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The Smartest Person I Know Is an Idiot
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| John Nosta via Psychology Today <noreply@psychologytoday.com> Unsubscribe | Thu, Sep 10, 3:26 PM (2 days ago) | ||
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View in web browser A note from JohnLately, I’m shocked by the vapid content that some of my smartest friends are writing and posting. Who’s doing the thinking, and what are the consequences?John The Smartest Person I Know Is an Idiot What happens when intelligence remains, but thinking becomes optional?  By John NostaKEY POINTS: Smart people still have intelligence but often hand the hard work of thinking to AI. AI erases the messy struggle of developing an idea and leaves only the look of thought. Cognitive friction may now feel like a defect, so people shun thinking and rely on AI for the answer.  Source: PublicDomainPictures / PixabayThis story started out rather differently. The initial idea was that the “genius experience” may be widely accessible to those using artificial intelligence (AI), even those with average IQs. And this thinking extended into the quest for nurturing genius across a broad population. But lately, I’m seeing something else going on in our quest for genius. And it’s happening to people I consider to be exceptionally smart. In this curious cohort, their intelligence is there, but the expression of that intelligence feels, at least to me, sort of frictionless, if not theatrical. Most of this arrives in the written form—functionally insulated from live encounters. And it’s not just AI slop or today’s popular argument that AI is “making” us stupid. Nope, it’s something more subtle, and I think it’s worth a closer look. Here’s the key insight. People who are perfectly capable of thinking are becoming comfortable, even complacent, with deferring cognition to AI. When Friction Becomes a Defect Recently, I wrote about the Activities of Daily Thinking, or ADTs. This references the “cognitive work” that may support our intellectual capabilities or even independence of thought. Looking back at that post, there’s a line that is spot on: “The friction that genuine understanding requires begins to feel like a defect.” AI is really good at removing that friction. AI can polish the paragraph, summarize the paper, and generate a counterargument. And that’s fine. But what happens when the friction removal becomes a cognitive expectation or even an imperative? Could it be that this cognitive friction increasingly feels like a defect? And does that defect foster a new personal compulsion for completion? The Cognitive Inversion This is where things turn inside out. We usually see or experience intellectual decline through exactly that—a decline. Today, AI might be driving something rather different. Cognitive independence can decline while perceived cognitive output can soar.The prose can seem brilliant. But here’s what fascinates and confounds me. Intelligence remains in plain sight, except for the one place that matters most. That’s the interval between encountering an idea and advancing it forward. Typically, this cognitive interval is a mess. It contains a mishmash of uncertainty and even confusion. AI can compress that interval almost to zero. And in doing so, it produces the artifact of intellectual engagement without necessarily preserving the experience of it. And that’s a sentence worth rereading. This is where an internal cognitive habit can find its way to the real world. Someone accustomed to the ease of frictionless thinking. And perhaps even more insidious, one may become less tolerant of the friction expressed by others. And when that gains traction in social discourse, disagreement may become something to resolve rather than inhabit. And conversation becomes increasingly efficient while becoming less reciprocal and genuine. What Happened to That Smart Person? The smartest person I know isn’t an idiot because intelligence has disappeared. And that’s the key point. Intelligence can remain intact while the practice of thinking begins to erode or become compromised because technology typically follows a path of human nature—to make things easier. Perhaps that’s the emerging paradox of AI as it participates in human thought. We can become increasingly capable of sounding intelligent while becoming less willing to “live” the experiences that intelligence requires. John NostaThe Digital Self Technology, Transformation and the Future You |
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