Everyone’s Talking. No One’s Thinking

How talking started to matter more than understanding

I sat in a committee meeting recently where several people confidently referenced “data” that wasn’t accurate. But it didn’t matter. The data felt right. It matched the narrative. It supported the preferred talking points. So, no one challenged it. I was shut down when I asked a clarifying question, just enough to suggest the numbers might mean something else. Not with evidence. Not with a counterpoint. Just… shut down. Because challenging the story wasn’t about accuracy, it was about maintaining alignment. It wasn’t just disappointing, it was familiar. I’ve watched this happen too many times to pretend it’s an exception. We’ve created a culture where confidence matters more than truth, and talking is confused with thinking.

Talking Isn’t Thinking. But We Keep Pretending It Is

We’ve been trained to prioritize how something sounds, how fast, how polished, and how confident it is over whether it makes sense. You don’t have to know what you’re talking about. You just have to sound like you do. You don’t have to ask good questions. You just have to agree with the right people.

This isn’t just happening online. I’ve seen it in schools, boardrooms, college campuses, and even fields that are supposed to be grounded in logic and evidence. We’ve been rewarding performance over thinking. Certainty over curiosity. And now we’re watching the fallout.

We’ve Trained Ourselves to React, Not Reflect

Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) are designed for speed. Post something reactive, emotional, or extreme; it goes viral. Ask a thoughtful question, express uncertainty, or invite nuance, it disappears.

We live in a world where enough negative comments on a post can start to feel like truth. The more backlash something gets, the more we assume it must be wrong, even when that backlash is off-base, emotional, or completely misinformed. We don’t stop to ask: Is this accurate?

We ask: How are people reacting? We don’t evaluate: What do the facts say?
We ask: Will this get me in trouble? So we play it safe. Or we perform certainty. Or we disengage altogether.

We’ve Confused Noise for Thought

This isn’t just about one bad meeting or a few viral posts. It’s about how we’ve rewired public discourse. We’ve created conditions where: Volume replaces value. Certainty replaces truth. Performance replaces understanding.

We don’t ask, “Is this true?”
We ask, “Does it match what I already believe?”
We don’t ask, “What’s missing from this argument?”
We ask, “Will I be punished for saying something else?”

In this environment, the safest thing to do is to repeat the dominant narrative as confidently and fluently as possible. The riskiest thing? Slow down, think independently, and challenge what everyone else seems to accept without question.

And Now the Consequences Are Everywhere

We are watching the downstream effects of decades of reinforcing the wrong behaviors: A society that mistakes confidence for insight. A generation trained to react instantly instead of reason slowly. Professionals who perform expertise rather than question assumptions. Students who repeat slogans but were never taught to analyze arguments. This isn’t a failure of intelligence; it’s a failure of instructional history. We rewarded verbal behavior that sounded smart instead of behavior that was thoughtful. We say we want critical thinkers but punish them when they emerge. We say we want depth, but we reward speed. We say we value truth but silence those who challenge the story.

And this isn’t just inconvenient. It’s dangerous. Because once people are rewarded for sounding right instead of being right, there’s no longer any incentive to pursue truth.
Once a culture punishes inquiry and rewards performance, it doesn’t just lose accuracy; it loses its ability to correct course. That’s how bad ideas stay in power. That’s how narratives harden into “truth.” Not through evidence, but through repetition, social reinforcement, and the silence of people who know better. That’s how we drift, slowly, then all at once, from a society that could think to one that only performs thought.

I didn’t realize how far this had gone until I saw it from the inside. And now that I see it, I can’t unsee it. We don’t need more confident talkers. We need people who are willing to think.

Even when it’s slow. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when everyone else would rather you didn’t. You're not imagining it if you’ve felt this and sat in rooms where the loudest voice won over the truest one. You’re seeing the system for what it is. And that clarity? That’s where real thinking begins….

Photo by Robinson Recalde on Unsplash