Here's something I have been thinking about a lot lately, thanks mostly to my being on the internet almost constantly. We live in a world where we can just google the answer to many of the questions that arise in day-to-day life. This is great in that it is harder to lie about things and this increases equity and transparency in that one does not have to trust another person’s word blindly. However, this also has two very pernicious effects.

The first effect is simply that of misinformation and false confidence. There is too much data available which is easy to interpret any way you like. However, I do believe that it is simply a matter of time before this gets sorted out. It was only yesterday we started to understand the power of data and machine learning and as the tools improve and simplify we will get better at handling this.

The second effect on the other hand is much more serious and pernicious. I believe that our thoughts are hardly in “our” control and are a product of our habits. The constant googling for answers and getting an answer in less than a second has gotten us into the habit of expecting answers to all questions. Even if you consciously know this to be false, your subconscious is being trained to think otherwise.

The truth is that there is no reason to assume that all questions can be answered. There are many problems in the world that can never be solved and can merely be ameliorated, which is fine. But the more we rely on google the more we expect the real world to behave the same way, to give us answers to tough questions immediately, to not make us struggle in any meaningful way to find the answers. I see this constantly in my students, especially the first-year ones. The concept of struggling as a means of learning is too foreign to them and does not mesh well with their world view. The widespread unacceptance of this difficult truth is the reason for so much anxiety around the world today.

Even more fundamentally, we are losing the skill of asking questions without expecting answers, of simply asking one question after another and going down the rabbit hole. All scientific research relies heavily on this fundamental skill and not having it is the principal obstruction to having a scientific mindset and a rational approach to life.

This is not a new phenomenon though. Before google, it was religion that served the same purpose. So perhaps, there is an innate human desire to have answers, even if they are unjustified or false, which we can never get rid of. Will we ever be able to overcome this foolish and detrimental instinct. Who knows?