Why Think for Yourself When AI and Social Media Seem to Have the Answers?

It's so easy today to spend a lot of time consuming information without spending much time thinking about it.

And if we get used to accepting what we see and hear, it becomes easier for other people to shape what we believe.

Why we accept information so easily

I was thinking about this while preparing a lecture video on how to check whether the science we come across on social media is reliable.

As I worked through the steps, I found myself asking a simple question: how often do we actually do any of this?

I don’t do it all the time either. It’s easy to come across something that sounds reasonable, accept it and move on. I think many of us do the same.

And I can understand why. Checking takes effort. You have to find out where the information came from, look at the source and think about whether it actually supports what you’ve just read, heard or watched.

Sometimes the source isn’t easy to find. Even when you find it, you might need a bit of time to understand what it’s saying. If you’re not familiar with the subject, you may also have to look up a few things along the way.

Compare that with a short video that gives you an explanation in a minute, or an AI chatbot that gives you an answer almost immediately. The explanation sounds clear, the answer looks complete, and you can carry on with whatever you were doing.

Of course that’s easier.

What happens when we stop questioning

The problem is that an answer can sound clear without being reliable. An influencer can speak confidently and still be wrong. An AI chatbot can give you a well-written answer and hallucinate. That means it presents false or made-up information as though it were true. If we accept the answer just because it sounds convincing, we may not notice the difference.

Over time, I think this matters for how we think. If we keep letting other people or AI do the thinking for us, we get fewer opportunities to practise asking questions and examining the answers ourselves.

And when we’re used to accepting claims without questioning them, we become more susceptible to being misled. If someone wants to manipulate what we believe, a claim that sounds plausible may be enough to persuade us if we don’t stop to ask where it came from.

That doesn’t mean we should be suspicious of every person we listen to. We all rely on other people’s knowledge. There’s no way for any of us to become an expert in everything we come across.

But there’s a difference between relying on someone’s knowledge and accepting a claim without giving it any thought. We can pause and ask what the claim is based on, particularly when we’re about to pass it on to someone else.

Before you pass a claim on

Imagine you watch a short video about a scientific finding, let's say about the benefits of eating raspberries for your immune system.

The person explains it clearly, and you find it interesting enough that you want to tell your sister about it.

Now, before you share it, I want you to do something I teach my Philosophy of Science students.

Think about the difference between saying, ‘I saw someone make this claim, but I haven’t checked it,’ and saying, ‘Scientists have found this.’

The second statement carries more certainty. If that’s what you want to tell your friend, it’s worth taking a little time to see whether the source actually supports it.

• What was studied?
• Does the source say what the video claims it says?

You might find that it supports a narrower point than the video makes. Or you might find that you can’t locate the source at all.

You don’t have to understand every detail of a scientific paper to start asking these questions. The first step can be as simple as looking for the original source and seeing whether other reliable sources support the same claim.

If you use an AI chatbot to help you, you can ask it where the information came from. Then take a look at the sources yourself. A source listed in an answer is a place to start checking; it doesn’t automatically mean that the answer is correct.

After a little checking, you may find that the claim is supported. Or you may realise that you don’t know enough to say. Either way, you’ll have a better idea of what you can honestly tell someone else.

You don’t have to check everything

Now, I don’t think we need to do this for every interesting thing we come across. That would be far too much work.

Sometimes you might see an idea that catches your attention, but you don’t intend to share it or use it to make a decision. You can simply find it interesting and leave it there. You don’t have to form a firm view about whether it’s true straight away.

There are things worth checking even if you never share them, of course. If a claim could influence an important decision you’re making, you have a good reason to look into it for your own sake.

If it’s worth sharing, it’s worth checking

But for much of what we encounter online, I think wanting to share something is a good sign that it’s worth checking.

When you feel compelled to tell someone else about something, that tells you it matters enough to you to pass it on. That’s a good moment to pause and spend a little time checking whether you’ve understood it correctly and whether the claim holds up.

You don’t have to know everything before you talk to someone. You can still share an idea you’re curious about and be honest that you haven’t checked it yet.

But when you want to present something as true, give yourself a chance to examine it first. You’ll be more careful about what you pass on, and you’ll also be practising the habit of thinking through what you’re given.