The Socratic Paradox claims that "I know that I know nothing." The quote explains that the highest form of wisdom demands two things: 1) the courage to doubt your own knowledge, and 2) to question it, and try to understand it through your own efforts.
There used to be a time when we would pause when a question was asked, brainstorm it, and answer our own interpretations. We would solve a math question ten times, finding a correct solution on the eleventh attempt, or take time to write analytical answers on exam sheets, reflecting on what the question was exactly seeking. Now, algorithmic dependence has increased to such a substantial level that our mind automatically declines to struggle for forming an opinion or even to struggle to find the logic behind something. The process to grow wiser is to doubt, pause, think, generate, and filter. But we are faltering at the first step now.
With the rise of technology and Artificial Intelligence, we are simply being spoon-fed, and gradually ruining our perception of wisdom and intelligence. Automated discussions, AI-generated arguments, and borrowed conclusions are slowly weakening the very cognitive capacity that defines the point of entire human existence. The fallacy of mistaking speed with intelligence, and understanding with convenience, is a trap destroying our biggest asset: the mind.
It would be easy to dismiss this as the same complaint every generation makes about the tools that follow it. Socrates himself, in Plato's Phaedrus, warned that writing would ruin memory, since people would stop holding knowledge in their minds and instead rely on marks on a page. Calculators were once accused of destroying arithmetic skill, and the internet of destroying the ability to concentrate. In that sense, none of this is new. But the difference this time is not the existence of a tool, it is what the tool replaces. A calculator replaces computation, not judgment. Writing replaces memory, not reasoning. Artificial Intelligence, used the way it increasingly is, replaces the act of forming an opinion itself, the very step the Socratic Paradox insists we cannot outsource.
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On YouTube videos, we often scroll through the comments and adopt the opinion that resonates most with us. The self evaluated feedback, the "why" questions, and doubts are slowly fading away, and curiosity remains untouched. The human mind is now casually borrowing the thought it can easily generate and still treating it as an "efficient task." The idea of speed and perfection is an illusion, because the most creative and meaningful ideas are never instant. We tend to choose options that are familiar, smooth, and safe because they feel easy and effortless.
Our perception of productivity is based on AI tools such as ChatGPT for writing, Claude for reasoning and coding, and Perplexity for research, tools that are validated online. These tools are portrayed as the easiest options for academic and professional survival. As a consequence, humans get entirely consumed by them, replacing their original process of thought. Although they can be used for organizing ideas, refining arguments, or sometimes exploring perspectives, entirely leveraging them is disastrous to a human mind. The line between the two is simple to state, even if it is hard to hold: a tool that returns your own thought back to you, sharpened, is an aid; a tool that returns a thought you never had, and you accept it as your own, is a substitution.
This tendency can be explained through the concept of cognitive ease, introduced by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Cognitive ease tells our brain to shut out the critical, doubtful, and difficult things. This habit makes borrowed thoughts feel like original ones. But the reality is that when our brain experiences cognitive strain, it becomes more alert, careful, and less likely to make errors due to deliberation. The tragedy lies not in ignorance, but in our refusal to understand, as we choose blindness despite still possessing sight.
The use of artificial intelligence is directly linked to our self-esteem. We feel validated when our thoughts fit with internet trends, automatically assuming that this is the only correct approach since it is recognized by the maximum number of people online. Over time, we begin to believe that having opinions different from what is portrayed online is wrong, and even attempting to think differently feels like adopting an incorrect approach. The reassurance we receive from online buzz makes the approach seemingly perfect and extremely addictive for validation. We don't even try to sit with our thoughts and conceptualize the topic anymore. In this pursuit of validation and claimed efficiency, we are losing novelty and self-confidence in our own ideas.
What is at stake is not simply weaker essays or less impressive conversation. A mind that no longer tolerates doubt is a mind that is easier to convince, easier to move in a single direction, and slower to notice when it is being led rather than leading itself. Wisdom, and the independence it produces, is what allows a society to question its own habits before those habits calcify into something harder to undo. Losing the muscle of thought is not a private inconvenience; it is a collective vulnerability.
The only way to regain our intellectual path is to stop seeking validation. The addictive validation offered by AI and the internet is a form of deception. We must at least try to generate answers for every "why" question the mind raises, as a step toward becoming an autonomous thinker. The output is not instant, and it cannot be obtained in minutes. The ideas are fragile and unpredictable; a process of generating ideas and thoughts takes time, and the process has to be created with continuous thinking, reflection, and, most importantly, experiments. And the day it finally arrives, it nurtures the idea even more. This is not about the results explaining the intelligence, but the journey that gradually sharpens the level of output. The result is the product of this journey. In fact, it is the process that builds intellectual independence. The very first step is to doubt even the ground we stand on, and to engage with ideas without getting consumed.
In the Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:9 states, "There is nothing new under the sun," suggesting that what truly matters is not just the mere existence of ideas, but the way we perceive and think about them. If Newton had accepted the world as it was, without questioning the falling apple, modern science would not have existed. In the human race, thinking originally is not an inherent trait but a muscle of the mind that grows stronger through continuous practice, doubt, and reflection. Humans must work on actively exercising the muscle of thinking, and not surrender it to heavy dependence on Artificial Intelligence and technology.
Socrates never claimed to have answers. He claimed only to know that he did not know, and it was that admission, not any conclusion, that made him wise. Perhaps the highest form of intelligence left to us now is not the ability to generate an answer faster than the person next to us, but the willingness to sit a little longer in not knowing, before we let something else decide for us.
We didn't lose the ability to think. We just stopped waiting long enough to do it.
(The author is a BBM-LLB 5th semester student at Kathmandu University, School of Law)
