LLM "Brain Rot" and the illusion of knowledge

Brain rot makes it sound extreme, but the phenomenon is real. The brain is not a muscle, but like muscles, it adapts to the volume and variety of load you place on it. “Writing is thinking” — to delegate writing is to think less.

A map of the US feels very familiar to me — but if you took the map away and asked me what states border Tennessee, that familiar map would start to feel a lot fuzzier.

The same things happens with LLM outputs — Claude or ChatGPT explains a topic to you and you read it, feeling smarter. But until you really apply knowledge by writing it down in some fashion — it doesn’t internalize.

Maybe the knowledge imprints on your brain for a moment. But like an etching of sand on a beach, the tide washes away the words like they were never there.