The idea that we think we know too much translates into something very down-to-earth your brain closes questions too quickly, fills gaps too fast, and blocks the error signals that would help it update.
Does the brain close questions early to save energy?
Yes. Your brain’s default strategy is energy-minimization. It’s a metabolic miser. It will always choose “reuse an old model” over “compute a new one” unless something forces it. The brain is constantly predicting the world instead of fully processing it because prediction is cheaper than perception. Why?
Predictions cost almost nothing. They reuse established neural pathways. Perceiving something new costs energy. It requires updating synapses, running error-correction loops, and allocating attention which is metabolically expensive. So the brain prefers to close questions quickly. It plugs holes immediately, sometimes with nonsense, simply to maintain a stable internal map at low cost. This metabolic laziness is why the system suppresses error signals, unless the prediction error is large enough to be impossible to ignore.
When you say, the idea that the brain closes questions too quickly… Mechanistically it means that the system lowers entropy (reduces uncertainty) as fast as possible. It locks onto the first explanation that works well enough. It filters out signals that demand recalibration because recalibration is calorically expensive.
So yes, the brain does this to conserve energy, but also to maintain behavioral stability. Randomly updating beliefs every five seconds would make an organism non-functional. Deprogramming reduces to weakening priors by repeated, safe, low-cost prediction violations. You do it by You introducing small surprises that don’t threaten survival. Each surprise forces the brain to loosen one overconfident assumption. Looser assumptions allow new information in. New information restores learning capacity. This is how you break old mental habits mechanically, without drama or mysticism.
The mind’s so-called certainty isn’t wisdom; it’s a cheap energy-saving hack pretending to be knowledge.
