Intellectual laziness, an evil of our time, how to overcome it?

They say that intellectual laziness is an evil of our time. Also, we think less and less and allow ourselves to be manipulated much more. This idea overwhelms and outrages. Who says we have become more cognitively passive? The truth is that phenomena as common as fake news and all the fauna of hoaxes that inhabit social networks reinforce this reality.

There are many people who allow themselves to be carried away by emotions without first passing through the filter of rationality when it comes to accepting news as true. Even more, in a context where data, news and information flow constantly, the mind becomes more passive. After all, reasoning requires time, patience and energy, and these are dimensions that are in short supply.

We have become lazy because we depend more every day on a created technology, expresslyto think for us. We do not need to retain information because Google Search and answer all our questions. It is also not necessary to remember where we have parked the car or where we are going to that address, because the GPS guides us effortlessly.

That is the silent tragedy of our days. The one that Shakespeare did not write, but that figures like Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clark did imagine in their time.

Mental laziness is the worst enemy of our time, since it makes us vulnerable to manipulation and deception.

What is intellectual laziness?

Intellectual laziness is a process in which the mind stops applying reflective and critical thinking.. Instead, it applies an automatic cognitive approach that stops using such basic tasks as analyzing and processing the information that comes to it. This phenomenon has become evident as new technologies and the Internet have established themselves in our lives.

A little over two decades ago, to find out which is the largest butterfly in the world or what is the approximate age of the universe, we had to go to a library, search in a specialized encyclopedia and read several pages until we found the exact information we needed. Nowadays, it is enough to ask the question in the internet search engine and get the answer in a few seconds.

We have reduced our cognitive effort to the maximum when searching for and processing information. We do not question anything (or almost anything) of what it tells us Google. And things get much worse when we enter the chaotic universe of social networks. Information flows every second and there is hardly time, desire or interest to apply the necessary filter of analysis and critical gaze…

False knowledge and passive minds, a goal of big technology

Adrian Ward of the McCombs School of Business conducted an interesting study. One of the objectives of big technology is to project a false sense of knowledge on us. Through the intense and constant use of mobile phones, people come to confuse their own knowledge with what the Internet gives us.

The false knowledge bias is one of the triggers of intellectual laziness. We stop making the effort to think, reason, remember or plan because the mobile phone already does it for us. It is our second brain, the one we carry in our hand constantly. We create to-do lists, it warns us so we don’t forget the important things, it knows everything about us and makes our lives easy…

If large companies seek to generate this perception in us, it is due to a very simple fact. Becoming even more dependent on technology…

Intellectual laziness and the Dunning-Kruger effect

If we didn’t have enough of the false knowledge bias, there is another cognitive distortion that we reinforce and integrate into our mental register without realizing it. The Dunning-Kruger effect makes us overestimate our knowledge. Because intellectual laziness in turn feeds on ignorance and the false perception that one knows everything and is never wrong.

This ultracrepidian filter (thinking and giving opinions about things we don’t know) causes us to validate fake news. It is also what makes us vulnerable to manipulation, hoaxes and those deceptions that flood social networks.

Only critical thinking can deactivate intellectual laziness.

How to overcome the lazy mind?

Technology should always be that ally tool capable of enhancing our life, our work, our leisure time. But not at the cost of slowing down our cognitive processes, allowing it to think for us. In this society of entertainment, immediacy and being distracted by anything, the ability to reflect is being lost. Also the critical look.

It is our responsibility to ensure that these skills are not lost, but rather that they are developed from a very young age. Schools are already focusing their attention on the need to teach children good use of technologies. Not believing everything that comes your way and developing critical thinking is key.

On the other hand, Let us also not neglect an essential aspect: the need to continue using and activating fluid intelligence. Tasks such as exercising attention, creativity or deduction are processes that strengthen our mind, and make us less dependent on Siri or Alexa.

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