I’m signed up to get the weekly newsletter of Nature, the big science journal. The deal is, I give them my email address, and each week they send me a summary of the most interesting science breakthroughs.
But here’s what they sent me yesterday, reporting on new research from MIT:
“The brains of people using the artificial-intelligence bot ChatGPT to write an essay are less engaged than those without access to online tools.”
At the risk of sounding crude, no shit, Sherlock. Isn’t that the whole point? In the words of a smart dead guy, Alfred North Whitehead:
“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy‑books and eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”
The MIT research is only newsworthy because we all respond to anxiety-stirring and fear-mongering. If it’s not second-hand smoke, then it’s parabens in the water, or now, ChatGPT. “It’s coming for your brain!”
But let me turn this email around to be constructive instead of destructive:
I use ChatGPT daily. My brain is very little engaged while it’s happening. And I don’t think any kind of a problem.
At the same time, I also force myself each day to perform a kind of mental cavalry charge, specifically, to write an email like this.
There’s value in such a daily routine from an outside standpoint. I think people can sense that I write these emails, for real, flaws and flops included, live every day.
There’s also value from an inside standpoint. Writing a new and fresh email each day keeps what little brain I have sharp, active, and engaged.
All that’s to say, if you are worried that your brain is going to mush, or even if you aren’t, then start writing, regularly, and your brain will get fit right quick.
And if you put what you’ve written into an email like this one, and send it out to the world, then there’s extra value to that, even if it’s just you reading at the start.
If you want some guidance and help with that, take a look at my Daily Email Habit service.
A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing, even if AI could do it for you.
Daily Email Habit helps you get that value by sending you a new email prompt or “puzzle” each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.
If you think of a daily email as a cavalry charge, then Daily Email Habit gives you the direction to charge in, so you and your mental horse don’t stay locked in place due to indecision, and so you don’t half-heartedly trot here and there and back again, tiring out the poor beast without getting anywhere.
For more information on Daily Email Habit: