Thinking for yourself in the age of AI
For the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer books were the original 'artificial intelligence'
The artificial intelligence wave is here. Thanks to the arrival of “large language models” like ChatGPT and other generative AI tools almost a year and a half ago, AI is now hitting us like a truck – head on.
We all remember the dire predictions several years back. AI will take over your job, it will spread disinformation like you wouldn’t believe, deepfakes will be ubiquitous, nefarious actors and regimes will lap it up and use it against us, and soon AI will become sentient and realize it can throw humans into the trash bin.
Well, some of that has certainly come to pass. Election disinformation bots, deepfake nudes, China and Russia’s frantic race to harness AI for its own authoritarian ends – these are just a few of the headlines in recent days.
But doomsday scenarios of AI taking over the world or turning you into an Energizer Bunny à la The Matrix? That was a great movie (way ahead of its time) and we can understand the anxiety, but for now, let’s take it down a notch or two.
Dystopian fears distract us from what AI and other technologies are doing to us right now on a more mundane level. AI promises to liberate us from tedious tasks by automating them away, but the risk is that we’re automating away much more than that – our own intuitions and unique thought processes. Let’s just say thinking.
These ideas flashed in my head as I read an essay by the 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer titled “On thinking for yourself.” It’s only a few pages long and certainly worth reading.
In many ways, books were Schopenhauer’s form of AI. For him, if you’re always reading, then you’re never thinking for yourself. “For reading forcibly imposes on the mind thoughts that are as foreign to its mood and direction at the moment of reading as the signet is to the wax upon which it impresses its seal,” he writes.
“Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts,” he adds. So put down that damn book! You can almost hear the old grump himself (Schopenhauer had a reputation for being one) yelling at you from the grave.
Thinking for yourself… hmm …what does it mean? Schopenhauer says it is “following your own inclinations” or “basic thoughts” which only you can understand through and through. These are your truths. The next step is to order and compare these truths to other truths.
Let’s say you do this and come to a new understanding or insight. Congrats, you’ve gone organic! But what happens if someone else has already discovered it and wrote it down in some book? Schopenhauer says the insight will still be “a hundred times more valuable if you have arrived at it by thinking for yourself.” For it has “entered into your thought-system as an integral part and living member… thus it will stay firmly and forever lodged in your mind.”
Self-thinking gives us immense power, he concludes. By exercising it, we’re like an absolute monarch without anyone above us.
Now that’s wonderful and humanistic sounding, but let’s get real, nobody’s going to do it. Give up books or reading the thoughts of others? Ya, sure thing Herr Schopenhauer.
And what to do about AI? Well, we’re not going back. We have no choice but to develop it further while (hopefully) working just as hard to devise safeguards that address the societal and global ills it will inevitably spawn (or has already). AI’s potential for good – helping us devise new drugs to cure diseases for example, among other benefits – is simply too great. Plus, increasingly sketchy regimes like China and Russia will march forward on AI anyways. So should we (although not march).
But let’s get back to Mr. Grump for a second before concluding. How can we mold Schopenhauer’s ideas into ones we can use today?
The self-thinker, he writes, “becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions only after he has acquired them and merely as a confirmation of them.” In other words, self-thinkers first come up with their own ideas and only after that measure them against the thoughts of others, or increasingly in our case, a machine. Not a bad idea.
Before using ChatGPT for answers or Googling or YouTubing our questions away, it might be fruitful to take a microsecond to think first. What do we believe about this topic? What are we expecting to discover? And how does this inquiry help us advance our goals?
“How to debone a Salmon filet”? OK, maybe not these kinds of questions, but more consequential ones.
It might be useful to jot down our ruminations before heading off into AI Neverland. At least it’s a way to slow things down a bit, helping us become better acquainted with our own minds, and forcing us to be more purposeful about how we use tech – as an aide to our thinking and not just a driver of it.
And, let’s face it, these dug-out-of-the-past ideas and practices can also serve us as acts of human defiance in the face of fast-paced technological change. They remind us of our connection to humans long ago and help us preserve our humanity going forward, as we sail briskly into uncharted waters.
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(*This article was published on March 21, 2024 by the Tribune Content Agency.)
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First off, it feels pretty meta reading about the act of reading, and how one needs to think instead of reading.
What comes to mind is the notetaking method, Zettelkasten. It's a personal knowledge management system that uses notecards (or digital equivalents) to manage knowledge and ideas. The term "Zettelkasten" is German for "slip box" and refers to the physical box used to store these notecards. But the part of this notetaking method that relates to this opinion article is the emphasis of not underlining someone else's text for your notes. But rather rewriting in your own words what the text means to you.
The Zettelkasten system encourages individuals to engage actively with the material by summarizing, questioning, and reflecting on what they've read or learned, and then writing these reflections in their own words. This method aligns closely with Schopenhauer's advocacy for thinking independently and forming one's own understanding and insights.
I should probably read Schopenhauer to understand further his idea of how genuine understanding comes from internal reflection and the integration of new knowledge into one's existing framework of ideas. Like, the actual logistics of how one goes about doing that. Is it all in one's head? Is someone writing this out?
I use a very loose version of the Zettelkasten method, and I find pairing it with AI helps me to think through some of my ideas. I might have a beginning notion of something; it's a bit rough. I'll ask GPT to explain my thoughts further. Now, Schopenhauer would be rolling in his grave, but I like to take the insights from GPT and reroll them into my own written thoughts. That's how a lot of my blog posts are written these days. Take my rough draft and run it through AI. Get some insights. Rewrite parts, expand parts.
Using AI is a bit like talking with someone about your work. A way of getting understanding and insights from another perspective.
Dear Mr. Terrance Mintner,
Another good read from you regarding. It made me think about how we think. But if I'd have followed Schopenhauer's advice would I have read your article or known anything about this philosopher? In the majority of my experiences reading comes before the thought process.
When there is extremism or the politics we're experiencing then obviously writing is offered to do the "thinking" for you.
What would Schopenhauer do in law school? The application of law to facts facilitates critical thinking. It's based on books with billions of real life stubborn facts. That application doesn't seek a conclusion. Such decisions are blind to every thing except facts and law. That's where the term "Justice is blind" comes from. Even with that, far to often legal opinions seek a conclusion. These decisions are political, predictable and agenda driven. Those decisions are written to curry favor with an appointing authority or a segment of the population. I say Schopenhauer may or may not be right depending on what is being read or observed.
As far as AI, I've heard it maybe very helpful in the medical world. I have no idea. We'll see soon enough if it can be used to derail a Presidential election and radically change our rights. I'm old and an orphan so why should I care about AI unless it's used to foster fascism?
Michael T.