Escaping the Certainty Trap

There was a time when arguments made us wiser. 

Not because we won them, but because we walked away carrying a piece of someone else’s understanding. Long before artificial intelligence, social media, and endless news feeds, learning came through conversations with people who saw the world differently. Those conversations demanded something increasingly rare today: the humility to admit that another person might know something we don’t. 

Today’s Israel is a remarkable place. Electric trains glide across the country. AI helps doctors diagnose disease, engineers design buildings, and students answer questions in seconds. From a yeshiva in Jerusalem to a café in Tel Aviv, nearly every question imaginable can be answered with a few keystrokes. 

That is an extraordinary blessing. 

But like many blessings Hashem places into our hands, it carries a test. 

Never before has mankind possessed so much information. Yet never have so many people seemed convinced that their opinion qualifies as expert. We have become surrounded by tools that answer every question while quietly convincing us that our own understanding is complete. 

Thousands of years ago, Shlomo HaMelech warns us: 

“A lazy man is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer with reason.” (Mishlei 26:16) 

At first glance, the verse seems strange. Why connect laziness with wisdom? The answer becomes surprisingly relevant when viewed through the lens of our modern world. 

It is easier to scroll through another hundred opinions, powered by an algorithm programmed to make sure all these opinions reinforce yours to the point you feel it’s fact, than to spend an evening listening to someone who genuinely disagrees with you.  

It is easier to consume information than to cultivate wisdom. 

When Listening Was a Skill 

When I was in college, one of my closest friends and I disagreed about almost everything. We agreed on the truly important matters—A Few Good Men was a great movie, the Backstreet Boys were overrated, and the best Buffalo wings came from the barbecue truck parked off 23rd and Broad—but beyond that, almost every conversation became a debate. 

He was liberal, and I was conservative. On warm evenings we would grab our wings, walk to the local park, and argue until two o’clock in the morning about climate change, taxes, economics, religion, and whatever else happened to come up.  

The discussions were passionate, but they were never personal. Neither of us expected to convert the other. 

We expected to learn. 

Looking back, I realize that my friend gave me something far more valuable than winning an argument. He taught me how to think. He challenged assumptions I had never questioned, exposed weaknesses in my reasoning, and forced me to defend ideas instead of merely repeating them. 

To this day, I remain sympathetic to parts of the climate change debate—not because television convinced me, not because social media persuaded me, but because someone I respected presented an intelligent argument that deserved to be taken seriously. 

That experience strengthened a part of me I didn’t even know existed: The muscle of listening. 

That is precisely how Pirkei Avot defines wisdom:

“Who is wise? One who learns from every person.” (Avot 4:1) 

Our Sages could have defined wisdom as knowledge, intelligence, or scholarship. Instead, they defined it as teachability. A wise person is not someone who has all the answers. A wise person is someone who never loses the ability to receive them. 

The Certainty Machine 

That is why our generation faces a challenge unlike any before it. 

The danger is not AI itself. 

The danger is what happens when AI joins forces with social media, personalized news feeds, recommendation engines, and algorithms that learn our preferences better than we know them ourselves. Together, they create something previous generations never faced: an environment that constantly reassures us that we are already right. 

Ask enough questions from one perspective, and AI naturally begins responding within that framework. Click on enough articles from one political viewpoint, and tomorrow’s recommendations become even more narrowly tailored to reinforce today’s beliefs. Social media notices what excites us, what angers us, and what keeps us scrolling, then quietly serves us more of the same. 

Without realizing it, we become surrounded by an invisible chorus singing the same comforting melody. 

“You’re right.” 

After months or years of hearing those messages, something subtle begins to happen. Our opinions become harder. Our curiosity begins to fade. The listening muscle that once grew stronger through honest conversation slowly begins to atrophy. 

When Certainty Becomes a National Disease 

The tragedy of certainty does not end with the individual. Scale it to millions of people, and it becomes the disease of an entire society.  

When every person is convinced he already possesses the truth, disagreement is no longer an opportunity to grow, but as something to defeat. 

We are living through that reality today. Families quietly avoid certain topics around the Shabbat table because they know the conversation will end badly. Friends drift apart because they no longer share the same news sources. Political opponents increasingly assume the worst about one another instead of beginning with the possibility that sincere people can reach different conclusions. 

The louder our world becomes, the less anyone actually hears. 

What makes this especially tragic is that the technology promising to connect us often pushes us further apart. The same algorithms that help us discover interesting ideas also learn which ideas keep us engaged the longest. Over time, our digital world becomes carefully tailored—not to challenge us, but to reassure us that we are already thinking correctly. 

It was not always this way. 

Throughout the 1980s, Israel faced enormous political and economic challenges. The left and the right disagreed passionately about the country’s future, yet they still managed to form a national unity government because they believed preserving the nation mattered more than winning every argument. They bent toward one another, compromised, and recognized that wisdom did not belong exclusively to one side. 

The same spirit appeared across the Atlantic. President Ronald Reagan never enjoyed the luxury of governing with complete political support. Democrats controlled Congress throughout his presidency, yet dozens of Democratic  congressmen repeatedly crossed party lines because they believed certain policies would benefit the country more than their own political careers. 

Imagine headlines like that today. 

Imagine politicians saying, “My opponent has a better idea.” 

Imagine voters applauding them instead of condemning them. 

It almost sounds unrealistic. 

The Slow Death of Listening 

Pirkei Avot offers another warning that feels almost prophetic in our generation. 

“An ignorant person cannot be pious.” (Avot 2:5) 

At first glance, that statement sounds almost harsh. Surely a sincere person can serve Hashem even without knowing everything. But our Sages are making a distinction that has become increasingly important in the age of AI. 

Ignorance is not a lack of intelligence. An unintelligent person cannot understand certain things. An ignorant person simply has not learned them yet. One speaks about ability. The other speaks about willingness. 

The greatest danger facing our generation is not that people are becoming less intelligent. If anything, we have access to more educational resources than every previous generation combined. The danger is that we increasingly lose the desire to learn because we mistake access to information for actual wisdom. 

Knowledge stored inside a machine is not the same as wisdom stored inside a soul. 

A search engine can answer a question. Artificial intelligence can summarize a book. A social media feed can expose us to endless opinions. None of these things can make us wise. 

Wisdom requires something much more difficult. It requires the humility to admit that we may be wrong, incomplete, or simply unaware of truths someone else already possesses. Information fills the mind. Humility prepares the heart. 

That is why certainty is so dangerous. 

The Muscle Hasn’t Died 

The good news is that muscles can be rebuilt. 

Years ago, a friend desperately wanted to stop smoking. He tried repeatedly and failed every time. Nicotine had become part of his daily rhythm, and every attempt to quit seemed to collapse within a few days. 

Then someone gave him unusual advice. 

“Forget cigarettes for now,” they told him. “First, stop eating sugar.” 

It sounded ridiculous. 

What did sugar have to do with smoking? 

Quite a lot, as it turned out. 

For two weeks he eliminated sweets. The first few days were miserable, but eventually he found sugar substitutes. Later he discovered healthier snacks, and over time he learned that cravings could be managed instead of obeyed. He wasn’t really defeating sugar. He was strengthening self-control. 

Once that muscle became stronger, quitting cigarettes became possible. 

The same principle applies spiritually. The problem is not merely that we have become too certain. The deeper problem is that we have forgotten how to learn. Muscles that go unused become weak, but muscles that are exercised grow stronger again. 

The listening muscle works exactly the same way. 

Learning to Learn Again

The cure begins in surprisingly ordinary places.  

Study a subject that reminds you how enormous Hashem’s universe really is. Learn about light and discover the astonishing precision hidden inside every beam that enters your eye. 

Study electricity and realize that every switch you flip depends upon countless invisible laws Hashem established long before mankind existed.  

Learn about the human body, about memory, about the lungs, about the heart, or about the miracle of photosynthesis.  

The more deeply we investigate Hashem’s creation, the more impossible it becomes to maintain the illusion that we have life figured out. 

One of the fascinating characteristics of great scientists is that many become humbler as they learn more. Every discovery opens ten new mysteries. Every answer exposes another layer of questions waiting to be explored. 

Torah learning follows the same pattern. 

The more deeply we study Torah, the more we appreciate how endless it is. The more we understand Gemara, Tanach, halachah, or the wonders of creation, the more we realize how much remains beyond our reach. That realization is not discouraging. 

It is exhilarating. 

It means Hashem’s world is infinitely richer than we imagined. It means there will always be another insight waiting to be discovered, another lesson to be learned, another opportunity to grow. 

Find someone who genuinely knows more than you about a subject that interests you. Ask questions, listen carefully, and allow yourself to leave the conversation having changed your mind about something. 

That is not weakness. That is wisdom. It is the listening muscle coming back to life. 

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, 60,000 passionate Israelis, and Matilda, our local camel.