Episode 16 – Cognitive Offloading
Are We Forgetting How to Think?
This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and
dive into the strange double-edged sword of cognitive offloading—the process of handing over memory and thinking tasks to digital tools.Can we use these tools to become more productive, more thoughtful, and even more human—or are we letting them erode essential mental habits?
Topics we explore:
What happens when we offload thinking to Google, GPT, or AI tools?
Is critical thinking being lost—or redefined?
The difference between knowing and accessing
📖 Ted Chiang’s short story “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling”—comparing the shift to literacy to AI-assisted lifelogging
Research from Michael Gerlich, Gong & Yang, and Nosta
What happens when AI companies push for fewer rules? (NYT)