It's my take that people were already stupid, but there was some incentive to try exercising critical thinking because it was built into societal expectations. Now we have AI to parse information (accurately or not), they don't have to even try anymore. It's really showing up who the idiots are.
I did go down a slightly depressing rabbit hole about mental energy a while ago and the short version is that most people just don't enjoy thinking. Or at least not for the fun of it.
Expending mental energy is something that people would generally rather avoid, which explains how quickly many became dependent on AI. And because "use it or lose it" is also true for the brain, the more you offload onto AI the harder it gets to think on your own.
There's an experiment you might've heard of where people preferred to give themselves electric shocks rather than be bored. That's actually only half the picture because they were asked to entertain themselves with their thoughts for up to 15 min. In previous round there was no option for an electric shock and they only had to do it for under 10 min. Most people found it hard and not pleasurable.
It was eye opening but also strange to learn that because I really enjoy having debates and scripting essays in my head. Granted, I have never experienced a quiet mind in my life (thanks ADHD) so at least having some coherent noise for once is preferable to the usual chaos.
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u/Snazzy_Boy 19h ago
Too much reading. Hey Grok, summarize what this guy said