Confusion is the point

There's no avoiding this technology now. If you're making money online, you're interacting with AI. I think we’re losing something critical in this push for mass adoption: friction.

That space where things are hard to say. Hard to articulate. Where you find yourself confused.

Whether you realize it or not, confusion is one of the most valuable states you can experience.

Confusion means you're using your mind to figure out what's going on. You're searching for connections that don't exist yet. When you’re building bridges in different parts of your psyche, the friction of searching for a solution is what makes you your own person.

When you rely too heavily on convenience, you rob yourself of the process of individuation, of developing your own unique point of view and the ability to see what others don't.

At a loss for words

I was speaking to my dev partner Rafiq today. With his permission, I share with you a piece of his story.

Rafiq is a talented web developer based in Pakistan. He speaks five languages: Urdu, Pashto, English, Arabic, and a little bit of Spanish. Smart guy.

A few years ago, he started using ChatGPT for writing emails, mainly to speed things up, but he relied on it too much. Since English isn’t his native language, he slowly started losing his grip on words.

It was helpful for a while, until one day, a client sent him a message.

In his head, he knew exactly what to say. But when he tried to write a response, he was blocked. The words just wouldn't come. He had to open up ChatGPT just to reply.

That moment broke something in him.

"I was reading my emails from 2019 and 2020, pre-ChatGPT," he told me. "I could not believe I wrote those myself. My grammar was good. My vocabulary was good. Now, at points where my thoughts are needed, I cannot articulate my words properly."

He has since bought a diary and has started the practice of writing by hand again, as well as taking care of all client communications himself to recover this part of his mind.

Hobbies make you smarter

As somebody who works in branding, my entire profession means helping people stand out in ways no one else can match.

Creating something different that people perceive as valuable requires a great deal of compressed energy and focus to push through the barriers where most people stop.

At the highest levels of material success, people are extremely gifted at articulating their value to the market. They know how to say the right words, how to present their ideas, and how to elevate themselves above of the sea of sameness.

To reach that level, you need to be creative. You need to put yourself in situations that are difficult to attract new information and solutions that aren't readily available.

Hobbies are a way of developing that mindset.

Thanks to being self-employed with no dependents, I enjoy many of hobbies. I play piano. I sing. I practice martial arts. I draw my dreams. Today, I joined a women's drumming ensemble even though I'm terrible at drumming.

These random interests make my life richer. They make me a better person.

The invention of writing

There's an old story from Plato's Phaedrus, originally told by Socrates.

The Egyptian god Thoth invents writing and presents it to King Thamus, the king of all Egypt. "Here is something that will make the Egyptians wiser and improve their memory," Thoth says. "A potion for memory and wisdom."

King Thamus isn't impressed.

"You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. They will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others."

"You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding. It will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.” (©1995 by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff.)

King Thamus warned writing would make us dumber. As a species, we'd stop training the muscle of remembering.

For most of history, stories were recorded orally. Their capacity of memory our ancestors possessed… we cannot even imagine now. Their motivation was different: if they didn't remember their stories, they would be gone forever.

I wonder what King Thamus would think about the technology available now.

Embrace the friction

Every technology we adopt changes us in ways we don't fully understand until much later.

Writing changed how we remember. The printing press changed how we think. The internet changed how we connect.

AI is changing how we articulate.

Are we going to let it degrade our capacity to think for ourselves, or use it in ways that enhance our intelligence?

Every time you let the machine speak for yourself instead of struggling through confusion, you’re making a choice. You can either develop the muscle of articulation, or let it atrophy.

You can either embrace the friction, and let it carve you into something new, or sand yourself down into the same smooth robot voice dominating most of the internet.

My recommendation: if you want to stand out in the coming years, consistently try new ways of articulating your thoughts. Record yourself speaking. Write more. Write by hand. Practice keeping secrets from your computer.

It doesn't need to know everything about you.

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Photography Credits
Cover photo by Daniel Farò with hand drawn edits
Keyboard by Jelly Luise
Drawing by Mathew Addington
Thoth statue by EgyptianMagician on Etsy
Clay disk by Daniel Farò