Is Your Brain Atrophying With AI?

The Choice That Defines Us

In my last post on LinkedIn, I connected fracture mechanics, thermodynamics,

and consciousness—cracks, cells, and brains as dissipative structures fighting entropy.

This post is the “now what?”

The same physics and neuroscience that describe energy, cracks, and prediction also explain why our thinking feels strained in the age of AI—and what we can do about it.

We stand at a moment that will define the cognitive trajectory of our species.

AI gives us unprecedented power to shape how we learn, how we think, how we develop as minds.

There are two paths:

-    The easy path – use AI to eliminate cognitive effort.
  Let it summarize, decide, and “think” for you.
  Short term, it feels great. Long term, humans become diminished
  and dependent, less able to minimize the entropy pressing in on us.

-   The harder path – use AI to enhance your predictive learning machinery.
Ask better questions.

Challenge the answers.

Use the friction of thinking to build stronger internal models.

Short term, it takes effort.

Long term, humans become more capable, more creative, more able to navigate complexity.

Your brain is a prediction machine, shaped by millions of years of evolution to:
·       learn through error,
·       build order from disorder,
·       and minimize entropy through active engagement with reality.

That machinery still works. It’s not obsolete. It just needs to be used properly.

AI can be the greatest learning tool humans have ever created—if we remember that learning isn’t about acquiring information effortlessly. It’s about building better predictive models through productive struggle.

The choice is ours, repeated thousands of times a day in how we use these tools.

Do we use AI to avoid the friction of thinking—or to optimize it?
- Make your brain work.
 - Make it predict.
 - Make it fail.
 - Make it update.
 - Make it stronger.

That’s not inefficiency. That’s the only path to human flourishing in an age of intelligent machines.

For those who want to go deeper, I’ve recorded a companion audio essay with Essay for this and previous discussion on this topic—link below.

McFadden https://lnkd.in/eyTtN4r6