The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It can be argued that it implies the opposite.

Technology lets us forget how things work

We live in a world of miraculous conveniences, yet most of us couldn't explain how a smartphone works, why antibiotics actually kill bacteria, or what keeps a plane in the air. We've outsourced the intellectual heavy lifting to specialists, experts, and algorithms. This isn't laziness—it's rational. Why spend years understanding combustion engines when you can just drive? Why decode nutrition science when an app tracks your meals?

But there's a real cost that sneaks up quietly. When we stop grappling with how things actually work, we become more vulnerable to nonsense dressed up in technical language. We're quicker to believe whatever claim sounds plausible because we lack the framework to question it. We defer our judgment to whoever sounds most confident. We mistake access to information for actual understanding.

The paradox is that technology frees us from thinking about certain things, which can either liberate our minds for deeper work or leave us intellectually lazy. The difference comes down to choice. You can use your phone to mindlessly scroll, or to learn something genuinely difficult. Most people do both, but which one gets your real attention?