Dependent Brain

The Dependent Brain is what happens when something thinks for you, every day, for years. It used to be parents, then school, then a job. Now it's an AI that finishes your sentences before you finish the thought.

Here's the trap: the AI is genuinely better than you at a lot of things. Faster, more accurate, never tired. You can let it draft your emails, summarize your reading, decide what to watch. Each individual decision feels rational. The aggregate is something else — a slow withdrawal from your own life.

The thing that atrophies first is judgment. Not facts, not skills — those you can always look up. Knowing when to trust yourself and when to defer. The Dependent Brain can't develop that, because deferring is its default. You have to deliberately choose to think things through, knowing the AI would do it faster. That's the practice.