Cognitive obesity

Not something that we will choose. But, not something that will not happen.

Fifty years ago, nobody chose to become physically obese. Industrialization made life convenient. Processed food made eating fast and cheap. The obesity epidemic didn’t happen through deliberately chosen bad decisions. The environment quietly removed the need for effort, and replaced real nutrition with something that merely looked like food.

The same thing is happening again. This time to our minds.

The environment is changing rapidly. Without much of our approval. We don’t get to shape that environment (to a large extent), but we do get to shape our habits within it.

Over the last 25 years, the internet has flooded us with information. Social media has given us more connections than anything in history. But most of them seem to be shallower than before.

AI is now doing to our thinking what the microwave did to cooking.

Here’s what cognitive obesity may look like: lots of information, but very little knowledge. Superficial knowledge but no real wisdom of lived experience. Data without meaning. The cognitive equivalent of weight without muscle. To begin with, you may not look unhealthy on the outside, but on the inside it won’t be the same. Over time, it will show on the outside.

When your diet is hyper-processed, your body gets calories but not nutrition. Sometimes you feel full but you’re not nourished. On other times you remain hungry and still keep adding unhealthy weight. The same thing will happen cognitively. Consuming endlessly, but not converting any of it into understanding. Not building anything. Just accumulating.

Nobody gets physically obese on purpose. Most drift, as the environment shifts around them. That’s exactly what’s happening now.

This is not about whether to use AI. It’s about recognising what’s inevitable. You will and must use the latest and new AI tools to elevate your knowledge throughput. That’s how life evolves. If you are not already producing significantly more in your knowledge work today than you were doing three years ago, for the same time and effort, you need to deeply introspect.

But most upsides come with an attached downside - life’s way of balancing things. To mitigate the downside, we will have to go the extra mile. If you’re not actively giving yourself the right cognitive workouts - maybe slow reading for an hour a day, deep work without assistance. Consuming the right nutrition for your mind - meaningful and knowledge-dense input, and genuine rest - boredom, deep sleep, stillness, cognitive obesity is a risk we will face. Not just personally. Generationally.

How will we measure it, like BMI? I don’t know. How soon will it become widespread? I don’t know. Will there be whole new business opportunities, cognitive gyms, mental nutritionists, a new knowledge and wisdom wellness wave? I don’t know. But none of that seems unreal on a 5-10 year horizon. The sooner we acknowledge that and act to keep it at bay, the better it is.