Using artificial intelligence (AI) is costing you your brain power.” This is the finding of a preliminary MIT research led by Nataliya Kosmyna.
Their study shows that using AI has been found to hurt brain connectivity and memory recall.
The emergence of smartphones and its multiple notifications, social media posts and stories that reel us in, AI to outsource thinking—all these have been causing our minds to lose focus, have ADHD brains and become lazy thinkers.
In school, we learn what to think, not how to think.
There has been a shortage of critical thinking pre-AI. With the barrage of information coming at us from social media, many opinions are formulated using fake information.
Without our consciousness of how our brains work, we are easy prey. The emergence of AI just makes the scarcity of critical thinking even more pronounced. Without this critical skill, we become puppets to those who benefit from our gullibility.
The brain follows a simple principle; “Use it or Lose it.” What doesn’t get used gets deactivated.
Our brains are programmed to preserve energy. If we don’t challenge our brains to stretch and think, it will just lay docile and hibernate. Critical thinking is the skill that will make us more intelligent, shield us from tricks and future-proof ourselves.
To do critical thinking, we need to be aware first of what nonthinking is. L Michael Hall, PhD writes in his book Brain Camp talks about nonthinking stages.
Here are the most common ones.
- Automatic Thinking. Learned and overlearned information that becomes part of our automatic thinking. No check of accuracy or ecology.
- “Fast thinking without thought.” When we don’t pause to question our own thinking. For many, this is what feels like intuitive thinking. “My instinct tells me.”
And we’re usually wrong. When we take on this process, we’re not thinking, we’re just following a pattern we’ve been programmed to do.
- Borrowed Thinking. In adult life, most of our thinking belongs to the nonthinking pattern. These are things we learned, we heard, we read and absorbed without questioning.
When we just repeat and quote other people mindlessly, we become guilty of this nonthinking stage. Most things in our culture are designed so that we don’t have to think.
Someone has already decided ahead what we should do, how we should think, what’s acceptable and what’s not.
This kind of thinking is helpful when we are learning, but when we just take things as a whole without breaking them down to question, we are not thinking. We are taking on someone’s thinking.
- Superficial thinking–lazy and easy thinking. This is an escape from thinking.
We learn this when we were taught that thinking for ourselves is tabooed and dangerous. When we don’t ask for details and just let ourselves get absorbed in vague, deceptive language.
Many things we hear from people who preach certain ideologies could fall under superficial thinking. Questioning it is threatened and wrong. When we do this, we don’t protect ourselves from cognitive errors. We become victims of scams and deceptions.
While we may have errors in thinking, we don’t have to get stuck there. Real thinking is being able to see reality as it is, then choose how to best interpret and respond to it to enable best decision and best everyday experiences.
Considering
The first step in active thinking is trying on an idea that’s different from ours. Take on a neutral perspective, get curious and wonder about other people’s thoughts.
The one thing that gets in the way of this is knowing that I’m absolutely right, and they’re absolutely wrong. Knowing and accepting that we are all fallible reduces this barrier.
“What if they have a point? What can I learn from them? Where must they be coming from?” These are good frames to take on.
Questioning
Good questions expose errors in our thinking and force us to think differently. If the question is something we’ve never thought about, it drives us to explore into deep thinking.
Our brains get activated to search for information. This is what real thinking is about.
Pause and ask, “What am I assuming to be true when I say this?” “How do I know that what I know is true?”
Doubting is being skeptical about our what we think is true. Skepticism is how we suspend judgment. Challenge “facts” and play devil’s advocate. Look for evidence for the opposite statement.
These are the initial steps of doing critical thinking. Being critical about how we think, what we think and what our references are.
True freedom is having a choice on how to manage our minds.
If there are too many thoughts and thinking patterns that are inculcated in us without our awareness, we become prisoners of someone else’s brain.
Learning to think for ourselves is a skill that liberates us to have a life we choose.
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