Adequate and Inadequate Ideas

An adequate idea is one understood through its causes. The person who holds it knows not merely that something is the case but why — she grasps the causal chain that produces the idea, and this grasp makes the idea genuinely hers. An inadequate idea is one whose causes are not understood. It may be correct. It may be articulated fluently. But its correctness is accidental, and it cannot be reliably extended to new cases. The person who holds an inadequate idea is like a traveler who arrived at the right destination by following directions she did not understand. She is where she needs to be. She does not know how she got there. She will be lost the moment the directions cease to apply. The most dangerous feature of AI collaboration is that it produces outputs with the form of adequate ideas without the substance — polished prose that the user accepts without doing the cognitive work that would make the idea