AI can answer your questions faster than any human. It can write your emails, help you code, and shape the way you see the world - and the people in it. But from the very beginning, AI was designed to deceive you.
This is the story of asking and answering questions, of the difference between being born to think and being built to think. Ultimately, it’s about the power of questions: how they connect us and divide us, where curiosity meets manipulation, and why we may be losing the muscle for real wonder in the age of prompting.
Pia Lauritzen Thinks On Paper with Mark and Jeremy Gilbertson. She’s asked and analyzed over 30,000 questions from people across languages and cultures.
She’s a philosopher, TEDx speaker, Forbes writer and a philosopher of the question. Tune in and you’ll learn why we default to “what” and “how,” why “why” is so rare (and so radical), and how every question transfers responsibility.
And then we go to the bible. Who asked the first question? And what can we learn about Adam and Eve and the pesky snake that changed the course of fictional humanity.
There are dancing with question analogies, the dispelling of myths - adults don’t lose their questioning instincts, they just hide them. Because of fear, ridicule, ego.
And finally, once the stage has been set like a Shakespearean play, the crux of it all: AI can’t think for you; blank pages matters; struggle is not a bug but a feature, and how the real test isn’t in the machine, but in your ability to hold onto what makes questioning, and not-knowing, uniquely human.
Please enjoy the show. And click subscribe, it’s the best way for other curious minds like you to find our show.
And remember: Stay curious. Be disruptive.
Keep Thinking on Paper.
Cheers,
Mark & Jeremy
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Email: hello@thinkingonpaper.xyz
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TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Trailer
(03:28) 30,000 Questions & the What/How Bias
(07:38) Questions That Connect vs Questions That Manipulate
(09:59) Do We Really Lose Our Curiosity?
(14:21) How to Start Better Conversations
(18:40) Conversation as a Thinking Space
(19:46) Why We Lead with Polarising Topics
(20:35) How School Trains Us to Have Answers, Not Questions
(22:22) Rethinking Education in the Age of AI
(25:22) AI in the Classroom: Tool, Threat or Opportunity?
(30:07) Why AI Can’t Help Us Think
(32:55) The Essence of Technology, AI Deception & the Turing Test
(38:17) What Could Humans Be in an Age of AI?