How Do We Build a Smarter Society?
On Laziness, Legislation, and Nudges for Intelligence
In 2008, Japan instituted the “Metabo Law,” mandating annual waistline measurements for middle aged (and retired) citizens and improved education programs at schools, plus awareness programs for all citizens. The law was direct, unsentimental, and unapologetically prescriptive. It aimed at reversing a quiet national drift toward metabolic syndrome and obesity.
Beyond simple measurements, it triggered a system: individuals exceeding specific waistline and BMI thresholds, coupled with risk factors like high blood sugar or blood pressure, were guided towards counseling, employer-supported health initiatives, and re-education on diet and exercise. Obesity rates fell. The law achieved what public campaigns and personal willpower had failed to accomplish. It made health a matter of shared responsibility, not just individual preference.
A Metabo Law for the Brain
Intellectual atrophy is less visible than physical decline and waistline growth. It doesn’t slouch in a chair or leave breadcrumbs of excess. But it is no less real, and arguably more insidious.
Attention spans, as Nicholas Carr has documented, have been partitioned into ever-smaller parcels, ill-suited for sustained engagement. Book reading, an act once synonymous with personal development and deep comprehension, is trending toward scarcity, replaced by the consumption of summaries or bite-sized content. Conversations, as Sherry Turkle observes, are increasingly fragmented, mediated by screens that promise connection but often deliver transactional exchanges. Reflection, the quiet cognitive space where understanding is forged, is becoming a rare commodity. Motivation, “participants who collaborated with gen AI on one task and then transitioned to a different, unaided task consistently reported a decline in intrinsic motivation and an increase in boredom.” The dominant posture is one of passivity toward information, a drift that Artificial Intelligence is not merely accompanying but actively accelerating.
AI tools are increasingly doing our thinking for us, not merely assisting but, in many instances, displacing the cognitive labor once considered essential. They complete our sentences, infer our preferences with unsettling accuracy, and summarize complex readings before we’ve had a chance to grapple with the source material ourselves. This is not progress in the classic sense of augmenting human capability; it is an outsourcing of the very faculties, critical analysis, patient inquiry, original synthesis, that have long defined serious thought. The immediate danger is not that AI will make us demonstrably less intelligent overnight, but that we will gradually cease to value, and therefore practice, the effortful processes of deep thinking, becoming content with the polished outputs of algorithms. We risk, as Neil Postman might have warned, amusing ourselves into cognitive passivity.
Can this trend be reversed? It will not be reversed by nostalgia for a pre-digital age. Nor will it be reversed by well-meaning exhortations to “read more books” or “disconnect.” If the burgeoning field of cognitive science teaches us anything, it's that environments and systems shape behavior profoundly. Reversing intellectual atrophy will require structural intervention, real policy with tangible incentives and disincentives.
The Japanese example, while culturally specific and focused on a different domain, offers an uncomfortable but instructive precedent. When a society accepts that certain collective behaviors, or neglects, carry too high a long-term cost to leave unchecked, it intervenes. With metabolic health, Japan chose to act decisively, implementing employer-based requirements for health checks, mandatory follow-ups for those at risk, and targeted public education campaigns. The result was not coercion into perfect health, but a national recalibration of what counted as a baseline and a shared concern. Could a similar ethos, adapted appropriately, apply to cognitive well-being?
We could, and should, build a framework, not built on vague slogans or voluntary pledges, but on coordinated, multi-faceted policy, that centers intellectual engagement as a civic and economic priority.
“Cognitive Fitness” in the Workplace: Employers, spurred by significant tax incentives, public recognition programs, could provide and actively encourage participation in structured learning opportunities that extend beyond immediate job-specific skill acquisition. This could encompass workshops on logical fallacies and cognitive biases, advanced data interpretation and statistical reasoning, ethical decision-making frameworks, and subsidized access to courses in humanities, philosophy, or complex systems thinking. The focus would be on “periodic engagement” and demonstrated application of these cognitive skills in relevant contexts, rather than solely on rote assessment or certification. This fosters a culture where continuous intellectual development is valued as a core component of professional competence. I have regularly instituted reading and writing groups in corporations that I have worked for, with much success and community.
Robust Public Intellectual Infrastructure: Just as we invest in physical infrastructure like libraries and museums, substantial investment is needed in creating and sustaining accessible, engaging public intellectual platforms. This means funding and promoting community forums dedicated to reasoned, evidence-based discourse on complex societal issues, distinct from the often-polarized nature of online social media. It involves championing “slow reading” initiatives and book clubs that encourage deep engagement with challenging texts. Support for independent, high-quality journalism and media outlets that prioritize depth, investigative work, and nuanced analysis over clickbait is crucial. Furthermore, this includes developing “citizen-scholar” programs that bridge the gap between academic research and public understanding, fostering public participation in knowledge creation and critical inquiry, and creating digital commons designed for constructive dialogue, supported by skilled moderation.
Educational Re-emphasis & Systemic Reform: Beyond merely incentivizing isolated programs, governments could spearhead comprehensive educational reform. This would involve restructuring teacher training to equip educators with methodologies for fostering deep critical thinking, Socratic dialogue, and intellectual resilience from early childhood through higher education. Curricula should be redesigned to integrate complex problem-solving, ethical dilemma analysis, and the sustained practice of long-form analytical writing and independent research. Assessment methods would need to evolve beyond standardized tests to include robust portfolio evaluations, public defenses of student research, and assessments of collaborative problem-solving capabilities. This includes dedicated funding for curricula that explicitly teach advanced media literacy, source evaluation, and the critical consumption of information within an increasingly AI-saturated landscape.
Comprehensive AI Literacy and Ethical Governance: Policy must move beyond basic digital skills to mandate radical transparency in how AI algorithms curate information, make decisions, and influence public perception. This could involve requirements for clear labeling of AI-generated content, “explainability statements” for critical AI systems, and independent audits for algorithmic bias. Educational programs, from K-12 to adult learning, must be established to teach citizens not just how to use AI tools, but to understand their underlying mechanisms, their inherent limitations, their potential for manipulation, and their profound societal and ethical implications. Governance frameworks are needed that go beyond mere literacy, potentially including “cognitive impact assessments” for new, widely deployed AI technologies, ensuring they are designed to augment, not erode, human critical faculties. This also means actively funding and incentivizing research into AI systems that are explicitly designed to support and enhance human critical thinking, creativity, and deep learning.
Such a program would be an investment in national cognitive infrastructure, no different in its strategic importance than ensuring clean water, a stable power grid, or effective public transport. Because what is ultimately at stake is not merely individual productivity or innovation in a narrow economic sense, but the collective capacity for sound judgment, informed decision-making, and robust democratic participation.
There will be objections, and they should be taken seriously. That such measures are invasive. That they constrain autonomy. That they risk creating a “thought police.” But autonomy already operates within collectively agreed-upon frames: seatbelt laws, compulsory basic education, taxation for public goods. What distinguishes many of those policies is that their benefits, or the harms they prevent, are relatively visible and immediate. Intellectual engagement, by contrast, yields slow, cumulative dividends. But those dividends, reasoned discourse, an informed electorate capable of discerning sophistry from substance, ethical discernment in the face of complex challenges, are the bedrock of a functioning, adaptable, and resilient society.
David Foster Wallace, in his Kenyon Commencement Address, observed that the most dangerous kind of default setting is not overt malice or willful ignorance, but a pervasive, gradual unconsciousness, “the mind-numblingly predictable, day-in-day-out, unthinking routine.” That is precisely what AI, if left ungoverned and uncritically embraced, risks producing on a societal scale: a generation that is perpetually informed but rarely understanding, constantly connected but seldom reflective.
If there is any overarching lesson from Japan’s “Metabo Law” approach, it is this: policy, thoughtfully designed and courageously implemented, can shape culture. It can reset baseline expectations. It can make visible and urgent that which has become invisible through neglect or the seductive ease of outsourcing. The degradation of intellectual discipline is not an inevitable byproduct of technological advancement. But recovering and revitalizing it will require something far more substantial than individual effort or market-based solutions. It will require collective will, and the carefully constructed machinery to make that will consequential.
“How Do We Build a Smarter Society?” is answered not by focusing on individual genius, but by systematically creating an environment that fosters intellectual vitality for everyone. It’s a matter of policy and infrastructure, not just personal willpower.
Stay curious
Colin
Sources and References:
Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (Metabo Law)
The Land that Does Not Need Ozempic – Time Magazine
David Foster Wallace, Kenyon Commencement Address, 2005
Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, 2010
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 1985
Sherry Turkle, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, 2015
Microsoft Research: The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers, 2025
Image Chris Fuller on Unpslash
A position that makes me say, Hmmmm.
I always struggle with any recommendation that says that we need a government policy to direct our decisions about our own priorities, time, and effort. As much as I believe in the vision of this piece, I can't support it as a thing that belongs in the hands of the government to direct.
Like you, I believe an educated, reflective, thoughtful citizenry is a necessity for a successful society. Providing opportunities for people to participate in these type of forums sounds fabulous and of value. I encourage individuals to create these communities, but to hand it to government as a responsibility, I think would be a mistake. We already recognize that education in the hands of the government is a waste of resources. Most teachers are incapable of applying critical thinking themselves, so I'm not sure that is where to start teaching it.
I read an interesting article about the history of "NGO's". During the depression years, communities started to create funds that they used to support those in their immediate communities who were struggling the most. It was voluntary and it generated a lot of money that could be invested and grow. Roosevelt was curious about this and decided this was a model that should be applied at the federal level. It gave him another "sales pitch" to institute the safety-net, and tax regime that never went away. Today, these are the very institutions that are causing us grief. If something is truly good for the public, and the public wants it, we don't need the government getting involved. I believe humans are compassionate and will take care of each other without coercion from above.
As I reflect further, I wonder if this position, that we both hold, that critical thinking is something important, may be just an elitist position. We hold formal degrees, years of working experience and wisdom. For us there is value and importance in deep thinking and deep reflection, but for working-class people struggling to just get through their day, it certainly isn't a priority. To be honest, it wasn't a priority for me either in my career days as a single parent. Technology is a tool that gives time back, AI is a tool that can remove much of the time we spend having to select, consume and internalize data from a world that is drowning in data. Today, society focuses on doing not thinking, and AI is positioned to encourage people to apply it for the benefit of more "doing".
Long before we start making government mandates for people to "think better" (which could very easily turn into an insidious propaganda machine), we need to change the ethos of our culture from doing to thinking. But perhaps that in itself would be un-American. It does occur to me that AI taking over all the "doing" will provide us with an opportunity to refocus our efforts toward thinking, as long as we are not starving or homeless. But until then, I suspect doing and thinking will continue to remain in silos. The best we can hope is to encourage as many people as possible to consider multiple angles on the topics they care about, and always be curious.
And in the meantime, absolutely, build communities of thinkers everywhere you can - like what I'm seeing here on Substack.
There you go - proof. We don't need the government, we just need the time to interact with other thinkers.
Japan’s “Metabo Law” would only work in an open society where for instance food labeling laws are transparent; where a corporation’s duplicitous behaviors are not protected by the government’s they spend billions lobbying. I worked for a consulting firm many years in a London. The managing director believed McDonald’s was a brilliant business model. And yet they impoverished and abused their own low grade employees, harmed the health of their own customers and used a supply chain and distribution system to deliver the same bag of ‘food’ worldwide. A system which at some point in the future we will come to realize is mind-bogglingly stupid. We will never achieve anything until we change our discourse on the meaning of profit. Once we do that we can begin to serve everyone and everything i.e the planet and its resources are not here to be exploited, rather they are here to teach us something we are still trying to learn and those fixated on profit and power are still very much deaf and blind to and intentionally so.