Cat HicksLearning and task solving strategies aren't the same as immutable abilities; the conflation of the two bothers me a lot because it creates a worldview in which any learning loss is irredeemable and people who face adversity are punished for inevitably suffering its effects.
Working on questions of learning loss and educational interventions during school closures was, in ways I never could have expected, a really interesting preparation for thinking about software developers' changing jobs
It's not that I'm a defender of AI products when I question whether studies of people's usage of them is good evidence for ability and skill change, it's that I'm a defender of being careful about how we talk about human ability, and I don't think problematic assertions about "weak minds" or "stupid people" should be the way we evaluate the impact of behavior changes.
The reality is that most of the task skills we learn, we forget and then need to learn again. The reality is that all modern careers are strange historically situated ways of doing things, not inherently The Best Way for our minds. Hell screens aren't even good for our eyes and it's not like we've fixed that.
But I am not a fan of scaremongering about this, as if our minds are pristine museums rather than complex and adaptive systems we use in a continually changing and challenging world.
At any rate, people talked a lot about abstract learning loss because of virtual learning in 2020 but very little about how subsidized childcare would have meant the children I observed did not have to spend their days taking care of infant siblings.
It's that kind of structural understanding that our world desperately needs, imho, in the fight to care for human ability and human knowledge. Not this deficit mindset that is obsessed with "brains melting" or "cognitive decline" or other health misinformation talking points
What keeps me up at night when I think about the cognitive and psychological health of the people I study now (software developers), is much the same as what kept me up at night when I studied children's outcomes. It's the toll of inequity, the knowledge losses and cruel costs of discrimination
Jacob Something@grimalkina Do you think software developers are affected differently than other professions? Do you think different societal/economic/psychological mechanisms impact software developers, compared to other people in employee relationships?
@jkanev this question is so broad I'm not totally sure what you're asking. Developers are affected differently by what, by AI? I think as with any profession and identity, developers share generalizable psychological mechanisms with any large collection of people but also tend to have their experiences and appraisals shaped by specific cultures and group identities that come along with seeing oneself as a software developer. So situated ways that generalized mechanisms are used/show up