[FRIAM] cognitive offloading

[Marcus Daniels]

2607.17397 is a weird one.   The true believers among us might wonder why they are still working on their papers at all.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2026 10:19 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] cognitive offloading


As preamble:

1) Protecting our FLOSS commons from LLMs https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-llms.html

2) Science Direct Summary
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661316300985

But this is the main driver for this post:

3) The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17397

I think the Codeberg hypothesis (and stance) about one-off code provides a clear foil for disambiguating what code/software actually *is*. There's a difference between collaboratively developed code and "interpretable" methods. It seems like 2 subtly different meanings of the word "open". Codeberg is (effectively, if not purposefully) saying they are not a "repository" in the sense of, say, https://vivli.org/. Now, I'm a fan of opinionated tech. But Codeberg's stance seems a bit reactionary to me. I mean, it's fine. It's their site, their hardware, etc. So I'm not objecting ... simply processing.

But if we move on to Duede et al (3), the paper irritates me because I like to believe I have an empirical bent. I'm having trouble formulating their model such that its premises are backed by data and that it makes testable predictions. It's my problem, I'm sure. But even in the abstract, they say "researchers will become more selective about what they publish". I feel like they should have prefaced that with "if our model validates" or "analysis of our model argues that" ... or somesuch. IDk. Inside the paper, their assertions are softer and more palatable ... but they still seem to be reifying.

I've included (2) because, from my perspective the LLMs are a fairly straightforward advancement in the lineage of the pencil, or the printing press, or the internet. We imbue our talisman(s) with our hopes and fears, then ratchet our thinking up and never look back (until someone slips a hero dose of LSD into our drink at the party). A large proportion of us will be catastrophically damaged if our ratcheted scaffolds collapse. (Some scaffolds are so robust no amount of truth or fact will collapse it at all.) But at least some subset of dorks will always be fascinated by little details like manually selected fonts or assessing whether some modeling assumption is *actual* as opposed to convenient. We're each free to offload whichever homunculus we find irritating. But I find myself in awe of those who relish irritation as a grounding to reality.

--
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ


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