Cognitive Surrender

 Recent MIT report on teaching and AI here.

Getting the right answer from a chatbot can create the illusion of learning – but it can also trigger “cognitive surrender”4, where students fall back on AI at the first hint of struggle. 

here's a direct link to the study footnoted ("Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial")

The MIT report:

In the same spirit, collectively, we need to shape MIT’s use of AI in education to be “pro-learner” – not to replace the “hard fun” of thinking, learning, creating, and problem solving, but to expand what’s possible for students to think about, learn, and solve. In short, AI should be used to augment and enhance curiosity, creativity, and learning, not automate them.

Here are 9 thinking skills where the "friction" of doing it yourself is exactly what tempts students to hand it over to an LLM instead:

1. Generating ideas from a blank page (brainstorming) — sitting with the discomfort of nothing yet existing.
2. Structuring an argument — deciding what goes first, what supports what, without a template.
3. Synthesizing across sources — holding multiple readings in mind and finding where they agree, conflict, or build on each other.
4. Formulating a research question — narrowing a vague interest into something answerable.
5. Working through ambiguity — tolerating a problem that doesn't have a clean, single right answer yet.
6. Self-explanation — articulating why an answer is correct, not just what it is.
7. Editing your own reasoning — noticing a flaw in your own logic and having to rework it, rather than starting fresh.
8. Estimating and sanity-checking — coming up with a rough answer to judge whether a "real" answer is plausible.
9. Persisting through a stuck point — the specific moment mid-problem where confusion feels aversive and quitting (or delegating) is easiest.

1. Generating

• Generate ideas

• Generate questions

• Formulate problems/research questions

• Retrieve relevant knowledge

2. Reasoning

• Structure an argument

• Synthesize across sources

• Work through ambiguity

• Make judgments

• Estimate/sanity-check

3. Monitoring

• Diagnose your own thinking

• Self-explain

• Edit/revise your reasoning

• Evaluate the quality of an answer

4. Persisting

• Sit with uncertainty

• Recover from being stuck

• Revise after failure

• Develop an internal standard of quality

1. Generating ideas from a blank page

• Coming up with possibilities before someone else supplies them

• Moving past the first obvious idea toward something more interesting

• Making connections between things that don't initially seem connected

• Exploring an idea that is incomplete, awkward, or uncertain

• Developing an idea rather than simply selecting one from a list

2. Structuring an argument

• Deciding what the central claim should be

• Determining which ideas need to come first and which should follow

• Deciding what evidence belongs with which claim

• Figuring out how individual pieces of reasoning build toward a larger conclusion

• Recognizing when an argument has a gap, redundancy, or weak connection

3. Synthesizing across sources

• Identifying meaningful similarities and differences among sources

• Noticing when two sources complicate or contradict one another

• Deciding which connections among sources actually matter

• Combining information to produce an idea that isn't simply present in any one source

• Moving from “Source A says…” and “Source B says…” to “Taken together, these suggest…”

4. Formulating a research question

• Moving from a broad topic to something genuinely worth investigating

• Identifying what is puzzling, unresolved, or interesting about a topic

• Narrowing a question enough to make it answerable

• Recognizing when a question is merely factual rather than intellectually productive

• Revising a question as understanding of the subject develops

5. Working through ambiguity

• Remaining comfortable when there isn't an obvious answer

• Considering multiple plausible interpretations

• Holding competing ideas in mind without immediately choosing one

• Asking what evidence might support or challenge each interpretation

• Recognizing that uncertainty can be a productive part of thinking

6. Self-explanation

• Explaining why an answer makes sense rather than simply stating it

• Putting reasoning into one's own words

• Identifying the evidence or assumptions behind a conclusion

• Explaining the steps taken to arrive at an answer

• Discovering gaps in understanding by trying to explain something clearly

7. Editing your own reasoning

• Looking back at your thinking rather than assuming your first attempt is sound

• Finding a claim that isn't adequately supported

• Recognizing when evidence doesn't actually prove what you think it proves

• Revising a line of reasoning rather than simply replacing it with someone else's

• Learning from the weaknesses of an unsuccessful attempt

8. Estimating and sanity-checking

• Predicting roughly what an answer should look like before calculating or researching

• Using prior knowledge to establish a reasonable expectation

• Asking, “Does this answer make sense?”

• Detecting answers that are technically plausible but intuitively wrong

• Comparing an external answer against your own independent estimate

9. Recovering from a stuck point

• Recognizing exactly where you are stuck

• Trying a different strategy when the first one doesn't work

• Rereading, reconsidering, or breaking a problem into smaller pieces

• Using a resource or asking for a hint without handing over the entire problem

• Experiencing difficulty as something to work through rather than something to immediately escape

10. Making judgments

• Deciding which idea is worth pursuing

• Deciding which evidence is strongest or most relevant

• Determining which interpretation is most convincing

• Distinguishing between something that is merely plausible and something that is genuinely insightful

• Choosing among competing possibilities and being able to explain why

11. Diagnosing your own thinking

• Identifying what you actually understand versus what you only recognize

• Locating the specific point where your reasoning breaks down

• Recognizing an assumption you may have made

• Identifying what information or knowledge you're missing

• Deciding what kind of help would actually move your thinking forward

12. Retrieving and recalling knowledge

• Trying to remember something before looking it up

• Bringing relevant knowledge to mind when confronting a new problem

• Strengthening memory through repeated retrieval

• Using what you already know to make sense of something unfamiliar

• Developing a body of internal knowledge rather than relying entirely on external retrieval

13. Generating questions

• Noticing something confusing, surprising, contradictory, or interesting

• Asking “why?” or “how?” rather than stopping at “what?”

• Turning curiosity into a question worth pursuing

• Generating follow-up questions as new information emerges

• Questioning an assumption rather than simply accepting the premise

14. Developing an internal standard of quality

• Developing a sense of what makes an argument strong or weak

• Learning to recognize effective versus ineffective writing

• Comparing your own work against examples and identifying differences

• Developing an instinct for when something is incomplete, superficial, awkward, or unconvincing

• Producing enough work yourself to develop the judgment that lets you recognize quality in someone else's work

One thing I particularly like about this list

There is a progression hidden inside it:

Generate → Reason → Monitor → Persist → Judge