#higherorderthinking — Public Fediverse posts

Higher order thinking and AI

On “Make Me Smart” episode “It’s tough our there for new college grads“, Kimberly Adams interviewed NYT writer Noam Scheiber. He mentioned in the world with so much AI, there’s still going to be a need for people who can synthesize and make a decision and make an argument. That stopped me cold because it’s a similar argument that I recall from reading A Whole New Mind back… 20 years ago.

Back then, it was saving my job from going to overseas outsourcing. Working in IT, I saw plenty of cases where the vendors I worked with (BEA, Oracle, HP) open overseas support desks. Over the ensuing two decades I’ve probably worked with a few dozen support people who seemed to work in distant time zones. Now, it’s artificial intelligence. I guess we will see. In both cases, it’s how to be valuable enough to still have a job.

I feel like back then, the argument was shipping overseas the easy jobs so that onshore employees could focus on higher order thinking jobs. Similar to using AI to do that work. So, I guess the question is why so many more IT jobs 20 years didn’t go overseas? The worry was IT in the 2000s would go the way of manufacturing. Did H1-B VISAs help? That doesn’t seem a relevant mitigation to AI. We didn’t create that many college graduates. I wonder how much of it was Enshittification? It felt like in that era, people really complained about all this overseas support in terms of resolution, feeling supported, and making a favorable impression of the company. It cut costs that cut brand image.

The educator panic over AI is real, and rational.
I've been there myself. The difference is I moved past denial to a more pragmatic question: since AI regulation seems unlikely (with both camps refusing to engage), how do we actually work with these systems?

The "AI will kill critical thinking" crowd has a point, but they're missing context.
Critical reasoning wasn't exactly thriving before AI arrived: just look around. The real question isn't whether AI threatens thinking skills, but whether we can leverage it the same way we leverage other cognitive tools.

We don't hunt our own food or walk everywhere anymore.
We use supermarkets and cars. Most of us Google instead of visiting libraries. Each tool trade-off changed how we think and what skills matter. AI is the next step in this progression, if we're smart about it.

The key is learning to think with AI rather than being replaced by it.
That means understanding both its capabilities and our irreplaceable human advantages.

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#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

AI isn't going anywhere. Time to get strategic:
Instead of mourning lost critical thinking skills, let's build on them through cognitive delegation—using AI as a thinking partner, not a replacement.

This isn't some Silicon Valley fantasy:
Three decades of cognitive research already mapped out how this works:

Cognitive Load Theory:
Our brains can only juggle so much at once. Let AI handle the grunt work while you focus on making meaningful connections.

Distributed Cognition:
Naval crews don't navigate with individual genius—they spread thinking across people, instruments, and procedures. AI becomes another crew member in your cognitive system.

Zone of Proximal Development
We learn best with expert guidance bridging what we can't quite do alone. AI can serve as that "more knowledgeable other" (though it's still early days).
The table below shows what this looks like in practice:

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#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy

Critical reasoning vs Cognitive Delegation

Old School Focus:

Building internal cognitive capabilities and managing cognitive load independently.

Cognitive Delegation Focus:

Orchestrating distributed cognitive systems while maintaining quality control over AI-augmented processes.

We can still go for a jog or go hunt our own deer, but for reaching the stars we, the Apes do what Apes do best: Use tools to build on our cognitive abilities. AI is a tool.

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#AI #Education #FutureOfEducation #AIinEducation #LLM #ChatGPT #Claude #EdAI #CriticalThinking #CognitiveScience #Metacognition #HigherOrderThinking #Reasoning #Vygotsky #Hutchins #Sweller #LearningScience #EducationalPsychology #SocialLearning #TechforGood #EticalAI #AILiteracy #PromptEngineering #AISkills #DigitalLiteracy #FutureSkills #LRM #AIResearch #AILimitations #SystemsThinking #AIEvaluation #MentalModels #LifelongLearning #AIEthics #HumanCenteredAI #DigitalTransformation #AIRegulation #ResponsibleAI #Philosophy