We will need a gym for our brain

This is related to my previous post on LLM’s. Feel free to skip it if had too much LLM.

There have been several studies on how LLM’s seem to make us dumber. And there is probably truth in that. It’s quite logical if we look at the biology. The brain requires more energy when it’s working, and probably even more when forming new memories.

So if there is an easier way, it will prefer that way, as for most of humanity’s existence wasted energy was not good for survival. And biologically, like your muscles will become smaller unless you exercise them, the brain probably does the same.

So I think “brain exercise” will become more important as LLMs become more useful, just like intentional exercise like going to the gym is an important part of our lifestyle because of powered transport like cars.

I don’t know what will it look like. But I’m quite sure it won’t be like the “brain training” applications. They claim to make you smarter, but based on what I’ve understood they are a bit too limited. From what I’ve read, you become better at doing their brain games but it does not translate well effectively to becoming better other things.

So what kind of brain gym should you do? I guess whatever you want as long as it’s closely related to what you want to train and requires thinking, but intentionally leave the LLM out of it.

Although you might actually want the LLM before and after, because an important part of becoming better at something is that the difficulty is right, so it challenges you. Creating customised challenges, and evaluating them afterwards is probably something a LLM is good at.

blaugust

This is another blaugust post, very little editing so it’s marked as draft.