In my speculative thriller The Siren's Code, one of the most chilling concepts is something I called QR, short for Question Rationale Removal. It's a fictional neural upgrade, very loosely based on dopamine, that removes the mental pause before a decision, bypassing uncertainty and doubt.

I was reminded of this during a parent information evening at my daughter’s school, when the teacher said:

“Teenagers are wired to take high-risk decisions with poor judgement.” Because during puberty, dopamine outpaces serotonin — Andrew Curran explains.

My character who embodies this feature most fully is a government-trained operative.. not a pubescent teen. He's fast, sharp, and decisive. But he's also cut off from self-reflection, unable to second-guess a command or weigh its morality. In effect, he starts to lose emotion.

The process of decision making on a simple task has been indicated to take 60–110 ms. But let’s face it, some of us deliberate decisions for weeks. However you look at it, he’s a few steps ahead… and that’s powerful. It allows him to anticipate other people’s hesitation, to predict what they are about to do. He can basically read the future. But QR is fiction. Isn’t it?

Teenage Brains, Tech Brains

In UX, we’re taught to remove friction. Make it seamless, reduce the number of steps, guide the user. Nudge, suggest, recommend. And, we are taught to create Delight.

But delight = dopamine.

Is good UX encouraging users to ‘take high-risk decisions with poor judgement”?

This is what ChatGPT told me about dopamine:

You become more focused… but possibly less reflective
High dopamine levels can increase attention and drive — but also make you act faster. That might mean less time spent questioning or evaluating your choices.

This is my Augmented solider.

You’re more likely to repeat a behaviour
Dopamine reinforces behaviour by making it feel rewarding. If an app, notification, or action triggers a dopamine hit, you’re more likely to do it again, encouraging habit loops — you start operating on autopilot.

And I think we can agree, this isn’t just teenagers!

Yet, some of the most valuable human experiences require friction. Struggle. Reflection. The “wait… should I?” moment.

The Dawn of Conversational Interface

Enter ChatGPT. Or any large language model, really. We’ve created a tool that’s astonishingly good at giving us answers without any struggle. Too good…and nothing if not delightful.

As a UX professional, I’m excited by what these models can do. But as a human and a novelist, I’m cautious. I could have researched dopamine myself, instead of asking ChatGPT to give me a neat set of bullets. The tool is brilliant. But if I’m not careful it will make me soft.

What happens to our minds when we no longer tolerate not-knowing? When the moment of doubt is always papered over by a perfect paragraph? When we don’t need to retrieve, recall or reason because the interface will do it for us?

Another line from the lecture that stuck with me:

“Any time that you, as a learner, look up an answer or have somebody tell or show you something that you could, drawing on current cues and your past knowledge, generate instead, you rob yourself of a powerful learning opportunity. Retrieval, in effect, is a powerful memory modifier.”
—Educational psychologist Bjork, 1975

In other words: doing the mental work matters. You can’t outsource understanding. Yes, we can do our jobs faster. But if we outsource too much of the “struggle,” what else do we lose? That’s the premise of my novel, but this is real life. Not a button in the brain, but a UX philosophy pushed to its extreme.

The Illness of Ease

We understand that an unfit body becomes more vulnerable to illness, to fragility, to dependence. But are we ready to apply that same logic to our brains?

Using a tool like ChatGPT or Google for everything is like taking an Uber everywhere. If you rely on it too often, you risk forgetting how to walk, unless you deliberately keep the habit alive. I’ve definitely forgotten how to map read, and I don’t imagine my children will ever learn. Your mental muscles atrophy only if you stop exercising them.

As the teacher at that parent evening summed up:
“I’m not saying don’t use the tool. I am saying notice when the tool is using you.”

UX design has a role in this too. When we build systems that encourage autopilot behaviour, remove visible structure or flatten learning curves completely, we risk creating users who are faster, but not deeper.

Think of TikTok, Amazon, or Uber:

You’re rewarded for making fast decisions.
The UI is designed to minimise doubt or delay.
You don’t question. You act. And that makes the company money.

So to come back to my Augmented character — and the question of is QR fiction? We build user experience to be efficient, but not reflective. And when speed and loyalty generate profit, removing emotion isn’t a design oversight. It’s the business model.

Designing with Friction

So how do we resist this?

As designers, of both graphical and conversational interfaces, we can choose to build friction back in. But it must be intentional friction: a pause that prompts reflection, a choice that requires thought, a button that makes you stop, not slide.

For example, amongst the growing number of GPTs — a dizzying array of immediate solutions — is Study Mode, a Socratic tutoring model that asks guided questions, allowing the user to discover the solution for themselves.

Other tools are already experimenting with “slow design”: apps that encourage journaling instead of posting, learning platforms that force retrieval instead of just giving answers, or checkout flows that make you confirm a high-stakes purchase with a deliberate pause.

Speculative Fiction, Real-World Parallels

When I created the QR upgrade in The Siren’s Code, I didn’t think I was writing about the world I live in. I thought I was exaggerating.

But now I see it differently. Question Rationale Removal isn’t just a sci-fi speculation — it’s the slow erosion of everyday decisions: the skip button, the instant answer from ChatGPT, the autofill form. It’s how we design for speed instead of understanding.

And yes, it’s fast, easy… addictive.

But in removing friction, we also risk removing the parts of experience that make us human: the struggle, the frustration, the breakthrough, the joy. The very emotions that shape how we learn, connect, and grow.

That’s what I was really writing about with my augmented character, not just what we gain from optimisation, but what we stand to lose. Because, to revert to my novel again “A world without questioning is easy to control.”

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