Are Thoughts as Valuable as They Used to Be?
The greatest inflation crisis of our time isn’t economic, it’s intellectual.
Introduction
Considering the rule of supply and demand… In the digital age, especially with the aid of AI, have our thoughts lost their value?
Take for example podcasts versus radio broadcasting.
When I was in high school, I did a specialized program for radio news broadcasting. We recorded on actual physical reels. If you wanted to edit, you would use an X-Acto knife to cut the tape and splice your edit together.
Clearly it was inefficient and time to retire this technology.
But, did that discipline and effort make us more judicious with our work? Now that an edit is a click or an AI command, it’s clearly much easier to get our thoughts and ideas out into the world.
Is it too easy now?
Are we putting too much out there of lessor value?
Sure, the digital age has given many more people the freedom to be heard. But, do we need every thought from every voice?
POINT 1 – We Don’t Have an Information Problem — We Have a Discernment Problem
Clay Shirky’s original idea still holds, but modern research shows the crisis has deepened.
Recent work by Lahlou argues that algorithmic systems, not human limits, now drive overload, creating “societal cognitive saturation” that erodes judgment and shared reality.¹
Cognitive psychology reinforces this:
Wang et al. show that under digital overload, humans default to shallow processing, meaning even strong ideas “get flattened into the noise.” ²
We’re not drowning in content.
We’re drowning in undifferentiated thoughts.
Point 2 – The Death of Friction Has Killed the Craft
Marshall McLuhan argued that every medium imposes a discipline.³ Radio forced scripting. Print forced editing. Film forced planning. Early digital tools forced at least some technical skill.
Today’s tools impose nothing.
The result?
We’ve confused expression with expertise, and output with originality.
The democratization of publishing is a gift, but it also removed the natural gatekeepers that once forced creators to refine, revise, and rethink. Without friction, the market fills with unrefined ideas that would never have survived the tape‑splicing era.
Point 3 – AI Has Made It Too Easy to Sound Smart Without Thinking
AI is not the enemy of thought, but it is the enemy of effortless thoughtlessness.
Automation bias makes us more likely to trust outputs simply because they’re fluent and fast.⁴ In creative work, that means we risk mistaking linguistic polish for intellectual substance.
AI can generate content.
It cannot generate conviction.
The danger isn’t that AI will replace human thinking.
The danger is that humans will stop doing the thinking because AI can produce the illusion of it.5
Point 4 – Do We Really Need Every Thought From Every Voice?
This is the uncomfortable question no one wants to ask.
The digital age gave everyone a microphone. That’s good. But it also created a world where every fleeting thought is treated as content, and every opinion is treated as expertise.
The result is a marketplace where:
· Volume is mistaken for value
· Confidence is mistaken for credibility
· Visibility is mistaken for wisdom
Not every thought deserves an audience.
Not every idea deserves amplification.
Not every moment deserves publication.
The freedom of expression does not obligate us to express everything.
Point 5 – What Becomes Valuable When Thoughts Are Infinite?
Ideas that stand out now are the ones that require what the digital age has made rare:
· Original thinking
· Slow thinking (Kahneman’s System 2)6
· Ideas shaped by lived experience, not algorithmic remixing
· Narratives that help people make sense of complexity
· Restraint
In a world of infinite content, judgment becomes the new craftsmanship.
Conclusion – The New Discipline: Publish Less, Mean More
We can’t go back to cutting tape with razor blades. But we can reintroduce the discipline that era demanded:
· Think before you publish
· Refine before you release
· Share only what adds clarity, meaning, or value
· Resist the pressure to produce for the sake of producing
The future of thought leadership won’t belong to the loudest or the fastest.
It will belong to the most intentional.
References
1. Lahlou S. Mitigating societal cognitive overload in the age of AI: challenges and directions. arXiv. 2025.
2. Wang P, Liu H, Zou L, Paas F. Overloaded minds and machines: a cognitive load framework for human‑AI symbiosis. Artif Intell Rev. 2026;59:109.
3. McLuhan M. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York, NY: McGraw‑Hill; 1964.
4. Tolosana R, et al. Deepfakes and beyond: a survey of face manipulation and fake detection. Inf Fusion. 2020;64:131‑148.
5. Benkler Y, Faris R, Roberts H. Network Propaganda. Oxford University Press; 2018.
6. Kahneman D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2011.