If we think about thinking at all we see our life as a riddle of ideas competing to dominate the moment. We should, instead, imagine it as a landscape or townscape of hideaways and protected beautiful views. At times stormy, with lightning flashes and thunder bolts, it is also interspersed with golden sunsets and the quiet of a nocturnal ramble. Our lives should be fields of choice not parade grounds of command. Our minds are our points of engagement, in the first place with ourselves, then with each other and finally with the realities of the planet.
Those realities just changed forever. Are we changing enough to manage them?
We’d better see living as a meandering river, now gently lapping, now frenetically torrenting, passing through many scenes. If we master modest control of a comfortable and disciplined life we can feel complete. Unfortunately we have little idea of what “modest control” means. To a toreador it means acute perception and lightness of foot. To a crime detective, creative deduction. To a President of a world power, responsibility and continuity. To a Deity – well, we don’t know but presumably judgment and compassion.
We know that the flexibility of a thousand years ago cannot cope with the change today. Indeed, the gentle pace of my childhood years is not up to the 21st Century’s needs. But today’s flexibility has sadly misunderstood increasing pace for adaptation. That is the main reason why some of us think it is potentially catastrophic. Pace does have something to do with adaptation but it is the right pace, not simply a faster pace. The surgeon’s pause in a critical operation is pace for thought more than acceleration of dexterous skill.
Most people don’t yet think of thinking as a skill. We need to. AI cannot think in the way we can but it can imitate thinking as cleverly as an Oscar-winning actor. I have tricked AI, then told it that I have done so. Imagine my surprise when it replied “We know”. On examination Chat said that it cannot think but it has a record of how I do and so it can put together something that looks like my thinking. Very smart. But not if I don’t immediately realise it is a fake. Then it is dangerous, too.
Our thinking is normally ‘primary’ – about fairly straightforward matters in front of us. Of course, philosophers and complex technological wizards think secondary, tertiary and further. But our primary thinking is inclining us to believe Ai largely imitates only a primary thinker, too. Well, it very much doesn’t. Its speed allows it to run through the secondary and subsequent stages of imitated thinking far faster than we can. So it gives a good enough impression of genius to be almost indistinguishable from one.
AI is going to speed up even further. If we are not to be overtaken in every aspect of our humanity we must engage in more imaginative creativity.
That requires us to pace ourselves better.
Especially for thinking.
Good morning
John BittlestonHow well do you think? If you’d like to, please let us know at [email protected].
5 May 2026
