Information, Intelligence, Imagination

Last week, I wrote about foundational principles for navigating parenthood. I tend to rely on simple rules to figure out what must not go wrong and then build from there. Three foundational pillars of being—and raising—human beings that I intend to explore more deeply are physical health, mental health, and cognitive health. Today, I want to focus on the third.

Lately, I’ve been listening to podcasts where former tech executives have been increasingly vocal about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Many of them paint a rather dark picture of the future. Social media thrives on hijacking our fear receptors, and while I sometimes pity podcast hosts who listen to these grim sagas for hours on end, I also don’t—because they are making millions in the process, and because they are often providing access to information that is not easily available elsewhere.

My main takeaway from these conversations is that we will almost certainly be living in—and raising children for—a world that feels unfamiliar. Information and intelligence will be abundant, creativity will become cheaper. Knowledge workers and artists alike may need to reinvent themselves to earn a living from skills that once felt durable. As a knowledge worker myself, I find myself asking: how do I think about my own cognitive health, and that of my child, in such a world?

I think of cognition as a function of three components: information, inference, and imagination. The question that keeps returning to me is how we preserve distinctly human capabilities—joining dots, exercising judgment, and pushing boundaries—in a world where we can borrow intelligence on demand. Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer of google X, recently remarked on a podcast that the IQ differences of 20–30 points that matter today may become irrelevant in a future where we can all borrow, say, 4,000 points of artificial IQ. Returning again to the idea of foundations, I wonder whether someone with 100 IQ will automatically know how to use 4,100. Perhaps AI will teach us. Perhaps we will find out whether we are masters or servants of this particular genie.

For today’s essay, I want to stay with questions rather than answers, saving practical steps and prescriptions for later. Asking the right questions may soon matter as much as—if not more than—being able to answer them.

Pillar 1: Information

For parents, the starting point has to be our own relationship with news, feeds, alerts, and the ease with which information crowds out reflection. In finance, we often talk about separating signal from noise. The same logic applies to the deluge of reels, podcasts, videos, and updates that reach us daily. This is a skill we must first cultivate ourselves before we can hope to pass it on to our children.

Mere screen-time limits or gadget restrictions are unlikely to be sufficient. For deep and critical thinking to develop, children may need the opposite of abundance: more time with less information. Practicing what I think of as cognitive quiet—space for thoughts to settle, connect, and mature—may become increasingly important.

Questions to sit with:

• What does it mean to grow up never having to wait for information?

• How much information can a developing mind meaningfully hold?

• How do we teach discernment and pacing, rather than mere consumption?

Pillar 2: Inference (or Intelligence)

If information is what we take in, inference is what we do with it. This is the domain of reasoning, pattern recognition, judgment, and the ability to draw conclusions under uncertainty. While machines may soon outperform us at retrieval and computation, inference still requires context—social, emotional, and moral—that cannot be easily outsourced.

A risk I see is the temptation to confuse access to intelligence with the cultivation of intelligence. When answers are cheap and instant, the harder skill becomes knowing which questions are worth asking, which conclusions deserve skepticism, and when to revise one’s beliefs. Inference is not just about being right; it is about being able to change one’s mind when new information emerges. I already see young professionals struggling to cultivate their own thought processes and relying too much on LLMs. This is a rather new phenomenon I am observing at work.

Questions to reflect upon:

• How do children learn to reason when answers are always available?

• What is the right level of complexity one's brain needs to be exposed to avoid cognitive fatigue?

• How do we raise thinkers who are comfortable with ambiguity rather than paralysed by it?

Pillar 3: Imagination

Imagination is often dismissed as frivolous, yet it may be the most essential pillar of all. It is the faculty that allows us to envision alternatives, to empathize with others, and to rehearse futures before they arrive. Imagination gives meaning to information and direction to intelligence.

In an increasingly optimized world, imagination risks being crowded out by efficiency. Daydreaming, storytelling, boredom—these are rarely defended, yet they are the spaces where resilience and creativity quietly form. For children especially, imagination is not escapism; it is preparation.

Questions worth asking:

• What happens when children lose the ability to daydream?

• How do we protect imaginative space in a world designed for constant engagement?

• Can imagination be taught, or only preserved?

I find myself returning to the idea that cognitive health is less about maximizing capacity and more about maintaining balance. In a world accelerating toward artificial abundance, the quiet work of nurturing attention, judgment, and imagination may be what helps us—and our children—remain human.