To “atrophy” means to diminish or even waste away, and in the context of biology it generally refers to the reduction in size or effectiveness of some kind of tissue or cell.
This is fascinating!! I always knew there was a cost to offloading some hard tasks (e.g. using my calculator for simplish equations in high school) but now I have a term for it.
I appreciate how you considerd the benefits of off-loading tasks to AI and other tools, namely freeing our brains up for more complex thinking, while also highlighting that the act of offloading cognitively challenging tasks is also taking away a challenge for our mental muscles. I guess it's about balance in the end, choosing to use tools for some tasks to invest that mental and physical energy into growing other muscles.
I think there's also a joy in choosing to do some things manually rather than reaching for a tool. For instance, I actually enjoy writing so using AI writing tools takes the joy out of writing for me. In the same way, I'm not mathematically-minded so using a calculator for most things is much easier and more enjoyable for me.
I was at school before electronic calculators existed: and, as an architecture student, had to learn how to use a slide rule for structural engineering. But this didn't mean brain atrophy: as we also had to perform mental arithmetic to check that the decimal point was in the right place...
This is fascinating!! I always knew there was a cost to offloading some hard tasks (e.g. using my calculator for simplish equations in high school) but now I have a term for it.
I appreciate how you considerd the benefits of off-loading tasks to AI and other tools, namely freeing our brains up for more complex thinking, while also highlighting that the act of offloading cognitively challenging tasks is also taking away a challenge for our mental muscles. I guess it's about balance in the end, choosing to use tools for some tasks to invest that mental and physical energy into growing other muscles.
I think there's also a joy in choosing to do some things manually rather than reaching for a tool. For instance, I actually enjoy writing so using AI writing tools takes the joy out of writing for me. In the same way, I'm not mathematically-minded so using a calculator for most things is much easier and more enjoyable for me.
I was at school before electronic calculators existed: and, as an architecture student, had to learn how to use a slide rule for structural engineering. But this didn't mean brain atrophy: as we also had to perform mental arithmetic to check that the decimal point was in the right place...