"There's an old Greek word that seldom appears in conversations about technology, though it captures something essential about the moment we are in. Amathia never meant stupidity. It meant a "confident blindness" and the ability to sound intelligent while missing what truly matters. It's a moral or cognitive slip, subtle enough to pass unnoticed and troubling because it often feels like clarity or even wisdom. Sound familiar?"
"These systems don't deceive us; we deceive ourselves. What I've come to see as a kind of "triple illusion." Fluency that feels like understanding. Coherence that passes for truth. Polish that eloquently masquerades as insight. None of this comes from malice, it comes from comfort. And that's the quiet (or even insidious) easing of effort that dulls the part of the mind that once insisted on pushing back."
Amathia denotes a confident blindness that sounds intelligent while missing what truly matters. AI technologies produce fluency, coherence, and polish that simulate understanding and truth. Those qualities come from comfort, not malice, and they erode the mental friction that previously compelled active judgment. Once thinking feels effortless inside AI environments, ideas can arrive before reasoning has fully formed, creating vulnerability. The ease of first-draft completeness encourages drifting away from slow, bumpy human judgment and risks loosening the cognitive bond that once linked careful thought to responsible decision-making. Discernment becomes optional when intelligence merely appears effortless.
Read at Psychology Today
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