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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

That's not really the question though. The question is, would we be better off if we didn't have "[the] means of external marks"?

I'm sure somebody out there would argue that the answer is yes, but personally I have my doubts.

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I think the question is that were Plato's fears unfounded. I don't think the question is "is writing bad", although it is framed as that to justify a carefree adoption of LLMs in daily life.

It’s all about how you use written content, even before AI you could just copy-paste code from StackOverflow without any understanding. But you could also use it as an opportunity to do your own research, make your own experiences and create your own memory (which sticks a lot better). And it’s not just about coding, you can’t really grasp a subject by just reading a text book and not doing exercises or further reading.

Plato’s (or rather the Egyptian king’s - IIRC) fears were not unfounded, since a lot of people do not operate this way (sadly I see this with some peers), however overall the effect could still be positive.

Writing distributes knowledge to a lot of people, without it you have to rely on a kind of personal relationship to learn from someone more knowledgeable (which can be better for the individual mentee though). So maybe it increases chances of learning (breadth of audience) at the cost of the depth of understanding?

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