Let’s not pretend everyone starts life with equal cognitive resources.
Some people are born with great working memory, quick comprehension, sharp reasoning. Others aren’t — but that doesn’t mean they don’t have good ideas, drive, or creativity.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are quietly helping bridge that gap.
They offer something rare:
the ability to punch above your intellectual weight.
You don’t need to remember all the edge cases, or how to word a formal request. The model helps scaffold that for you.
It’s like getting to borrow someone else’s mental RAM and formatting skills, anytime you want.
“It’s Making People Think Less” — or Is It?
Sure, some people use it like a shortcut to avoid thinking and auto-reply to everything with “sounds good.”
But the same was true of Wikipedia. Or Stack Overflow. Or calculators.
Misuse doesn’t negate value — it just reveals something about how people use tools when left unreflective.
In practice, the people getting the most out of LLMs aren’t thinking less.
They’re thinking better.
They’re testing assumptions faster. They’re seeing counterarguments they hadn’t considered.
They’re experimenting with styles of thinking that didn’t come naturally before — analytical, concise, lateral.
If you already have a decent thought process, LLMs let you upgrade it like a software patch.
It’s Not About Replacing Thinking — It’s About Scaling It
We’re used to thinking of intellect as a fixed trait.
But LLMs treat it more like compute.
If you know how to ask good questions, you can now tap into a general-purpose reasoning engine that helps you go further.
The internet gave us access to information.
LLMs give us access to synthesis — and to a kind of “on-demand second brain” that lets people without elite credentials or training produce surprisingly high-quality outcomes.
This won’t make everyone brilliant.
But it will shift the baseline.
It’s already doing that.
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