Crisis of Confidence

Please read the linked piece in full:

“ The machines we've built to help us have become the tools we lean on to confront our doubts. They promise reassurance, certainty, and validation in situations where our intuition falters. We reach for our phones to verify things we probably already know, seeking confirmation for even the simplest decisions. With each verification, each surrendered decision, we're participating in a process that Kenneth Burke, writing in 1935, would have recognized as a new and distinctive form of 'trained incapacity.'”

“ What emerges is not just a crisis of verification, but a more profound retreat from unmediated experience. Technological systems don't merely offer verification; they provide a comprehensive architecture of avoidance. Where once we might have confronted uncertainty directly—learning through trial, error, and embodied experience—we now have elaborate mechanisms for circumventing discomfort.”