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The Mere Exposure Effect
Nowadays, it seems that people are becoming more intelligent with the support of AI. We can answer whatever questions we have readily with the help of AI.
We can easily access vast amounts of information, because AI will help us to gather and process information, and generate answers to our questions.
But is it true that the more we are exposed to the knowledge generated by AI, the more intelligent we become? Do we really know more, or are we just experiencing the illusion of the “mere exposure effect”?
I think the latter is more likely. It’s a bit of a no-brainer to get the right answer of our questions. Our brains are washed by the precise knowledge generated by AI, but how much of it do we actually retain and become our knowledge?
We thought we know more, but the reality is that we are just more familiar with knowledge. But familiar is not equal to really understand. But the mere-exposure effect[1] makes us feel that we know more than we actually do.
Minds Require External Scaffold
If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” (John Searle) People always think that they knowing something, but if you ask them to explain it, they can’t. The reality is that they just familiar with the knowledge.
How could we examine ourselves whether we really understand the knowledge? The answer is using our own words to elaborate on the knowledge.
If we can’t explain it clearly, it means that we don’t really understand it. Our minds require external scaffold to help us to think, And writing is the best tool.
As one of the key takeaways in “Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics”[2] Concluding, “Notes on paper, or on a computer screen […] do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavour easier, they make it possible”.
Writing is Thinking
Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, stated in his blog[3] that with the help of AI assistants, the world will divide into writers and non-writers. This is dangerous because it means the world will be divided into thinkers and non-thinkers. Writing is thinking, and we should continue to write to think.
Notes:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect