Conservation – of Thinking?

by Brian Lewis

I have nothing against labor-saving devices.  However, I don’t include “thinking” as labor that should be saved.

Back in the ‘70s, pocket calculators were a new thing.  Everybody got one.  And then we raised a generation of children who could not add 2 and 2 without a calculator.  There is a world of difference between someone who uses a calculator to solve problems and someone who uses a calculator because he never learned how to do the math.

Following that, there were digital watches.  This resulted in a generation of people who can’t tell time using an analog timepiece.  Worse yet, many of them don’t know which direction “clockwise” is.  We end up with idiotic sayings such as “Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” not because “clockwise” and “counterclockwise” are too difficult to say, but because too many people don’t know which is which. 

And then we got laptops and iPads.  Students don’t learn to spell.  They don’t need to because there is SpellCheck.  Take away their electronic devices, and their written communications fall between unintelligible and incomprehensible.

Now we have something mistakenly labeled Artificial Intelligence.  Intelligence is, among other things, the ability to create original thought.  This is something that cannot be done yet and perhaps never will be.  But today’s students believe that since there is AI, they don’t have to think any longer.

So we are raising children who can’t add, can’t write, can’t spell, can’t tell time, and never learned to think — because they didn’t have to. 

Is this the future we want to create?

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