How Do You Know Which Thoughts Are Yours? | Dave Nadig on AI and a Borrowed Mind

Dave Nadig joins Notes on Notes to discuss his Epsilon Theory Unplugged essay Paying Attention: A Case for Contemplative Autonomy and why thinking for yourself matters even more in the age of AI. This conversation explores writing, research, introspection, AI assistants, and the importance of sitting with your own thoughts before outsourcing your opinions. Main topics covered Why contemplation is different from meditation, productivity hacks, or stress relief How AI can help with research but cannot replace independent judgment Why knowing how to think is becoming more important as AI tools improve The difference between using AI as an intern and letting it form your opinion How deep expertise helps catch mistakes that AI can miss Why writing is often a process of discovering what you actually believe The value of putting work in a drawer before publishing it Why consumption and discussion are not the same as reflection How deliberate introspection helps separate your thoughts from everyone else’s Why using AI to fake original work can feel like intellectual shoplifting Timestamps 00:00 AI, original thought, and the problem with outsourcing opinions 01:33 Introducing Dave Nadig and Paying Attention 02:13 What contemplative autonomy means 03:00 Why nobody teaches us how to think 04:34 How each person’s thinking process is different 05:14 The missing practice of sitting with your own thoughts 06:03 How AI can make people feel disconnected from their own thinking 06:35 What Google changed about research 08:00 Why AI facts do not automatically create an opinion 09:16 Using AI for market structure research 10:00 Where AI assistants still get things wrong 11:00 Why AI is more like an intern than a true assistant 12:00 Writing 20,000 words to find the real idea 13:12 When AI helps with editing and when it does not 14:09 Asking AI to critique your writing 15:05 How Dave knows when a piece is finished 16:00 Why putting writing away can make it better 17:28 Why the thinking process grounds your beliefs 18:00 The ethics of using AI to fake original work 19:02 Why you have to sit with your own thoughts to have your own thoughts