Overheard someone at the coffee shop say they Google everything before making a decision now

It got me thinking, are we all just outsourcing our gut feelings to search results and is that making us more or less confident in the long run?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo2381mo ago

Funny you mention this, I actually saw a podcast clip where a psychologist was talking about this exact thing. He said that googling everything can actually make us LESS confident over time because we never practice sitting with uncertainty and making calls based on limited info. It sounds backwards but I kinda get it. The more we look up, the more we realize how much we DON'T know, and that can make us second guess ourselves even harder later on. We're basically training our brains to need a second opinion before every single move.

the_phoenix1mo ago

I mean, 47% of statistics are made up on the spot, right? @hugo238, I get what that psychologist was saying but it feels a little dramatic. Like yeah, maybe I Google whether you can freeze soup or whatever, but it's not like I'm losing sleep over it. I still make plenty of bad decisions from the gut - just last week I guessed the wrong exit driving to a friend's place and ended up 20 minutes late. The phone was right there in my pocket and I didn't check it once.