolished, not entertained.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I don't mind condescending to AI salesmen.

If boss Kolanaki can't replace you with AI, then why is AI passing your classes for you?

I get you want to burn the system, and yay, I love burning things, but it's kind of irrelevant to the point being made.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

It’s kind of burn it all down, but it’s more just standing up to the unearned arrogance of someone who says idiotic bullshit like “why should I hire you?”

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I went to school in the 1980s. That was the time that calculators were first used in class and there was a similar outcry about how children shouldn't be allowed to use them, that they should use mental arithmetic or even abacuses.

Sounds pretty ridiculous now, and I think this current problem will sound just as silly in 10 or 20 years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I see your point, but calculators(good ones, at least) are accurate 100% of the time. AI can hallucinate, and in a medical settings it is crucial that it doesn't. I use AI for some insignificant tasks but I would not want it to replace my doctor's learning.

Also, calculators are used to help kids work faster, not to do their work for them. Classroom calculators(the ones my schools had, at least) didn't solve algebraic equations, they just added, subtracted, multiplied, divided, exponentiated, rooted, etc. Those are all things that can be done manually but are rudimentary and slow.

I get your point but AI and calculators are not quite the same.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

You're going for a much stricter comparison than your parent comment. They were just saying that calculators are a standard tool that did not in fact destroy the fundamentals of learning as some people felt compelled to believe. If you give a calculator to a child learning their times tables, it can in fact do their work for them, but we managed to integrate calculators into learning at higher levels. Whether calculators can be wrong isn't really relevant.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Fair enough - it's not the most concrete of comparisons and those are good points, but I do feel there is an amplification of ludditism around AI just because it's new.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

Lower level math classes still ban the calculator.

Math classes are to understand numbers, not to get the right answer. That's why you have to show your work.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It was a bad argument but the sentiment behind it was correct and is the same as the reasoning why students shouldn't be allowed to just ask AI for everything. The calculator can tell you the results of sums and products but if you need to pull out a calculator because you never learned how to solve problems like calculating the total cost of four loaves of bread that cost $2.99 each, that puts you at rather a disadvantage compared to someone who actually paid attention in class. For mental arithmetic in particular, after some time, you get used to doing it and you become faster than the calculator. I can calculate the answer to the bread problem in my head before anyone can even bring up the calculator app on their phone, and I reckon most of you who are reading this can as well.

I can't predict the future, but while AIs are not bad at telling you the answer, at this point in time, they are still very bad at applying the information at hand to make decisions based on complex and human variables. At least for now, AIs only know what they're told and cannot actually reason very well. Let me provide an example:

I provided the following prompt to Microsoft Copilot (I am slacking off at work and all other AIs are banned so this is what I have access to):

Suppose myself and a friend, who is a blackjack dealer, are playing a simple guessing game using the cards from the shoe. The game works thusly: my friend deals me two cards face up, and then I have to bet on what the next card will be.

The game begins and my friend deals the first card, which is the ace of spades. He deals the second card, which is the ace of clubs. My friend offers a bet that pays 100 to 1 if I wager that the next card after these two is a black ace. Should I take the bet?

Screenshot of Microsoft Copilot saying this is a bad bet because there are no black aces left in the shoe

Any human who knows what a blackjack shoe is (a card dispenser which contains six or more decks of cards shuffled together and in completely random order) would know this is a good bet. But the AI doesn't.

The AI still doesn't get it even if I hint that this is a standard blackjack shoe (and thus contains at least six decks of cards):

Suppose myself and a friend are playing a simple guessing game using the cards from a standard blackjack shoe obtained from a casino. The game works thusly: my friend deals me two cards face up, and then I have to bet on what the next card will be.

The game begins and my friend deals the first card, which is the ace of spades. He deals the second card, which is the ace of clubs. My friend offers a bet that pays 100 to 1 if I wager that the next card after these two is a black ace. Should I take the bet?

Screenshot of AI that figured out the shoe contained at least six decks but still advised against taking the bet

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Good answer, and some good points.

My analogy is not perfect, but I think there are parralels. People are currently trying to shoe-horn AI into things where it's never going to work well, and that's resulting in a lot of stupid and a lot of justifiable anger towards it.

But alongside that, it is also finding genuinely useful places, and it is not going to go away. Give it a few more years and it'll settle down into something we rely on daily. Just as we did with electronic calculators. The internet. Smartphones. Everything since the Spinning Jenny has had a huge pressure against it because it's new and different and people are scared it'll negatively affect them, but things change and new things get adopted into the everyday. Personally I find it exciting to be alive during such a time of genuine invention and improvement.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

I had to calculate a least squares fit by hand on exam. You have to know what the machines are doing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

lol I remember my teachers always saying "you won't always have a calculator on you" in the 90's and even then I had one of those calculator wrist watches from Casio.

And I still suck at math without one so they kinda had a point, they just didn't make it very well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

My teacher said the same thing. To this day, there is a Casio scientific calculator in my pickup truck, one in my backpack and one in my tool bag, I also never leave the house without my smart phone and I usually carry some kind of Linux laptop or tablet with me on any significant mission.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Hah! I had a calculator watch too - and I'm certain it got me my first girlfriend when I was 11!

You're right about that exact argument being used widely, I certainly was told I'd never have a calculator with me. Little did they know.

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