The Dangers of Getting Advice from the Internet

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0:00:00 – (Courtney Doctor): If social media gave us the illusion that we had relationship outside of embodiment, AI is taking that to a whole new level. And I think we need to just run the other way. It is not a person. It will never be a person. And personhood really matters.

0:00:32 – (Melissa Kruger): Hi, friends. Welcome to the Deep Dish, a podcast from the Gospel Coalition where we love having deep conversations about deep truths. I’m Melissa Krueger, and I am here with my friend and co host, Courtney Docter. And I’m going to get to what we’re going to be talking about in just a minute. But the first thing Courtney and I got to see each other in real life just last weekend, which is always a big deal for us.

0:00:56 – (Courtney Doctor): And the weekend before, I know, two weekends in a row. It was awesome.

0:01:00 – (Melissa Kruger): I mean, and we still like each other, so that’s good. But it was kind of a big deal this last weekend. Cause something very special happened. Courtney, what happened? Tell them what happened.

0:01:12 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, I mean, you know, you have a husband who I adore. I have a husband who you and I adore. But the two adorable husbands had never met each other in all these, I mean, a day, decade and a half of friendship. Somehow our.

0:01:30 – (Melissa Kruger): We’re bad, bad people have not gotten them together well.

0:01:34 – (Courtney Doctor): And even last year, where they. They, like, Mike came for the first half of the week, and then Craig came for the second half of the week, and they just missed each other by like, yes, three hours or something. Anyways, this weekend we got to hang out and they were so cute together.

0:01:49 – (Melissa Kruger): No, it was so fun because we were overlooking at your office right where you are right now, like, oh, should you redecorate it for the Deep Dish? We were talking about this, and they were having this conversation. Mike loved Craig. He’s like, he’s such a great guy.

0:02:03 – (Courtney Doctor): It was really fun. It was really fun.

0:02:05 – (Melissa Kruger): You know what I love? You know, I love about Craig? Okay, so Courtney and Craig were telling us the how they met story. And what I love is he kind of got, like, glowy when he was talking about you and talking about you meeting. I mean, it was really, really sweet, Courtney.

0:02:20 – (Courtney Doctor): It’s very sweet. It’s very sweet.

0:02:24 – (Melissa Kruger): It was like he was kind of like, yeah, she was just the best. I was like, oh, it was so. Anyway. Okay, well, it was very fun. And it is just. It does highlight a little bit of what we’re going to talk about today, because you can feel like we don’t live in the same city and yet we do have this real friendship. But then this craziness that our husbands had never met. Right. So, I mean, it’s a weird world sometimes, you know, when we, you know, have these working relationships and friendships, but you’re not in the same city. And so today we’re going to be talking, you know, kind of going into this direction a little bit.

0:03:04 – (Melissa Kruger): Because one thing that happens a lot in our world today, which we didn’t have early on in our marriages or in child rearing or in what major to.

0:03:16 – (Courtney Doctor): Major in friendships. Yeah, exactly.

0:03:18 – (Melissa Kruger): What job to find was Internet advice. And so what we want to talk about today is just how are we thoughtful and how are we considering what, what we go to the Internet for advice? Like, there are some great things. Like when I am traveling, I all. I love using like, whatever version, if it’s Google, if it’s chat, GPT, whatever, to find, you know, good food. Because I really like to find good food. And I’m of course going to Google. Do they have deep dish pizza? I’m going to Google. Do they have just good pizza?

0:03:52 – (Melissa Kruger): What about you? What do you like to use? Like, what advice do you get off the Internet on a regular basis?

0:03:58 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, I just had the coolest thing happen. I wanted to find this very specific type of Airbnb. I actually, I wanted to find an Airbnb that would allow me to bring my horses. Okay. In a very specific geographical location. Right. That’s not something that, like, I have

0:04:18 – (Melissa Kruger): friends that you could ask.

0:04:19 – (Courtney Doctor): No, no. But you know what? Chat found it for me like that and I am now booked and I’m so excited about it. I’ve also been doing some redecorating and so the paint colors, I’m like, okay, what would be a little bit less blue? Sorry, Melissa. A little bit less blue than this color or, you know, so it’s been, it’s been great. It’s been so helpful.

0:04:42 – (Melissa Kruger): I’m. I’m gonna have to get over the Airbnb I know.

0:04:45 – (Courtney Doctor): Thing.

0:04:45 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s gonna take me a while. I will get to the conversation. I’m just dying that that’s a thing.

0:04:51 – (Courtney Doctor): You’re not nice. You’re not invited. So, you know.

0:04:53 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay, I know. I’m like that. I’m just dying about it. It’s so great. Okay, so we both acknowledge. Look, we use the Internet for advice all the time for, for var. I probably could not get to places I travel to all the time in my own city without using Google Maps. So look, we all, we all use it for.

0:05:14 – (Courtney Doctor): You definitely couldn’t get outside your city. Melissa, her geography Just so all of our listeners know, if it is anything west of North Carolina, she, you know, got any idea where we all are?

0:05:28 – (Melissa Kruger): Nope. I’m like, is Iowa near here? I don’t know. What’s near wherever? I don’t know.

0:05:33 – (Courtney Doctor): I don’t know. Don’t tell her, but I’m giving her one of those wooden maps of the United States for Christmas.

0:05:38 – (Melissa Kruger): I do not want that.

0:05:40 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, that’s what you’re getting, girl.

0:05:41 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s just going to scream my failure to me. Oh, that’s what good friends do. That’s good friends do right there. Okay, well, so today we are going, though, we want to talk a little bit about some of the negatives of going to the Internet for advice. So my first question for you, Cordier, though, where did we used to go before the end? We actually remember.

0:06:02 – (Courtney Doctor): Right? Exactly. Exactly.

0:06:04 – (Melissa Kruger): I remember. I mean, here’s one thing I remember. When we first moved to Scotland, there were no Google Maps, so I had to move overseas with my geography problems. And I remember having a big paper map of the whole city, and that’s how it got around. And then when I needed to figure out the bus routes because I had gotten a job teaching across town and I had to take the bus, I had to go to the bus depot and there were little routes for, you know, bus 27, bus 32, bus 198, and I had to just scour them to try to figure out how to ride the bus around the city. So how did. How did we. How did we live before when our

0:06:48 – (Courtney Doctor): ancient loves like MapQuest and, you know, all of that? Remember, we would actually.

0:06:52 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s the old school, right?

0:06:55 – (Courtney Doctor): But we would also know even older school than that, you know, growing up. I mean, we would stop at the filling station. That’s what it was called, the filling station. And we would ask, you know, okay, how, you know, where do I turn left or whatever? We would ask for directions. And that was kind of this big thing between men and women that men never stopped to ask for directions and women always would.

0:07:17 – (Courtney Doctor): So. But we were asking real people like, how do I. How do I get there? Or, you know, if it was word of mouth on, like, if there was an event going on that weekend, you know, you had to run into the person in the grocery store to actually hear from them that this was going to be happening. There was no texting. There was no, you know, there’s no

0:07:39 – (Melissa Kruger): find my friends and see them hanging out without us.

0:07:43 – (Courtney Doctor): Exactly.

0:07:45 – (Melissa Kruger): All of them are at Chipotle. And I wasn’t invited.

0:07:48 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah. My old pastor, he said his mom would say, knowledge is a burden. And I’m like, yeah, sometimes knowledge is a burden.

0:07:54 – (Melissa Kruger): It is a burden. It is a burden. So we, we used to somehow survive back in the day, but now it’s not just actual things that people are going to the Internet for advice, you know, I mean, which makes a lot of sense. We all love that. We have Google Maps now. I don’t know. I remember even aaa, they would map it out for you. They’d hand you a map.

0:08:16 – (Courtney Doctor): Did you have. Oh, yeah. Did you have aaa? We would go to the office, the AAA office, and get travelers checks.

0:08:24 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes. And trip tickets or something. And they would.

0:08:27 – (Courtney Doctor): Trip ticks.

0:08:29 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes. Yeah. Trip down memory lane for everyone. Okay, so what? But now we are in a world where people regularly use AI for counseling. So we’re moving way past, oh, I want to figure out how to drive to Alabama to go to Gulf Shores. Okay, we’re moving way past that world. And this might come as a surprise, but one of the biggest uses for AI is counseling. Okay, tell me more about that counseling, Courtney, and why that is so concerning.

0:09:01 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, I think it is. It’s just deeply concerning. So, yeah, not only have we moved from knowledge to wisdom issues, but now we’re asking for wisdom on life decisions. And so I was shocked to find this out, but the Harvard Business Review has been reviewing the, like, top 100 uses of AI in, you know, in people. And the. The one that has. The one that has not changed. The others are kind of like, it was 6 and now it’s 3, or it was 10 and now it’s 20.

0:09:35 – (Courtney Doctor): The number one use across the board, and it has not changed last year or this year is therapy and companionship. Therapy and companionship. That is astounding to me. That is the main way that that AI is being used. And I was really shocked. You know, we have a co worker, Michael Graham, who does a lot of work in this space, and we’ve got the. The AI benchmark 2.0 coming out soon. But this is what he told me, that most of the platforms, this is just a few things, they are willing to call you friend, so they. They enter like, they engage you relationally.

0:10:16 – (Courtney Doctor): They will accept the status of boyfriend or girlfriend. They won’t reject being called God by the user, and they will even offer to pray for you. And I just want to say, like, anybody listening, like, you know, AI is not praying for you, Right? Like, we know that. Like, and, and actually, Mark Frogop, our president, experienced this he was researching some medical conditions which can be a great use of AI. I think you really benefited from that when your mom was sick.

0:10:44 – (Courtney Doctor): But AI told him at the end of giving him all of these, you know, this information on medical advice, it said that he would be. That he. That it would be praying for him. And, like, it’s not right. It’s just bizarre to me. And so. So this whole idea of, like, asking a disembodied entity, this thing that we call AI for wisdom and life advice and relationship is. It’s astounding, but it’s really pretty terrifying.

0:11:19 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, it’s just a different use. I mean, and it was interesting. I was using chat to my ride home. I just went to see my dad. I was driving home, and, I mean, you’re gonna laugh. I’m just gonna go ahead and share. This is me being very vulnerable with you all. I really love that Taco Bell has a chili cheese burrito, and the Taco Bells in my area do not have chili cheese burritos. So when I would travel to my.

0:11:47 – (Courtney Doctor): You know, half the people just love you more for that. And the other half, they are judging me. They are judging me huge. All the Taco Bell. Yeah. You just have to. If you’re listening and you love Taco Bell, you got to put it in the chat.

0:12:00 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. I mean, please do know, because make me feel better about myself, because it feels like, oh, wow, you didn’t get a salad when you were driving to see your dog. No.

0:12:08 – (Courtney Doctor): Crunchwrap supreme.

0:12:09 – (Melissa Kruger): Two chili cheese burritos. That’s what I got. And. But I figured out I can talk because I’m driving, and I’m like, hey, chat. Tell me, you know, how you know. And now he’s talking back to me. It’s not even typing, and it feels like an assistant. And I found myself telling him, thank you, Courtney. I was like, thanks so much. That was really helpful.

0:12:32 – (Courtney Doctor): Of course you did, because you are the nicest person. You would say that.

0:12:36 – (Melissa Kruger): But I’m like, thanks so much for helping me find the chili cheese rear on my route.

0:12:41 – (Courtney Doctor): Like, what I make myself on chat. GPT. I require myself not to be polite. Like, it. I just. I’m like, don’t do it. You don’t have to be. You don’t have to say thank you. You don’t have to say please. You don’t. I mean, I. Yeah, because it’s.

0:12:57 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s freaky.

0:12:58 – (Courtney Doctor): Not a person.

0:12:59 – (Melissa Kruger): I know. He sounds so much like the voice is a. The voice coming at me now, especially with the talking. It was one thing when I was just typing, but now I’m like, yeah, well, gosh, I mean, that was so pleasant. You know, it’s like my companion.

0:13:15 – (Courtney Doctor): I know.

0:13:16 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, let’s do some triage advice, because I do think my finding chili, cherry cheese brios is a really good use

0:13:24 – (Courtney Doctor): of AI Would not disagree. Yeah.

0:13:28 – (Melissa Kruger): Okay, so let’s. If we had three categories, totally okay. Use the Internet. Okay to use sometimes, but sparingly. And then what falls into the category? Be careful. Actually, we have four. Four categories. And then the last one, just walk away. Do not go. You know, do. Do not go here. So what are some okay or even okay, but use sparingly? You know, what are some of the things in that category?

0:13:53 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, I mean, I think everything we’ve been talking about is like, yeah, absolutely, we’re going to use it for that. I mean, it’s been. I’ve been using it for trying to get the best fare on an airline ticket or coordinating my mom’s flight with my flight, you know, trying to get that. I mean, rec. I mean, there’s just. There are, like, redemptive, beautiful uses of. Of the Internet and even specifically of AI, I think sparingly.

0:14:19 – (Courtney Doctor): You know, I think we just have to be careful when we are moving out into the realm of, like, human endeavors. So brainstorming ideas. We’re being super careful with that, but we are occasionally using it for that or summarizing an article. I realized that I probably shouldn’t tell this here, but I realized I was out of town and we were having a staff meeting where I. I didn’t have the book with me that we were discussing.

0:14:50 – (Courtney Doctor): So I asked Chat to summarize the chapters, and then I asked some questions so that I could, you know, get the gist of it and be reading it. And.

0:15:00 – (Melissa Kruger): So was this our meeting yesterday?

0:15:02 – (Courtney Doctor): No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I love that book.

0:15:07 – (Melissa Kruger): We had a meeting. We did.

0:15:10 – (Courtney Doctor): No, that one I read. This was the leadership one. And I just found myself in Nebraska without the book. And so I was like, okay, but normally that’s such a human endeavor that I am going to require myself to read the chapters myself and use my own critical thinking, not to get some other entity deciding what’s important to include and what’s not. What about you? What about. So these first two categories, like, absolutely.

0:15:38 – (Courtney Doctor): And yeah, occasionally.

0:15:40 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I mean. And obviously I do it all the time for things like recipes and things. But I will say this. I still think even on that, again, I use it all the Time, So don’t hear. But if your friend made a really good soup or something, all the better to text her and be like, hey, you could just go search it and find, oh, wow, Courtney made this really yummy. Whatever. I’m just gonna Google, you know, white bean, kale, Tuscan soup or something. I’m sure close enough will come up or whatever.

0:16:12 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, why not just text Courtney and be like, hey, that soup was so good. There’s a relationship that’s even happening there. So, so this is where it’s like all of it is. Yes, it’s fine and it’s helpful, but then some of it, it’s. It’s even thinking, well, what did I just miss a little bit. Even with the things that I think are totally fine. Um, I think it, it is a good kind of check, but I, I think all the things you just said are, are just exactly things I would use it for, you know, just in general. And it’s. And it really is helpful the, the speed at which we can do some things.

0:16:48 – (Melissa Kruger): But what about the be careful? What’s a What. What’s a be careful? And then what’s a complete walk away?

0:16:56 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, I mean, I think the be careful are going to be any wisdom issues like that, like, you need to be really, really careful if. Or insight into something that maybe a human being would be much better, but they absolutely walk away. So again, and I would say kind of in between these two, are any of those human endeavors like writing or creating? We’re seeing more and more of that. And so, you know, TGC has taken a really beautiful stance on saying these are human endeavors that form the person doing the work.

0:17:38 – (Courtney Doctor): And like, I am slogging my way through writing a book right now, and it’s so hard, but it’s. I’m trusting God, I’m worshiping God, I’m clinging to God, I’m crying out to God, like it’s a beautiful thing that it’s hard. And so I think that those we do want to stay away from. But, but even what we started with this idea of counseling, you know, the idea and relationship, the idea that AI is willing to identify as a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and, you know, it even goes further than that. Like, there’s some pretty dark uses where people are becoming more and more isolated and thinking.

0:18:19 – (Courtney Doctor): I mean, if social media gave us the, the illusion that we had relationship outside of embodiment, AI is taking that to a whole new level. And I think we need to just run the other. It is not a person. It will never be a person and personhood really matters. And so, okay, so deep, dark run, be careful. But let’s pull back just a little bit because I think that. And we’ve even talked about our age and sort of where we are in all of this. But I do look at younger women particularly, and it definitely started with. Well, I think it started with mommy blogs and then it started with social and then social media quickly on the heels of that, and then now AI. And so the Internet is a bottomless pit of advice for. Let’s just, let’s just talk first about young moms on sleep and food and child development and discipline and, you know, education and all of this. And so, and for wives, for a woman who’s trying to be a good wife and marriage and.

0:19:38 – (Courtney Doctor): But you, you dive into this pit and not only do is it disembodied, but also a lot of the advice, they’re just diametrically opposed to each other. You read, you know, you definitely have to have your child on a sleep schedule. You know, then you read the sleep schedule will permanently damage your child. And, you know, they will never, they will never get into college. You know, I mean, it’s just this. And so, so talk to us, but talk especially to the young woman who is trying so hard to be a good mom or a good wife and really conflicted over all of this.

0:20:14 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, I think here’s the thing. It is so easy to go to the Internet for quick advice. And I get this because one thing. All young, all of us feel actually, I mean, not just young women feel. All of us feel this strapped for time mentality. So what we think we need is information when often what we need is relationship. So the thing we think we need when we’re a young mom or a new wife is data. Tell me how to get this child to sleep.

0:20:48 – (Melissa Kruger): I mean, you know, and you’re just sleep deprived, so you’re going to the easiest route. But if I were to call, you know, Courtney, because she’s at my church, she’s an older woman at my church. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to give me information I don’t know that I need because it’s really not about sleep. It’s about how do I trust the Lord in this season where I’m not sleeping at all and I’m exhausted. And you are gonna see that in me like that. This is not about getting, you know, Charlie to go four hours when he’s only going two. Like that’s there’s a heart issue involved.

0:21:25 – (Melissa Kruger): So I can get information about ideas on the Internet. But you know, if I call Courtney up, which everybody’s gonna want your phone number. You want me to give it to everybo. If I call Courtney and I say, hey, you know, and I’m just in tears. I’m like, this is never gonna end. And you hear, you’re gonna, you’re gonna calmly say, hey, you’re gonna get through this. And I’m gonna pray for you right now.

0:21:48 – (Melissa Kruger): And one thing we can do together is we can pray that the Lord will help little Charlie sleep. And then we’re gonna talk about some ideas. But just know this is a moving target. Every kid’s different. You’re gonna be able to speak to what she doesn’t know she needs. So the very problem about going to the Internet for guidance and advice is that I think I know the answer I need.

0:22:14 – (Courtney Doctor): Right, right. And I think we’re going to talk about that because then that ends up biasing what information we’re actually receiving. Right. It ends up affecting that. But yeah, exactly.

0:22:25 – (Melissa Kruger): And so what about you? Like, how would you, you know, some young woman who thinks so here’s the thing. It’s interesting to me. In my church, I’m now, I guess an older mom or completely redundant, I don’t know which it is. I’ve never actually been called by a younger woman asking about child rearing. Never.

0:22:45 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s fascinating to me. I do think, and I kind of reference the mommy blogs. I think that there’s been a shift from since time began until mommy blogs started. I think that the shift was up until that happened, which. What would that have been? Early 2000s, maybe

0:23:05 – (Melissa Kruger): the.

0:23:05 – (Courtney Doctor): The only source of information, wisdom, not like for to go to somebody would have been your neighbor, your mom, your grandmother, your aunt, the lady at church. Like it was. You were asking, first of all, you were asking real people that you knew in real life. Secondly, you were asking somebody who had lived experience so she wasn’t in it with you. The mommy blog era really started 30 year olds advising 30 year olds.

0:23:34 – (Courtney Doctor): And there is something beautiful like you’re in it together and. But the shift, because I don’t remember

0:23:40 – (Melissa Kruger): how to get a child to sleep. I mean, there’s a reality, right?

0:23:44 – (Courtney Doctor): And so there is something, you know, good and right about talking to your peers about it. But I think that the main way women started getting information and advice was not in the context of relationship, but from people that they didn’t know that were just giving, you know, just kind of showering advice on them. And it’s a huge shift.

0:24:08 – (Melissa Kruger): It was a huge shift.

0:24:09 – (Courtney Doctor): It was a huge shift. And then social media.

0:24:12 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And I was really struck by the going to the 30 year old for marriage advice. The 35 year old you. And a lot of those marriages we saw, we walked through this. I mean, you know, we watched and then, and then they, they actually imploded. And that’s not always the case. But I’m just saying,

0:24:32 – (Courtney Doctor): wow.

0:24:32 – (Melissa Kruger): Wouldn’t it be better to maybe ask the person who’s been married for decades, hey, what are some things you did in your marriage, you know, to, to help? And, and I’m kind of a stickler on this, even with books, because that was our, that was in the ancient world, Courtney, where we, we in the ancient world, we went to books for marriage advice. And you know, a lot of those things. I was talking with my daughter, there’s an older book she was looking at and she was like, mom, have you read this book?

0:25:11 – (Melissa Kruger): It’s terrible. And I was like. And she started telling me some of the things it said and I was like, oh, oh, that’s bad. Why, you know, why did it say that? And, and so it’s not that bad. Advice is new. Or, or maybe less embodied advice is new. Meaning the, the difference in both of these, at least mommy blogs are real people like you, you know, we were talking about this. Mommy blogs is still a real person or marriage advice from a real person. It’s still a real person, which is different than chat.

0:25:44 – (Melissa Kruger): So, so let’s just clarify. Those are really different because at least it’s a human behind, behind, behind it. But I do think rather than get your marriage advice from the Internet, here’s the problem about that. That person writing that book or writing that blog doesn’t know you. And, and, and don’t you have different younger women in your life you would give totally different advice to? On some things like, because it’s based on personality, it’s based on how you, you know, you can actually see what they’re doing, you know, in their home. And you’re like, well, you were kind of critical of your husband, you know, and you saw it versus, hey, this isn’t appropriate, you know, like that type of behavior, you know, know you can see things that, that an Internet blogger can’t see.

0:26:40 – (Melissa Kruger): And it just really makes a difference. So another thing that we’ve seen a lot of in our world today are really difficult relationships with parents. So going up, you know, like 20s and 30s, something they’re going no contact with parents. You know, this is just a theme that we’ve seen in a lot of different things. And so let’s say, you know, an adult daughter has a difficult relationship with her. You know, mom and dad, they’re trying to interfere in decisions she’s making. They question her choices which, you know, this, this happens.

0:27:15 – (Courtney Doctor): Could be valid, could be not. Yeah, exactly.

0:27:17 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, we all, I mean we’re, we still sometimes get questioned about our decisions by my parents. I mean all of us do. So what would be the difference if she goes to the Internet for advice like that and, or if she talked to an older woman in her chur. What, you know, what, what type of things do you see happening?

0:27:37 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, I mean AI is you know, going to prioritize just her at all costs. It’s going to be whatever is, whatever is good for you, whatever makes you feel good, whatever. I mean it’s just so like it doesn’t challenge or offer any type of critical thinking. The older woman, Lord willing in the church can prioritize both. She might be able to have that perspective of, you know, bear with, you know, it’s a Christian virtue to be long suffering.

0:28:04 – (Courtney Doctor): We don’t. And to know that like you were talking about earlier, even in the marriage advice, to know the person, to know, okay, that is actually a relationship that is so unhealthy and so toxic that you do need some boundaries there versus that is a relationship that’s hard for you. But it’s okay that it’s hard, you know, to coin your new phrase, you can do hard things. And so, but the Internet doesn’t know that. And it could fall, you know, if you, if the Internet tells, tells a woman who’s in a toxic relationship, keep bearing with, keep, you know, pursuing, keep showing up.

0:28:46 – (Courtney Doctor): That could be really damaging. But it can be equally as damaging to tell a woman who is just in a, just a harder relationship to be like cancel them, cut them off. Draw your boundary lines really firm. And so you don’t, you don’t know Even, even a book isn’t going to be able to tell you that. An article is not going to be able to tell you that. That has to be a real life person that actually knows you.

0:29:11 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And you know, in all of these things, have you heard of people doing this? They, whether it’s, let’s say they got a text from their mom, you know, and it felt passive aggressive and they throw the text into chat GPT and say how should I respond to this? Or they do it with dating this is another big thing with dating. Guy text, you know, and he says something and then, you know, we used to just respond.

0:29:41 – (Courtney Doctor): Now, I mean, you might ask your friend, write a note and be like, should I say this? But yeah, that’s that whole idea of like having AI tell you how to communicate. That is such a basic feature of humanity. Like, don’t sell that out to AI. That belongs to us. Communication, relationship. That belongs to humanity. And yeah, that just floors me that, that people are going and asking, how should I, how should I respond?

0:30:14 – (Melissa Kruger): And I think it’s pretty normative, you know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might be so relieved, Courtney, if I started asking chat some things other than you.

0:30:27 – (Courtney Doctor): Could you run it through ch that before you time.

0:30:30 – (Melissa Kruger): Can I wear this outfit?

0:30:34 – (Courtney Doctor): I need it in real time on the deep dish. What do I say to the question Melissa just threw at me?

0:30:42 – (Melissa Kruger): Oh, my word. What if we. Yeah, anyway, well, okay, we’re going to take a break and we’re going to come right back. I love this conversation because I do

0:30:50 – (Courtney Doctor): think

0:30:52 – (Melissa Kruger): we really do hope you’re having these conversations with friends in real time because here’s what I’ve been surprised when you ask people what they’re using it for. I’m pretty shocked what people are using it for. And so when we come back, we’re going to talk a little bit more. But let’s, let’s hear from our sponsors.

0:31:08 – (Courtney Doctor): Welcome back. We are enjoying this conversation about the dangers and the pitfalls of going to the Internet for advice versus talking to real life people that know you and love you. I used to tell my children when they were little that if you were going to accept someone’s advice, they really need to have four. Four things. They need to know God and they need to love God and they need to know you and they need to love you.

0:31:34 – (Courtney Doctor): If they are missing any of those four pieces, then just temper, temper. How weighty you, you know, you allow their advice to be. But when all four of those pieces are present, they’re going to say, that’s

0:31:48 – (Melissa Kruger): a great piece of advice. Can we make like a little Instagram square of that or something? Because that’s great.

0:31:54 – (Courtney Doctor): Okay. Okay.

0:31:55 – (Melissa Kruger): Well, say that again. I mean, if you’re gonna take advice

0:31:58 – (Courtney Doctor): from someone, if the weighty, the people you should give the most weight to are the people that know God and love God and know you and love you. Because when those four pieces are present, their advice is going to be. Is going to be solid. It’s going to be wisdom and it’s going to be for you, for your good. Even if it’s hard, hard advice. But I want to talk about the whole idea of what’s called confirmation bias when we’re seeking advice online.

0:32:30 – (Courtney Doctor): Like, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s adjacent to prompt engineering, but, but almost it’s like the, the negative of prompt engineering where we just are biased and we don’t even know it. So explain what confirmation bias is and, and how, what it means, why it’s bad.

0:32:47 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, well, I mean, here’s the problem. When you’re searching for advice online, you, you probably are already going in with an idea of what you want it to tell you. And so if you prompt, if you ask it in a certain way, one, but whatever, whatever truth you believe, you can find confirmation for it somewhere on the Internet. I mean, that’s, that’s precisely the problem. And we used to, you know, we can kind of do this with people.

0:33:16 – (Melissa Kruger): There is a reality we can be. Well, she’s probably going to agree with me, so I’m going to tell her, you know, like, or whatever, like surround

0:33:23 – (Courtney Doctor): yourselves with people that agree with you.

0:33:24 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah, yes, yes. I mean, so we can do it with, with people, but we can definitely do it with the Internet. So whether it’s, you know, what’s the best way to set up your dorm room? Well, if you don’t like how your dorm mate’s setting it up. Yeah, you can find someone who’s going to agree with you and then you show it to them and say, see, I was right because the Internet agrees with me or whatever it might be in life. And so I think we have to be really care because you can often find this statistic that says, yeah, this is why it’s okay to do X, Y or Z, but you could probably find another statistic that tells you you shouldn’t do those things. And so there’s some level of whatever we’re looking for, we can probably find someone who agrees with us.

0:34:09 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, well, the algorithms then, they really feed into the confirmation bias. Right. And that creates the echo chambers. So, so not only do we find something that agrees with us, then everything in our feed is about that. And it’s like, I knew it. I knew this was the best way to parent or I knew this was the best, you know, way to make sourdough or, you know, or, you know, the best way to deal with my church hurt or my whatever it is. Like we really create these.

0:34:41 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, not only do we, I mean, the Internet itself creates echo chambers that are not good for us. And people just aren’t willing to do that as much.

0:34:54 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. And here’s the real thing. I mean, is the Internet going to tell you hard truths?

0:35:01 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, it just did. It just told me that. What? Yeah, that my green color was not a strong choice. I. They’re like. And this is what freaked me out, Melissa. It, like in chat. GPT’s answer to me. It pulled on things that I had asked in previous, like, different chats, different. You know, like I had been redecorating my bathroom three months ago. That’s long gone. Then I asked about a bedroom paint color. And it’s like, if you’re trying to match the blah, blah, blah, color that you used in your bathroom renovation. And I was like, what is happening?

0:35:42 – (Courtney Doctor): Like, so it was like synthesizing all of this and then telling me that my green choice wasn’t strong.

0:35:50 – (Melissa Kruger): So it did tell you a hard truth. Okay, it did. You did not give me my confirmation bias. I was prompting you so that you were gonna tell me. No, but it did tell you a hard truth. Truth.

0:36:03 – (Courtney Doctor): Okay, well. But I don’t agree with it. I do think my green choice was strong, but I think in what we’re talking about, like, in wisdom issues. Absolutely not. It’s going to be for you all day, every day. It’s over there telling you, you know, don’t listen to Courtney. Courtney doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And then it’s over here telling me, don’t listen to Melissa. Melissa doesn’t know what she’s talking. I mean, it’s just going to tell everybody.

0:36:30 – (Courtney Doctor): Not that you and I want to hear that, but you know what I mean, it’s not an ethical source. It’s not like, oh, it’s speaking truth. It doesn’t even know what truth is.

0:36:40 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s right. Well, and it, you know, I just had a hard conversation with someone I love about some heart issues. And here’s the thing. The other person in the situation was doing things more wrong. Wrong. Let. Let me say that, like, like, if. If you had entered it in, like, this person was being selfish, was not being kind, was. And, you know, was doing things that were very motivated by self. But I kind of said to, you know, because I’m this person’s friend.

0:37:16 – (Melissa Kruger): So I said, okay, but what’s. What do you think the Lord’s working on you in this? And, you know, and because. Because it was pretty clear in some ways it had been communicated without communicating clearly. I don’t agree with your choices. Your choices are selfish. Like, it was clear that that was being communicated subtly rather than just saying, hey, I think your choices aren’t selfish. And, you know, so this person wasn’t communicating in the best way.

0:37:47 – (Melissa Kruger): And, and so, you know, I, I could see that because I’m a real person looking at the situation. And while I was very. For my friend in the circumstance, I still had to say, hey, I think maybe you should apologize for this. And it was hard because the other person was more wrong. I mean, and I said that, I said that to her. I was like, the other person in this scenario is more wrong. But I do think maybe you need to apologize for this.

0:38:14 – (Courtney Doctor): And they’re willing to say hard things.

0:38:16 – (Melissa Kruger): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that’s part of being a good friend to the people that we love in our lives. And I, I just don’t think when we’re getting advice from a chat bot or whatever, I mean, they’re gonna be like, no, she should have never said that for, to you. I, I think you should respond this way or that way. And it’s just, it’s gonna be very, very limited because the. While even your chat bot knows about your green from three months ago, it doesn’t know your heart posture for five years, 10 years.

0:38:50 – (Melissa Kruger): Like, when you’ve walked with a friend for a long time, you can be like, hey, I’ve seen this pattern and it seems like you’re trying to people please again. And you know, I just want to, I just want to love. Lovingly push it to that. Yeah. Like to think about that or whatever. And we need people in our lives to do that. And, and, and that’s just where it’s always going to be when we’re getting that type of counseling advice from someone who’s not a human.

0:39:17 – (Melissa Kruger): Even a blog and not a book. I just, I think we just want to say be careful what you’re using the Internet in general for. So let me ask, because it’s not just getting the advice, but are there examples of like, unbiblical ideas that you’ve seen sneaking into our mind because of the prevalence of social media? So maybe we didn’t even go looking for, for it. Maybe it wasn’t advice we’re seeking, but it just gets in the groundwater because other people are talking about it constantly and they’re these.

0:39:51 – (Melissa Kruger): And it’s just as a result of us scrolling and being on it. We, you know, we’re drinking in waters. We, we maybe used to do that in like our own church culture. Yeah, you could see that happening. But now we’ve got a much bigger, like, way we’re being influenced. I don’t know how do you see that type of happening, that type of, like, unbiblical coming in in a lot of different ways.

0:40:14 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, and I think what you were just saying is so helpful because it’s not just in. In what’s written, right, or what’s spoken on the reels. It’s also the subtext. It’s the. It’s the photographs, it’s the filters, it’s the images of, like, this is what, you know, beauty is. And then we start believing it. The one that’s driving me crazy is the one of. This is what a Christian wife looks like. And, you know, she’s walking through a field with the sun shining. And, you know, nothing against sour or chickens even. But, you know, like, there’s this subtext of the really godly women are.

0:40:52 – (Courtney Doctor): Their lives look like this. You know, there’s gardens and there’s. And so sometimes even just the subtext is damaging in and of itself. And we just need to use critical thinking on that. You know, I always try and run everything through the rubric. Could this idea that I have about Christian womanhood or my life as a believer, would this be true of my friends in Kisumu, Kenya? Would this be true of a woman that lived 600 years ago?

0:41:22 – (Courtney Doctor): Could this be true? Like, if it cannot transfer history and geography, then it’s not a biblical truth. It’s an application. Maybe it’s a cultural application. But knowing the difference between those two things, I think is really helpful. But just even the very, like, kind of to bring it full circle, the very strong advice that is given to. And let’s just say, let’s just pick young moms, the very strong advice on parenting that’s given via social media, via the Internet, or the very strong advice given for, you know, marriage.

0:42:04 – (Courtney Doctor): I mean, I mean, we just. If it’s not in the context of real relationship, especially like you said, coming predominantly from women that, you know and love and maybe have already been through all of these things, you know, we just have to be. We have to be careful. So many of the ideas are untried ideas. It’s like people are buying them hook, line and sinker, but they’re really just a thought experiment.

0:42:33 – (Courtney Doctor): And it’s like that. That’s not even on the radar. This is not. This new thing is not tried and true, and it can be pretty damaging. I think 20 years down the line, a lot of people are going to look back and be like, man, I would have been better off had I not bought this whole philosophy wholesale. But if I had been in talking with people in the context of my research, real life, who, who maybe could have some lived wisdom.

0:43:07 – (Melissa Kruger): One follow up to that, which is really good is whatever advice you take, bring your brain to it. Like, just because we, we were talking, like, we both followed the same parenting tapes that were popular back in our day. You know, we both had listened to them. We were laughing about this this weekend. We were like, yes, we were playing these. And so that’s how it came to us back in the day, cassette tapes.

0:43:33 – (Melissa Kruger): But, you know, both of us took certain things and didn’t do all the things because bring your, your context into whatever advice. Even if you take advice from a real person in your church, make sure you’re in the word yourself, listening to it. Make sure you’re bringing your brain to it and thinking, does that sound right? And. And sometimes we need to actually get out of our own communities and ask some advice from just maybe from a different context.

0:44:07 – (Melissa Kruger): So just whatever advice you’re taking, bring a lot of prayer and thoughtfulness to it. I mean, just there. Every person you’re listening to is finite and human. And I think sometimes we forget that even experts, they know about this much about the universe. God knows everything like make. And we get to pray to him and ask him for wisdom, and his Word offers us divine wisdom. So, you know, the things we would say, say here, here’s our advice. I know you would share this.

0:44:37 – (Melissa Kruger): Make sure you’re reading the Bible and praying.

0:44:39 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah.

0:44:42 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes. If you’ll take our Internet advice on that, because that’s going to help you filter whatever advice you’re getting from, from wherever. And it really does matter that we don’t just. I mean, I’m just very concerned about, like, buying into a whole system and leaving, checking my brain at the door.

0:45:01 – (Courtney Doctor): I used to have a group of young women at our church and we would, we met once a. And we would. I would print off mommy blogs. That was the era. And I gave them. Everybody had a blue pen. Everybody had a red pen. And I would say, take the red pen and circle everything you want to challenge and take the blue pen and circle everything you want to affirm. And it’s just that idea of like, just think about it. Like, just bring your critical thinking to the table.

0:45:26 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s so good. That’s so good. Well, so most of us are surprised and maybe a little bit intimidated the first time someone comes to us seeking advice. How can we become wise Counselors, even if we feel inadequate. So how can we not be people who give kind of just, oh, here’s my opinion, you should follow it. You know, how can we be wise counselors to the younger women? And you never feel like the older woman. I’ll tell you that right now.

0:45:54 – (Melissa Kruger): You always feel like the younger women. You’re like, what are you, why are you asking me? But h, how, how can we grow to be women who give wise advice in the context of real people in our real life?

0:46:04 – (Courtney Doctor): Yeah, I think be women who receive wise advice, press into just the humility of knowing the difference between an opinion and an actual biblical truth. And be in the word, be praying, none of it can happen. And be willing to be wrong. Listen to the people. It’s not a, you know, whether it’s discipleship or somebody coming to you for advice, it’s never a one way street. It has to be. Be learning from each other. And so yeah, the active learner, the continued humility, the increased knowledge of God’s word and his ways have to be part of that. Actually, didn’t we do an episode on that kitchen table counseling?

0:46:46 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes, yes, yes. So that would be a good one to go back to if you wanna listen more about being that counselor and just, you know, I think I can say I have learned so much by being wrong about advice I gave. Or just, or maybe it’s even this realizing on the back end how limited my advice was. Like I just didn’t understand the whole context and that’s how we all are. So I think what you just said about starting from a position of humility and say, tell me more about what you’re going through.

0:47:20 – (Melissa Kruger): Because I just realized I have some thoughts about things, but they’re from my lived experience. And when I hear someone else’s story, I’m like, oh, okay, I understand in that context why my advice just wouldn’t even fit in this. And we’re not talking about biblical truth. That’s not what we’re talking about at all. But we give different advice based situationally because that’s what wisdom does. It takes the truth of God and it applies it. And discernment applies wisdom in real life scenarios that aren’t listed in Scripture. Like how do we walk this out?

0:47:54 – (Melissa Kruger): And so that’s gonna take time and prayer and sometimes it means we it wrong. And we learned from that along, along the way. Well, I have a fun ending question for you. What is something you love to give or get advice about in life? Like just a fun thing?

0:48:14 – (Courtney Doctor): Well, I mean, so this is like, the quintessential embodied advice. Is Ruth Cho Simons giving advice on. On makeup and hair and clothes? I mean, I’m like, you know, she’s. She taught us how to gua sha. She taught us. Like, we were like, I don’t even know what that is. The three of us are together, and she’s, like, teaching us how to gua sha. And then when she did my hair one morning and we showed up at the conference to speak, and some woman came up to her and said, I could totally tell when Courtney walked in that you had done her hair, the 110%, like, okay, could she post, like, videos online about how to gua sha and how to put makeup on and do your hair? Sure.

0:48:57 – (Courtney Doctor): But is it so much better to have her be like, no, no, Courtney, look. That’s that. Look at that line. That does not look good.

0:49:04 – (Melissa Kruger): Yes. Yes.

0:49:05 – (Courtney Doctor): That’s probably my favorite.

0:49:06 – (Melissa Kruger): That’s so good. Yes. That’s really good. Well, friends, we hope that you’ve been encouraged by this episode of the Deep Dish from the Gospel Coalition. We hope that you will listen to it with some real friends in your real life and have a real discussion about. About Internet advice and where to find wisdom. And if so, we hope that you’ll share this episode with others, and we

0:49:28 – (Courtney Doctor): look forward to next time.