The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing

Re:The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding ... by abustamam on Sunday April 05, 2026 @12:21PM (#47650958)

One time when I was a kid I was playing with my older sister's graphing calculator. I had accidentally pressed the base button and now was in hex mode. I did some benign calculation like 10+10 and got 14. I believed it!

I went to school the next day and told my teacher that the calculator says that 10+10 is 14, so why does she say it's 20?

So she showed me on her calculator. She pressed the hex button and explained why it was 14.

I think a major problem with people's usage of LLMs is that they stop at 10+10=14. They don't question it or ask someone (even the LLM) to explain the answer.

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Re:The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding ... by saltcured on Sunday April 05, 2026 @01:15PM (#47651569)

Totally on a tangent here, but what kind of calculator would have a hex mode where the inputs are still decimal and only the output is hex..?

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Re:The threat is comfortable drift toward not understanding ... by abustamam on Sunday April 05, 2026 @05:41PM (#47654163)

I probably got the actual numbers wrong in telling the story. But I do remember seeing a shift key on her calculator that would let you input abcde.

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