From Gods to Google: How We’ve Changed Who We Trust
by Beezone
Remember when people looked to the sky for answers? Well, that’s changed quite a bit over time. We’ve gone from trusting priests to trusting scientists, and now we’re starting to trust computers. As AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, it’s worth looking at this journey to see what we might be getting ourselves into.
When the Church Called the Shots Think about living in ancient times, when St. Augustine was around. The Church wasn’t just another voice – it was THE voice. If you wanted to know anything important, you asked a priest. People who tried to figure things out on their own, like those practicing magic, were seen as troublemakers. It was simple: God spoke, the Church explained, and everyone else listened.
Shaking Things Up Then along came some bold thinkers during the Renaissance, especially a guy named Pico della Mirandola. He had a wild idea: what if different religions and philosophies all had pieces of the truth? It was like saying, “Hey, maybe we can learn from everyone.” This was huge – it meant people could start thinking for themselves, even if they still had to be careful not to upset the Church.
Show Me the Evidence Next came the real game-changer: science. People like Galileo started asking for proof instead of just taking the Church’s word for things. They said, “Let’s look at the evidence and do experiments.” Pretty soon, if you wanted to know how something worked, you didn’t ask a priest – you asked a scientist.
The New Authority? And now? We’re watching something just as big happen. AI is becoming our go-to source for answers. Doctors check with AI before making decisions. Scientists let computers crunch their numbers. Even when we want to know if it’s going to rain, we trust an app more than we trust our own eyes.
What We Might Lose Here’s the thing: while AI is amazing at processing information, it might be missing something important – human wisdom. Sure, a computer can analyze millions of cases in seconds, but can it understand why a joke is funny? Can it feel why a sunset is beautiful? There’s something special about human judgment that can’t be reduced to ones and zeros.
Finding Balance So what do we do? The trick isn’t to reject AI – that ship has sailed. Instead, we need to figure out how to use AI while keeping what makes us human. Just like Renaissance thinkers found a way to balance faith with reason, we need to find a way to use AI without becoming totally dependent on it.
The real issue isn’t whether AI will become important – it already is. The question is: will we let AI make all our decisions, or will we keep thinking for ourselves? How we answer this could change not just how we find answers, but who we are as people. Just remember: every time we’ve changed who we trust for answers, we’ve gained something and lost something. As we move forward with AI, we should keep in mind that some of the most important truths in life can’t be calculated by any computer, no matter how smart it is.