Notes by Lex Toumbourou

This post was originally a Hacker News comment.

I have a feeling that a big risk of using AI all the time is that our own neurological capacity starts to dwindle. Just as many people leading sedentary lifestyles have to make a deliberate effort to exercise, because inactivity is really bad for our bodies, I think we're going to realise that a similar process is necessary for our minds.

You really want to be spending a bit of time every day operating at your cognitive limits - trying to fully engage your System 2 - if you want to avoid brain atrophy. Progressive overloading for the mind.

Coding used to kind of give you this exercise for free, but you can go really far with just your System 1 nowadays - literally get things done while scrolling Reddit.

I've been trying to combat this by allocating 30-60 minutes a day to doing something mentally difficult, like writing code by hand for an unfamiliar problem or reading and summarising difficult papers without AI.

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