In the 1920s, psychologist Hermann Rorschach created a test that asked people to interpret ambiguous inkblots. Some saw butterflies, others saw monsters—each answer revealing more about the observer than the image itself.
A century later, truth works the same way. The same facts, events, and data are interpreted in completely different ways, shaped by bias, emotion, and misinformation. Reality is no longer fixed—it’s one giant Rorschach test.
AI is generating content at unprecedented scale, and misinformation spreads faster than ever. We’re no longer just seeing inkblots—we’re drowning in them. Flooded with fragmented, contradictory information and AI-generated images, we’re left to piece together what’s real.
In this era of deep fakes, echo chambers, and data overload, communicating effectively has morphed from sharing information to making sense of it. And that requires three essential skills: dot connecting, critical thinking, and metaphor. Mastering these skills will help you not just survive but thrive in the AI era.
Dot Connecting: Seeing The Invisible Threads
We live in a world where data is abundant, but wisdom is scarce. In 2015 the world created and consumed 16 zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes). By 2025, we’re predicted to reach an almost unfathomable 181 zettabytes.
For years, data was the domain of experts–researchers, scientists, executives. But GenAI has democratized information, making reams of it available to the masses. GenAI is flooding the world with content, but raw information isn’t power—understanding is. Understanding is the process that turns information into knowledge and wisdom. The winners will be those who can efficiently sift through vast amounts of data to create meaning–finding patterns, synthesizing, and connecting dots.
To master this skill, look for relationships between seemingly unrelated ideas. The most valuable insights emerge at intersections - of ideas and expertise. Steve Jobs credited a calligraphy class he took from a Trappist monk with influencing Apple’s revolutionary typography and iconic design aesthetic. Painter, scientist, and engineer Leonardo da Vinci was brilliant at bridging disciplines making dozens of discoveries at the intersection of art and anatomy, physiology and engineering. And, as fiction follows life, Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes remains iconic because he connected clues in ways others missed, seeing the invisible threads linking seemingly unrelated events.
This kind of systematic, interconnected thinking and dot connecting is what’s required to turn zettabytes into meaning. We don’t need communicators who see a mass of stars in the sky. We need those who connect them into constellations and point them out to the rest of us.
Critical Thinking: Separating Signal From Noise
The term “post-truth” was coined in the 1990s but usage spiked 2,000% in 2016 and Oxford Dictionary named it the Word of the Year in the face of Brexit and the U.S. presidential election. But long before the term was coined the post-truth spectacle was alive and well.
In 1964, the infamous Daisy television ad juxtaposed a freckle-faced girl pulling the petals off a daisy with a nuclear explosion, prompting a landslide victory for President Lyndon Johnson. With its thinly veiled implication (without any evidence) that his opponent Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war, the ad appealed to emotion, fear and insecurity. The truth simply didn’t matter.
And that’s exactly where we find ourselves today. Everything is essentially a Daisy ad. The decline of traditional journalism and the rise of partisan media have exacerbated rampant polarization, as people increasingly consume curated content tailored to their worldview. AI and deep fake technology have intensified the challenge, making deception more sophisticated and difficult to detect.
Critical thinking is our only defense. This requires examining and interrogating every source. It means intentionally looking for contradictions, even when something sounds compelling. Slowing down is also essential. Misinformation thrives on speed; critical thinking requires pause and reflection–pressure testing new information against what you already know. And it requires you to challenge the assumptions you’ve built over the years to continually question the status quo. It takes time and practice.
But it also takes courage. Galileo defied the church and redefined the cosmos by challenging the widely accepted belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. In the 1800s, Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that washing hands drastically reduced infections in hospitals–decades later, germ theory proved him right. Alan Turing, who cracked the Nazi ENIGMA cipher, laid the foundation for modern AI and computing by envisioning a seemingly “intelligent” machine that mimics human behavior.
History’s code breakers and paradigm shifters show us that there is no such thing as a singular truth. Challenge all the possibilities by removing your blinders, questioning assumptions, and seeking out divergent points of view.
Metaphor: Making Meaning Stick
Poet Robert Frost famously said, “Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.” He believed metaphor was both the heart of poetry and the heart of thinking. Without it, we are at great risk of misinterpretation, manipulation, and confusion.
AI generates data, but humans understand stories. Every metaphor is a short story that creates clarity, emotional impact, and mutual understanding. Metaphor helps us make sense of the world because it helps us to immediately understand what we don’t know in the context of something we do.
Powerful metaphors shape perception. Science uses them to explain the unseen—DNA as a code. History uses them to frame narratives—the “Iron Curtain” dividing East and West. In politics, media, and everyday conversations, metaphors are a shortcut to understanding.
Einstein famously compared gravity to a stretched fabric, allowing people to visualize space-time. Martin Luther King Jr., in his I Have a Dream speech, likened racial injustice to America writing a “bad check” to its Black citizens—an analogy that made economic and moral injustice instantly clear. Shakespeare’s phrase “All the world’s a stage” condensed life’s complexity into a single, unforgettable image.
The power of metaphor lies in its ability to frame complex concepts in a familiar way that resonates deeply and instantly. Sadly, it seems to be a dying art these days as people want key takeaways and spoon feeding instead of ideas that make them think. But metaphor is a distinctly human art we must embrace in order to win the battle of the narratives because in the AI era, those who master the metaphor will control the message.
Truth has become a Rorschach test—distorted, debated, and shaped by whoever happens to be looking. As we are overwhelmed by zettabytes of facts, we can’t expect to communicate in the same way we always have and make any impact. We have to learn new skills. By mastering dot connecting, critical thinking, and metaphor, we don’t just navigate the AI landscape, we thrive in it. We turn information into insight and become the sharp, creative communicators this era demands.
AI can generate content, but not wisdom. Facts are abundant, but knowledge generates meaning and meaning is power. The future belongs to those who can make sense of the inkblots.
First published in Forbes.com.
