AI Makes You Stupid

Here is another good counter point to using AI as a writer.

It boils down to Socrates’ argument against reading. Does reading make you dumber than learning to memorize the Iliad and Odyssey word for word? Yes. Yes it does.

As Socretes said:

“They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”

Socretes foresaw my inability to memorize more than a handful of phone numbers 2300 years ago.

But reading and writing opened up the world of ideas up to more people than who had the ability to memorize the Iliad. There are many other advantages to reading and writing that outweigh the very real cost to memory.

The act of memorization has been lost and now people think it is impossible to memorize the Iliad or the book of Genesis word for word without missing a single word. That is a real cost.

The one place I disagree with her is that she believe in Blank Slate Theory. This is a common assumption in The Academy and one that underlies a lot of her views. The blank slate theory states that with the right education anyone can do anything.

I disagree with this common view.

Talent is real and some people lack the talent to succeed, particularly in arenas where success is determined by the power law. When 90% of the money goes to the top 2% talent really matters. For some people there is literally nothing they can do to succeed in publishing because they lack the needed talent. Once I realized this a few years back I had to rework my sales copy for some of my courses.

As one of my mentors like to say, “Life is not fair and some people are stupid.”

So back to AI.

Does digging with a backhoe make you physically weaker than digging with a shovel? Yes, yes it does. But backhoes allow for more digging to get done by weaker people.

Hilary Layne’s advice of not using AI at all is like a man with a shovel refusing to learn how to use a backhoe because the shovel helps him develop strength and grit. And for an aristocrat who digs for fun, this is a wise decision call. But for a working man who gets paid by how fast he can dig ditches, learning the backhoe is the only path to provide for a family.

Why? Because all the other ditch diggers are learning to use backhoes. And no construction project will pay shovel prices when given the choice of faster and cheaper backhoe work.

Telling a working author to completely avoid AI or to use a physical dictionary rather than spell check because it is good for his mind will impoverish that author as AI-powered competition increases.

John Henry worked himself to death trying to compete with the steam drill. And the day after he died, the man using the steam powered machine went back to work.

Telling authors to just work harder is not the path to prosperity.