Overestimating What We Know: The Trap of Effortless Search

You would like to learn about a particular topic.  You have two options.  You can search online for information, which AI tools and search engines summarize quickly for you.  Alternatively, you could dig deeper, read an article or two, listen to a podcast, and... maybe even read a book on the subject!  How much do we rely on the easy route to knowledge, and how confident are we that we have become highly knowledgeable through our rapid search for information?

In her amazing book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, author and journalist Maggie Jackson explores this topic.  She writes:

After even a brief online search, information seekers tend to think they know more than they actually do, according to a decade of studies. In one set of five experiments, people were asked to study weighty topics, such as autism or inflation, before taking a quiz on the subject. Half the participants were told to find an online article on the topic, while others were simply given the same information without having to search for it.  People who searched online were far more overconfident going into the quiz.  In one round, they predicted that, on average, they would get two-thirds of the questions right, although they scored less than 50%. 

In contrast, people who had been given the information studied longer, absorbed more, and got about 60% of the questions right - about what they had expected.  Rarely if ever in life are just handed information. Searching and seeking are the human condition. But how we do so matters.  In the virtual realm, we seem to lose the ability to sense that we don't know, the starting point of discernment.  This false confidence blossoms even when people learn nothing from an online search, further studies show. By assuming we can know effortlessly, we close our eyes to our failings and so to chances to explore.  We run from the work of fully attuning to the here and now, finding in hubris a retreat from the challenges of facing up to reality as potent as that of outcome-oriented fear. 

This research suggests that we need to proceed with caution when we jump to conclusions based on a breezy online search or quick prompt on an AI tool such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude.   Ask yourself: What do I actually know?  How deep and accurate is my knowledge?  Should I be making critical decisions based on this superficial knowledge?