I wanna preface this by saying I'm really not trying to come at you here. This is just a really great microcosm of AI usage and the differences in use-cases, so though it might seem like I'm overthinking this, I'm intrigued and want to challenge you a bit if you're open to it.

I arrived at the OnePlus thing not by reading any speculation threads or anything. I was just thinking about it, just 'cuz. Thinking for the love of the game, for enjoyment. I wasn't searching for an answer -- obviously there _isn't_ one, it's all just speculation. So, already, the idea of searching the internet for other people's speculation seems pointless and antithetical the point, which is to think about it for myself.

I _certainly_ didn't think about it from the perspective of "spending actual brain cycles." As far as I know, "brain cycles" is a pretty reductive way of looking at the brain, and is fundamentally wrong in the same way that Trump was when he said that "exercise uses up the body's finite energy:" it's overly protective in a way that results in the exact opposite of what you think you're achieving. To put it more simply: "use it or lose it." I'm not worried about "spending brain cycles" (to the extent that "brain cycles" is an accurate model at all), because thinkin' 'bout stuff is precisely how I get _more_ "brain cycles," not _less_.

Which is all to say: do you seriously engage with all your potential thought avenues from this perspective? Weighing which ones are "low priority," etc? For work/programming/etc, I can understand that to a degree, but for something that can only be classified as "recreational thinking," I just do not get this _at all_.

You said in another comment in this thread that while ChatGPT does something, it frees you up to do something else. What did it free you up for?

Hello, appreciate the respectful tone.

To add more context I don't follow the smartphone tech news that closely. If you ask me to name a model that was released within the last 12 months from Sony, Xiaomi, OnePlus and some other makers I wouldn't know where to start. Much less about the differences in their behavior between how open their devices are. From cases where you can't even install LineageOS to cases where you can but without locking the bootloader, up to the pixel devices where you can install GrapheneOS with a locked bootloader.

Educating myself on all those nuances to make an informed speculation about which company could be interested based on past policy looked like more effort that I was willing to commit to. Honestly if LLM's weren't an option I m not sure I would have performed a web search for it, given that for specialized topic you need to dive deep in search results to find what you need.

Instead of spending 5-10 minutes searching and evaluating posts on the internet I got an answer in like 20(?) seconds.

I m surprised you classify that issue as recreational thinking. I was a bit reductive of it myself as I just considered it bad curiosity. That's why I used the word speculation. It's one thing to ask ChatGPT how good a research paper that made the news is without even bothering to read the summary and another thing not to want to evaluate other people's speculations. And I am saying this is speculation, since, to the best of my knowledge, the parties involved are not speaking about this. I think that difference in the classification of this task is one of the key parts why we preferred different actions over this "case/scenario".

I disagree with your brain cycles comment but there is indeed some nuance that both my post and "Trump's" example miss. Mental bandwidth is a thing and is indeed limited. But it's not a static thing. The (not necessarily good) way that I understand it, is like this. It's a muscle that can only do so much at a time. Like a daily budget of mental (or physical) activities. If you use that budget in a good way you can expand it. And if you don't it can decrease. If you try to go over budget, you can also "crush" under the weight of what you are trying to do. For example if I'm playing Starcraft 2 and I am trying to attack in 3 separate places at once I am going to mess things up because I m not that good (unlike the pros). It would have been better if I focused on one location because that's the extent of my capabilities. I can mentally keep track of only so many things while playing SC2. But if I had time to play SC2 > 3 hrs a day and review my games afterward to evaluate my decision making then I could develop that capability within some months (I hope :p - also SC pros do more things than "just" being able to fight simultaneously at 3 separate locations).