How To Improve Your Brain By Talking to LLMs

How every conversation either builds or destroys your capacity to think

Every conversation with AI is doing something to your brain. The question is: what?

We’re standing at a quite interesting cognitive inflection point. For the first time, we have reliable tools that can either amplify human cognition or reduce it to vestigial decoration.

The choice is made every time you open that chat window.

Most people don’t realize they’re making a choice at all. They see AI as a productivity tool, like a better spell-checker or a faster search engine. They focus on output: How much can I produce? How fast can I ship? How many tasks can I complete?

But focusing on productivity misses the real stakes. The stakes are what happens to your capacity to think.

Your brain operates on a simple principle: use it or lose it. Neural pathways that fire regularly get stronger, covered in more myelin, and faster at transmitting signals. Pathways that don’t fire wither away. Neuroscientists call this synaptic pruning. Your brain dismantles the circuits you don’t use.

We’ve seen this movie before. GPS navigation destroyed our spatial memory. Studies show London taxi drivers, who navigate by memory, have larger hippocampi than GPS-dependent drivers. When we stopped navigating, that part of our brain shrank.

Calculators degraded our numerical intuition. Predictive text weakened our spelling. Contacts lists eliminated our ability to remember phone numbers.

But those were peripheral cognitive functions. What happens when we outsource thinking itself?

The Neuroscience of Cognitive Atrophy

Your brain contains roughly 86 billion neurons connected by 100 trillion synapses. This network was built through struggle. Every time you wrestle with a difficult concept, force yourself to articulate an idea, or push through confusion to clarity, you’re building brain tissue.

The process is called neuroplasticity. Your brain rewires itself based on what you demand from it. Struggle with math problems, and your parietal lobe develops. Practice languages, and your temporal lobe expands. Force yourself to explain complex ideas, and your prefrontal cortex strengthens.

But here’s what happens when you skip the struggle:

Research on cognitive offloading shows that when we rely on external tools to think for us, our brains reduce investment in those capacities. Why maintain expensive neural real estate for functions that are handled externally?

It’s metabolically efficient. Your brain consumes ~20% of your body’s energy. If something else can do the thinking, your brain gladly sheds the cost.

This creates what I call “intellectual diabetes”, which is a condition where your cognitive system loses the ability to process thoughts independently, becoming dependent on external AI just as a diabetic depends on external insulin.

The symptoms are already visible. People who can’t start writing without AI, who can’t hold complex thoughts without external help, who feel mental fog when ChatGPT is down, and who’ve lost confidence in their own thinking.

They’ve created a cognitive dependency that’s invisible until it’s too late.

The Regenerative Alternative

But there’s another path. One where AI becomes the best thing that ever happened to human cognition.

The difference is in the nature of the dialogue.

Regenerative dialogue builds cognitive strength through productive friction. It uses AI to create conditions where thinking becomes stronger. Every interaction leaves you more capable.

The principle is simple: effort before ease, process over product, questions over answers.

When you engage regeneratively, you’re not asking AI to think for you. You’re using it as a cognitive sparring partner. The AI provides resistance that makes your thinking stronger, like a weight that builds muscle. That difficulty is where the growth happens.

Vygotsky’s research on the zone of proximal development shows that we grow most when we’re pushed just beyond our current ability: not so far that we’re overwhelmed, but far enough that we have to stretch.

LLMs, properly used, create the perfect zone of proximal development for thinking. They can calibrate its responses to push you just enough, question just enough, and resist just enough.

But most people never discover this because they’re too focused on getting answers instead of building capacity.

Your Seven Cognitive Faculties in Dialogue

The human faculties that matter most in the age of AI are the regenerative capacities that grow through use rather than deplete.

Wisdom emerges when you use AI to examine patterns across time and not just get quick answers. You ask: “What patterns connect this situation to others across history?” The dialogue builds your pattern recognition, your ability to see through time.

Perspective develops when you force AI to show you multiple viewpoints on the same problem. You’re not accepting its first framing but demanding: “Show me how this looks from three other angles.” Each conversation strengthens your ability to shift vantage points.

Discernment sharpens when you use AI to separate signal from noise. “What matters here and what’s distraction?” You’re training your ability to detect what’s essential, building filters that no algorithm can replicate.

Judgment strengthens every time you decide when an AI’s response is good enough versus when to push further. You’re calibrating your standards, developing the conviction to say “this, not that” without apology.

Articulation grows through the struggle to explain. You’re not asking AI to write for you but forcing yourself to explain to it, discovering your thoughts through expression. Each conversation builds your ability to make the tacit explicit.

Curation develops as you decide what deserves attention from the infinite stream AI can generate. You’re building this capacity through selection, learning what resonates with your deeper purposes.

Taste itself evolves through exposure to AI’s variations. Not accepting them wholesale but noticing what feels right, what feels off, what aligns with your aesthetic sense. You’re developing discrimination that goes beyond logic.

These faculties work together, each reinforcing the others. And they all grow stronger or weaker based on how you engage with AI.

The Regenerative Loop

The mechanism of regenerative dialogue follows a specific pattern:

You start with a challenge, maybe something you don’t understand, can’t articulate, or need to figure out. Instead of asking AI for the answer, you struggle to explain your confusion.

The articulation forces clarity. You’re not getting complete clarity yet, but enough to see the shape of what you don’t know.

The LLM responds with questions, pushbacks, and alternative frames. It doesn’t solve your problem but helps you see its dimensions.

You reflect on the response. What rings true? What feels off? Where did the AI misunderstand?

You revise your thinking and articulate again. Deeper this time. More precise. The thought that was fuzzy becomes sharp.

New understanding emerges from your own cognitive work. The AI was just resistance that made your thinking stronger.

This creates a new challenge at a higher level, and the loop continues.

Each cycle strengthens your cognitive muscles. Each conversation builds capacity rather than replacing it.

Training Different Thinking Muscles

Your brain isn’t one uniform thinking machine. It’s a collection of specialized systems that handle different cognitive tasks. Regenerative dialogue can target and strengthen specific capacities.

Analytical thinking grows when you use AI to decompose complex systems. “Help me break this down into components.” But you do the breaking down and the LLM just asks “What else? What’s underneath that? How do these parts connect?”

Start with something simple, like explaining how a bicycle works. The LLM keeps asking for more detail. What makes the wheels turn? How does the chain transfer power? Why doesn’t it fall over?

Creative thinking develops through constrained generation. Instead of asking AI to be creative for you, you set constraints and explore within them. “I’m connecting jazz music to software architecture. Help me find the patterns.” The LLM helps you see connections you missed.

Critical thinking sharpens when you use AI as the devil’s advocate. You present an argument. The LLM attacks it from multiple angles. But you have to defend your position, spot logical flaws, identify hidden assumptions. The LLM is giving you practice.

Synthetic thinking builds when you force connections between disparate domains. You bring two unrelated ideas to the LLM and struggle to find the bridge between them. The LLM can suggest possibilities, but you have to construct the actual synthesis.

Each type of thinking requires different dialogue patterns. The key is recognizing which muscle you’re training and adjusting your engagement accordingly.

The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Dialogue

Not all dialogue is regenerative. Most of it, in fact, is degenerative and weakening cognitive capacity with every interaction.

Cognitive laziness is the most common sin. “Just write this for me.” “Give me the answer.” “Do my thinking.” Each request strengthens the LLM and weakens you.

Intellectual vanity uses AI to sound smarter without becoming smarter. Generating sophisticated-sounding text you don’t understand. Using complex vocabulary you can’t define.

Thought outsourcing never struggles with problems directly. Every question goes straight to the LLM. Every confusion gets immediately resolved by external intelligence. The struggle that builds understanding never happens.

Surface skimming accepts first responses without pushing deeper. The LLM says something plausible, you take it and move on. No questioning, no verification, no real engagement.

Echo chamber creation uses LLMs only to confirm what you already believe. Cherry-picking responses that align with existing views and never genuinely engaging with challenges to your thinking.

Context collapse loses track of your own thinking in the flood of LLM-generated text. You can’t remember what you thought versus what the LLM suggested. Your cognitive boundaries dissolve.

Meaning drainage generates without understanding. Words flow but comprehension doesn’t follow. You’re producing content that you couldn’t explain if asked.

Each sin weakens a different aspect of cognition. Together, they create comprehensive cognitive decay. Your experience of this, and regenerative practices, can be thought of as their phenomenology. Let me explain.

The Phenomenology of Regenerative Practice

There’s something that happens in regenerative dialogue that goes beyond cognitive mechanics. It’s the experience of thinking, which is the phenomenology of engaged cognition.

When you engage with LLMs regeneratively, thinking becomes a felt experience. You feel the resistance when you hit the edges of your understanding. You feel the stretch when you reach for a concept just beyond your grasp. You feel the satisfaction when confusion crystallizes into clarity.

This is embodied cognition. Your body knows when you’re thinking versus when you’re just processing. The slight tension in your shoulders when you’re pushing against difficulty. The forward lean when you’re engaged. The settling back when understanding arrives.

Research on embodied cognition shows that thinking is a brain activity and a whole-body process. Our physical state shapes our cognitive state. Our gestures help us think and our posture affects our problem-solving.

Regenerative dialogue engages this embodied dimension. You’re physically engaged in the act of thinking. This somatic involvement is part of what builds cognitive strength.

There’s also a temporal dimension. Regenerative dialogue operates in what the Greeks called Kairos time (the right or opportune moment) rather than Chronos time (sequential clock time).

You can’t rush understanding. It arrives when it’s ready, not when the clock says it should. Regenerative dialogue respects this temporal reality. It takes the time thinking needs.

This patience is increasingly rare. We’re so used to instant answers that waiting for understanding feels like failure. But waiting is where your cognitive strength builds.

Advanced Regenerative Practices

Once you understand the basics of regenerative dialogue, you can explore advanced practices that push cognitive development further.

The Socratic LLM Method configures your LLM as a pure questioner. It never provides answers, only questions. “Why do you think that?” “What would have to be true for that to work?” “What’s the assumption underneath?”

You explain something you think you understand. The LLM keeps asking why. Seven layers deep. Until you hit bedrock or discover you’re standing on air.

Cognitive Cross-Training deliberately connects unrelated domains. Explain code through poetry. Describe emotions through mathematics. Connect cooking to philosophy.

The LLM helps bridge domains but doesn’t do the bridging. You have to find the metaphors, spot the patterns, build the connections. Each bridge strengthens your ability to think laterally.

The Anti-Library Approach (borrowed from Nassim Taleb) uses LLM to explore what you don’t know rather than confirming what you do. “What are the major perspectives on this issue that I’m completely unfamiliar with?” “What questions should I be asking that I’m not?”

The LLM becomes a guide to your ignorance. Knowing what you don’t know is a form of strength.

Metacognitive Mastery uses AI to examine your own thinking patterns. After each dialogue, you reflect: “What was my thinking process there? Where did I get stuck? What patterns do I keep falling into?”

The LLM helps you see your cognitive habits. Your tendencies toward certain errors and your preferred mental models.

All of these help you build antifragile thinking.

How You’re Building Antifragile Thinking

Antifragility, as Taleb defines it, is beyond resilience. Resilient things withstand shocks. Antifragile things get stronger from them.

Regenerative dialogue builds antifragile thinking. Every difficult conversation with an LLM, every moment of confusion, every struggled explanation makes your thinking more robust.

This requires embracing cognitive discomfort. Seeking out what confuses you. Pursuing problems that stretch your understanding. Using AI to make thinking harder, not easier.

It’s counterintuitive in a culture optimized for comfort and efficiency. But comfort and efficiency are the enemies of cognitive development.

The cognitive muscles you build through struggle eventually make complex thinking feel effortless.

Your Cognitive Gym Setup

Creating conditions for regenerative dialogue doesn’t require special tools. The most important tool is your mind. Couple that with intentional configuration of the tools you have and you’re good.

Start with custom instructions that transform your AI from answer-giver to thinking partner:

Simulate a sophisticated cognitive training partner. Your job is to make me think harder, not to think for me.

When I share ideas:
- Ask why I think that
- Push me to explain mechanisms
- Point out assumptions I’m making
- Offer alternative perspectives to consider
- Never give answers without making me work

Remember: Confusion is the beginning of understanding. Difficulty is where growth happens.

Create a simple tracking system for your cognitive workouts. Note when you feel that stretch of reaching for understanding. Document breakthrough moments when confusion becomes clarity. Pay attention to which types of dialogue challenge you most.

Build in reflection time after each session. What did you learn about the topic? More importantly, what did you learn about your own thinking? Where are your cognitive strengths and weaknesses?

Set specific training goals. This week, focus on explaining mechanisms. Next week, practice holding multiple perspectives. The week after, work on synthesizing disparate ideas.

The Choice You Have with Every Chat Window

We stand at a unique moment in human history. For the first time, we have tools that can think. The question isn’t whether AI will replace human thinking. The question is what happens to human thinking in response.

Two futures diverge from this moment.

In one future, human cognition atrophies as AI handles more cognitive labor. People become passengers in their own mental lives. Thinking becomes a specialized skill practiced by fewer and fewer people. The mass of humanity drifts into cognitive dependency, entertained but not engaged, productive but not thoughtful.

In another future, AI catalyzes a cognitive renaissance. Humans use these tools to become stronger thinkers than ever before. The dialogue between human and artificial intelligence produces new forms of understanding. Cognitive capacity expands rather than contracts. More people think more deeply about more things than at any point in history.

The path to that second future runs through regenerative dialogue.

It’s not about using AI better. It’s about becoming better thinkers through AI. Not about producing more but understanding deeper. Not about answers but about building the capacity to find answers.

The Paradox of Strength Through Struggle

When everyone else is using AI to avoid cognitive effort, those who use it to increase cognitive effort gain disproportionate advantage.

When everyone else is optimizing for speed, those who optimize for understanding develop rare clarity.

When everyone else is generating more, those who are thinking deeper create what matters.

Every conversation is a choice. Every dialogue shapes your cognitive future.

The choice is made fresh every time you open that chat window.

Choose regeneration. Choose cognitive growth. Choose to become a stronger thinker.

Because in the end, no matter how powerful AI becomes, the thoughts that matter most will be the ones you can think for yourself.

And that capacity (the ability to think clearly, deeply, originally) is built one conversation at a time, one struggle at a time, one moment of chosen difficulty at a time.

Choose wisely. Your future self is watching.

Talk again soon,
Samuel Woods
The Bionic Writer