Cognitive Crutches

by Justin Skycak (@justinskycak) and Sanjana Kulkarni on

(Note: This is an AI-assisted teaser for my prior manual writing. If you like it and want to read more details about this topic/perspective, then check out my 100% manually-written blog and books!)

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Crutches are meant to help you walk again.
Not to become the only way that you can walk.

Learning tools should work exactly the same way.
Whether it’s hints, worked examples, notes, or AI.

These things are meant to help you become independent.
The goal of every learning tool should be to eventually make itself unnecessary, not to make you permanently dependent on it.

If you never become able to solve problems without them, they’re no longer helping you build up your strength.
They’ve just become cognitive crutches.

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Here are the 100% manually-written long-forms that this teaser is distilled from, if you want to dive deeper:



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