Don’t let others replace your thinking

July 19, 2026

Is AI bad? What makes you think so? The more salient question is who did you hear that from?

The marketing of LLMs has reached a point where tech companies are spending billions of dollars to develop something to replace your thinking. We could have AGI or AGI is already here. Although the water in the jar is muddy, the truth is even murkier. There is a growing disconnect between those who support AI and those who oppose it. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Neither the news or social media is telling you an accurate picture. Of course reading the news is hazardous to your health, but it is next to impossible to avoid. The reality is LLMs are really good at boring mundane tasks. Here is one such example.

make list into a list org-mode

Nothing about the emacs text editor is straightforward. But all you want to do is turn a block of text into a list. Before you might fumble around with search engines, using different types of search techniques. Now you can just search for something and get reasonably close to the answer.

To instantly convert a block of raw text lines into an Org-mode plain list, highlight the target lines in your buffer and press C-c - (or run M-x org-toggle-item).

It’s tempting to say all AI is a better search, but the reality is regular people are using it for search and they don’t think much of it. The mundane insights are not a story. Regular LLM users are showing up everyday, using AI as a tool, not as a replacement for thinking. Be wary of those who are trying to decide for you otherwise.