.png)
Do you remember a time where you sat down and learned something without the help of anyone? Most of us have to think way back.
Today, people's ability to form their own opinions and process their own thoughts has reached a dangerously low level. This lack of ability to sit with yourself and think is attributed to three main causes: the rise of AI, social media algorithms, and the accelerating pace of everything.
Several years ago, if you wanted to develop expertise in any field, you had to consume great effort in pursuit of that knowledge. Say you wanted to learn how trading works, plan a trip, or cook a certain dish, all that process demanded something from you. All that effort is now diminished, and you are handing your natural thought-processing and opinion-building to a machine. Slowly, your brain stops forming the crucial connections that allow it to function as a conscious system.
The second cause is the social media algorithm. Your feed on any platform is tailored for you in a deeply personal way. It shows you people who look like you, think like you, and stand for the same things as you, basically leaving little room to understand what others think. When you only see your own opinion reflected back at you by dozens of accounts, it starts to feel like fact and truth. Any belief becomes justified simply because your algorithm keeps confirming it.
The third cause is the accelerating pace of everything. Our exposure to news and information from every corner of the world is unprecedented, no humans before us have experienced this. The media produces thousands of stories every single day, creating the feeling that everything is urgent and moving fast. But things have been happening everywhere for thousands of years, we simply didn't know about them. Science tells us humans are not built to absorb this volume of information. So we conserve the energy required for forming our own opinions just to keep up.
The battle today is between our most defining human feature and the machines. Do not hand it over without a fight.
"Our human mind is our greatest gift, let us not waste it."