Do not offload your thinking

Thinking is hard work, and thinking well is exceptionally-hard work. Deep thinking takes time and effort, two things that seem evermore scarce in this day and age. But the thing that differentiates us from other animals is thinking itself, so I ask: does it make sense to offload our thinking to another person, or even to a tool?

We try to be efficient by achieving results as quick as possible and with as little mental exertion as we can, but behaving like this all the time is harmful to our brain. Human biology is clear: use it or lose it.

Thinking hard changes who we are and makes us better persons, because we need to anticipate objections, consider what someone else would think or say, check how our beliefs can be counter-argued, and so on. It is through deep reflection that we can change our understanding about a complex subject.

Thinking deeply forces us to slow down and revisit an idea repeatedly. We have to ruminate on big problems before we can genuinely solve them. We are forced to ask ourselves “what evidence do I have for this?” and “how can I either support or refute my view?”; to answer those questions, we must go out on the real world, collect data, make connections, re-evaluate our evidences and, very likely, formulate new questions that would go through the same cycle.

As a historical example, let’s consider Isaac Newton, who spent two years working on Principia Mathematica, the famous book about universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. This period of almost solitary confinement was fundamental for a true revolution that defined the scientific thinking of the following 300 years.

As we see in Never at Rest by Richard S. Westfall “Newton was asked how he had discovered the law of universal gravitation. ‘By thinking on it continually’ was the reply”. Whatever he thought about, he thought continuously.

We must seek efficiency; yes, I agree. But is efficiency defined by not critically pondering for ourselves? Are we supposed to accept things just as there are presented to us? Then I am not so sure. If we care for what is good, what is true, what is magnificent, then we must be critical, and not offloading our reasoning is a requirement for that.

Let us journal through our own thoughts, if we must. Write them down and see how far we can go before we contradict ourselves or find the limits of our knowledge, only so that we can expand them.