The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported (2025)

Re:The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Re... by jimnotgym on Saturday October 31, 2026 @03:09PM (#50319085)

But ai chats are brilliant places to practice your thinking. It is a like a human with zero ego, so just gives you counterexamples to what you said, without any care to your feelings. It tells you your novel idea was written down by some thinker 100 years ago, and doesn't care about the crestfallen look on your face. You can use this to strengthen your argument, it will tell you when you did, and when you just did the opposite. It doesn't care if you change places and argue from the other side either. Or if you say, I feel like x is true but could this just be my bias from years of y, it argues back.

To try, go and type a weakly argued point into Claude and watch it take you apart. Try these:

People only post on hn for the pathetic dopamine hit of upvotes

Hn comments are getting weaker

James Acaster is the best commedian of the last 200 years.

Your challenge is to turn it into an argument strong enough to not get an instant rejection

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Re:The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Re... by Creamsicle47 on Saturday October 31, 2026 @03:14PM (#50319118)

I'm pretty sure thinking is practiced by attempting to argue the opposite viewpoint yourself. Here, you're telling me that you "practice" your thinking by having it actually create the argument for you.

I agree that AI is a useful tool, but it's arguably a very easy tool that people can offload their thought process to - which you should not be doing.

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Re:The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Re... by kenferry on Saturday October 31, 2026 @03:16PM (#50319146)

Hoo, not been my experience.

AI has an obvious issue with incorporating how happy users are in its responses. It LOVES to "take your argument seriously", push back lightly, and then tell you you are really smart and make amazing points. If you start with an argument out of left field, you will shift the Overton window very easily.

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Re:The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Re... by jiggawatts on Saturday October 31, 2026 @04:54PM (#50320122)

Depends on the model. I’ve found Gemini to have the most silver tongue and Anthropic models to be the most harsh critics to the point of hilarity.

I’ve been burning spare weekly quota on fringe-adjacent physics. I often copy-paste the LaTeX format “paper” back and forth for “peer review of a friend’s work”.

Gemini: “Your friend’s insight hits the nail right on the head!”

Opus: “Tell your friend to stop wasting his time now, it’s more kind than to keep indulging him.”

Brutal.

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Re:The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Re... by jimnotgym on Saturday October 31, 2026 @06:22PM (#50320847)

Have you tried asking it not to? Claude can be a harsh critic. See the other commenter

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Re:The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Re... by kenferry on Saturday October 31, 2026 @07:19PM (#50321211)

See https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.13562. AI tends to make people much more confident in their answers. I worry about this for myself, and therefore try to limit my use of AI to either "getting things done" or idle queries. For developing real thought, I think of it as a very political underling who wants you to think it's valuable.

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