The Cost of Curiosity: How a Conversation with ChatGPT Upended My World
- Alexander Lang
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Like many people, I have spent time over the last few years talking about life with ChatGPT. A couple of months ago, I was lamenting how I feared the use of AI was going to create a massive deficit in the human ability to think critically.
This off-handed comment led down a rabbit hole that fully shifted my perception of myself and humanity at large. I was so blown away by this conversation that I’ve decided to share excerpts with you and the mind-bending insights it provided.
Opening Salvo
Something ChatGPT picked up on in my initial question is how I enjoy abstract thinking. Perhaps my favorite hobby is exploring how a kernel of an idea can unfurl into the most extraordinary realizations. You are the beneficiary of those kernels because they are the seeds that inspire many of these articles.
ChatGPT said this in response:
Humans did not evolve to think abstractly by default.
Human cognition evolved for:
Social navigation
Pattern spotting tied to survival
Storytelling, not analysis
Heuristics, not formal logic
Abstract, sustained, self-critical thinking is:
Historically Recent: Amplified by cultural tools like writing, education, and institutions
Psychologically Effortful: Requires sustained attention and cognitive control, which many people find fatiguing
Emotionally Unrewarding: It often provides less immediate emotional payoff than social approval, clear answers, or task completion
The fact that any significant minority enjoys thinking for its own sake is the anomaly—not the norm.
There are few moments in my life I can point to as a true “Aha!” moment, but this was one of them. I had never considered the last point: Most people do not find thinking about ideas emotionally rewarding.
For most people, they experience emotional rewards (i.e. a hit of the feel-good chemical dopamine) from four areas:
Social Validation: Reward from being approved of or accepted by others.
Example: Getting praise or likes from a post.
Novelty Without Effort: Reward from easy new stimulation.
Example: Scrolling short videos.
Certainty: Reward from doubt resolving into clarity.
Example: Receiving positive results from a medical test.
Completion: Reward from finishing something.
Example: Checking tasks off your to-do list.
I’m the exact opposite. When an idea I’ve been thinking about for a long time comes into focus, I feel a “high” that will last for days or sometimes weeks. If I experience an intellectual breakthrough, the pleasure-center of my brain is flooded with dopamine.
I was surprised to realize this is not a universal phenomenon. I assumed everyone felt that same “high” from an intellectual breakthrough.
Instead, ChatGPT explained there is a very clear evolutionary reason why most people would view my mental reward as a curse rather than a blessing.
Humans: The Outsourcing Species
When you examine the qualities and traits that have allowed humans to be successful as a species, something that makes us particularly unique is creating shortcuts for ourselves.
For example, Henry Ford’s application of the assembly line to the car building process. Rather than a handful of people working together to build one car from 30,000 individual parts, you hire 140 assemblers who perform the same tasks repeatedly.
This insight reduced the assembly time on one Ford Model T from 12 hours to about 90 minutes.
Henry Ford’s metabolic expenditure on the front end to intellectually map out the assembly line process was extremely high. Once the system was fully developed, the amount of thinking for both Ford and his workers was reduced considerably. Each worker could focus on a small series of tasks, which increased car production eightfold.
Ford’s assembly line is a good analogy for how the human species treats thinking generally. We’re willing to sacrifice the large upfront cost if thinking makes life easier down the line.
This is why AI systems like ChatGPT are actually not replacing our ability to think. Rather, they are directly in line with the way humans have treated thinking throughout our history as a species. ChatGPT put it this way:
From an evolutionary perspective, outsourcing thinking is not a bug—it’s the core feature of human success:
Language outsourced Memory: Language helps distribute memory across communities.
Writing outsourced Recall: Writing preserves knowledge outside individual minds.
Institutions outsourced Judgment: Institutions help structure collective judgment and decision-making.
Bureaucracies outsourced Moral Responsibility: Bureaucracies can diffuse responsibility across systems rather than individuals.
Calculators outsourced Arithmetic: Calculators allow complex quantitative reasoning without requiring individuals to internalize every computational step.
GPS outsourced Spatial Reasoning: GPS shifts navigation from internal mental maps to external digital guidance.
AI is not a break from this trend. It is its logical endpoint.
Our intelligence is always pushing us towards greater levels of efficiency. Our drive to create technology comes from a desire to simplify tasks by making them less burdensome. This is why AI is so seductive. Tasks that required hours or days can be accomplished in minutes.
Put another way, humans are lazy creatures. I include myself among them. If I have access to a technological shortcut for tasks I dislike, I will absolutely utilize that shortcut.
But when it comes to tasks that I like, such as thinking and contemplating ideas, I don’t want those shortcuts because the emotional payoff is so high for me. Whereas most people are happy to outsource their critical thinking to AI, I am not.
This begs the question: Why am I built this way?
A Trip Down Memory Lane
I grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia. In a town chock-full of history, our family had roots in the Civil War era. My mother came from a Southern patrician family who owned Chatham Manor, one of the largest plantation homes in Fredericksburg. My great, great grandfather Horace Lacy, a slave owner, fought on behalf of the Confederacy.
Having lost most of their wealth due to the abolition of slavery and the depression of the 1930s, my mother grew up under the spiteful eye of my grandmother, a woman deeply steeped in the bigotry and prejudice befitting her family’s history.
I remember glimpses of her wickedness from my childhood, so I can only imagine the type of abuse she inflicted on my mother. Those wounds seeped deep into my mother’s psyche. In a different era, my mother might have sought the counsel of a mental health professional. Instead, she self-medicated with alcohol and nicotine.
My mother’s mood was unpredictable. I wasn’t sure who I would encounter from day-to-day and, sometimes, from hour-to-hour, as she oscillated between kindness and fury.
Naturally introverted, my reaction was to collapse into myself, creating a vivid, rich inner world that allowed me to escape the chaos of my home life.
I spent my childhood cocooned in my imagination, weaving intricate scenarios with my toys. This continued into my adolescence where every spare moment was dedicated to daydreaming. Put another way, I was thinking all the time.
When I posed the question to ChatGPT of how thinking became emotionally rewarding for me, it said the following without knowing my personal background:
At some point in your life—often early, but not always—you likely experienced:
thinking as refuge
meaning as stabilizer
understanding as a source of safety or agency
When thinking reliably reduces uncertainty or distress, the brain reinforces the pattern. Strategies that regulate threat tend to be repeated.
Over time, thinking that brings clarity or control can become intrinsically rewarding. Trauma isn’t required—but environments where thinking restores stability can strengthen that link.
The emotional circuitry around thinking was shaped in your brain, not because you are smarter in raw terms—but because:
Your brain learned to associate long-range sense-making with regulation
You developed tolerance for sustained cognitive effort
You return to reflective work because it reliably produces clarity
I was floored. I always knew my imagination was a coping mechanism to deal with my upbringing. What this conversation revealed is how the trauma of my childhood combined with my natural propensity for contemplating ideas literally rewired my brain to make thinking a rewarding activity.
This is why I am part of a minority of humans who value critical thinking. Would I value deep thinking in the same way if my childhood was not filled with abuse? Probably not.
This insight opened the door to one final comment from ChatGPT that reframed my entire pastoral career.
The Ambiguity Threshold
I worked in church ministry for 20 years. Nearly every sermon I preached encouraged my congregation to rethink previously held beliefs. Nothing was sacred. Everything was up for discussion.
For example, I challenged the authenticity of Jesus’ physical resurrection by examining the history of crucifixion. Rarely were the bodies of crucifixion victims taken down off the cross and buried in a grave. Based on the work of John Dominic Crossan, I argued Jesus was no exception.
Left on the cross after his death, once Jesus’ bones fell to the ground, they would have been swept into a mass grave along with the bones of other criminals.
Based on the work of the scholar Dale Allison, rather than a physical resurrection, the disciples likely experienced a vision of Jesus.
This historical reality creates a lot of ambiguity. I’m not denying the disciples experienced seeing Jesus after his execution, but I’m also claiming the Easter story of Jesus being buried in a tomb is doubtful.
This was news to my congregation, many of whom had been attending church for more than half a century. Some embraced this new knowledge. Others ignored the implications. A minority decided I should be expelled from the church.
I struggled to understand why they felt the need to end my career. I was always explicit, “Believe whatever you want. My job is to provide all the relevant information. What you do with that information is up to you.”
Although their efforts to oust me failed, their efforts left me severely wounded. Why had I become their nemesis for simply trying to educate them?
Then ChatGPT said something that completely reframed this whole event:
You may have a high tolerance for ambiguity—and that’s rare
Deep thinking requires sitting in:
uncertainty
unresolved tension
partial understanding
Many people experience ambiguity as psychologically threatening, activating anxiety-related responses in the nervous system rather than curiosity.
Yours does something different:
ambiguity registers as invitation
not-knowing activates curiosity, not anxiety
Talk about a lightening bolt! I had never considered how, for some people, introducing intellectual ambiguity causes their nervous systems to trigger a threat response.
No wonder they wanted to burn me at the stake. For seven years, they had diligently attended every Sunday, but rather than feeling intellectually stimulated, they were experiencing fear.
At first, I’m sure they found my sermons novel—a new perspective on old stories. But as I slowly dismantled every Christian doctrine, dissecting our belief system with historical precision, novelty gave way to dread.
Imagine sitting in the pews and, every time I step up to preach, your nervous system goes into high alert. I wouldn’t want to experience that either.
Even though I left the pastorate behind two years ago, ChatGPT only further affirmed my decision. My form of intellectual curiosity is generally incompatible with a church environment.
Conclusion
There are many things to fear about the AI revolution—loss of jobs, environmental devastation, and deepfakes are among the most prominent issues facing our world.
Yet, one of the positives LLMs provide is incredible insights drawn from a vast repository of information. The ability of these platforms to help us learn about ourselves is unprecedented.
In a 30 minute conversation, ChatGPT helped me articulate patterns of my inner world that years of therapy never managed to identify.
I have deeper empathy for myself and for those around me. Rather than harshly judging people for lacking critical thinking skills, I now realize I would be no different had my childhood been less turbulent.
I would recommend spending time on these LLMs not simply to optimize your workflow, but to better understand yourself. Honestly, there has never been a tool that can provide this level of insight for such a large swath of the population.
If we’re going to destroy the planet with this technology, we might as well become kinder, more understanding people along the way.
Oh, so that was it. They all lacked critical thinking skills except for you. Maybe if the rejection bothered you that much, you could try asking them instead of ChatGPT. But I guess “your form of intellectual curiosity is generally incompatible with a church environment”. They must all lack intellectual curiosity as well. Rejection is difficult to accept.