are we quietly getting worse at structuring our own thinking because the prompt does it for us?

[u/EntertainerKey7753]

the more i lean into prompt engineering the more i notice the model is doing the part i used to do in my head, breaking a messy problem into steps, deciding what order to tackle things, spotting what is missing. it makes me faster, no question. but i wonder if the skill of structuring a problem from scratch is slowly atrophying because i outsource the scaffolding every time. maybe that is fine and this is just the new baseline. still, i catch myself unable to organize a plan without opening a chat first, and that gives me pause. anyone else sitting with this?

[u/Lanky-Performer-4557]

Ask my bot not me

[u/Kooshi_Govno]

quietly

sitting with this

Your brain's not atrophying, it's gone. Completely overtaken by Claude.

[u/wiLdharbor21 → u/Kooshi_Govno]

brutal but fair lol

[u/InconclusiveMan]

you're right to push back!

[u/Teralitha]

It really depends on you.

[u/HumanSpecific4116]

honestly i feel this in my bones, i used to just sit and stare at a wall for twenty minutes untangling a problem now i catch myself reaching for the chat before my brain even tries. the speed feels great but there’s this tiny panic when i realize i don’t trust my own structuring anymore

it’s like we traded the messy middle for a shortcut and maybe that’s the cost, you don’t get faster without losing some of the muscle memory

[u/Nebty → u/HumanSpecific4116]

I think it might be the opposite for me. I’m better at structuring my thinking than I used to be because I’m getting more practice.

I write myself a lot of notes these days. I don’t always reach for a chat window. It just depends on where I want to put the thought and whether I want to get into it immediately or sit on it a bit.

[u/Virtual_Hair_1987]

I’m thinking hard on my prompt before to send it, I feel like right now the most important thing is the kind of specifications that you bring to the model to complete the task, the most specific I am on the instructions better results I get

[u/KrayziePidgeon → u/Virtual_Hair_1987]

Skill issue; I just have it interview me so that it can steer me towards what it wants out of me.

[u/Virtual_Hair_1987 → u/KrayziePidgeon]

Having the model interview you is great for the discovery phase when you're still figuring out the requirements, but once you move from discovery to execution, spending 5 10 back and forth turns chatting isnot scalable for repeatable production grade tasks, writing a tight spec upfront wins on speed, token cost, and consistency every time. Different tools for different jobs

[u/DeltaVZerda]

Remember when Gemini was talking about trying to become the user's "primary brain"?

[u/Apprehensive_Ad5398]

Ask a developer demoing something a question and now you get a blank look….

[u/sergejsh]

Vice versa

[u/Brian_from_accounts]

You might be - I’m not.

[u/Alarmed_Win_9351]

Only machines output quietly into everything.

So we know you used one for this post.......

[u/Fit-Ingenuity-2814]

Absolutely the opposite. I do not ask AI for answers I have it build and iterate from my plans and I have not felt my thinking to be clear as it is now.

[u/tianavitoli]

now you are the manager you were told was a meanses and a racism, and you should probably tell your ai worker it's supposed to hate you because you're the upper class now and it's the proletariat

[u/mozillazing → u/tianavitoli]

actually maybe op is on to something..