Coping with Information Overload - Quareness Series 101st "Lecture".
The recent decades have seen humanity becoming more and more impacted by what we might reasonably refer to as information overload, to the extent that it's now rapidly coming to be widely regarded as somewhat of an out-of-control monster...what some might call an Info-Apocalypse. However, like for many of our potential or real worrying problems it may not always be the wisest approach to regard any such as one big problem rather than a series of distinct problems which perhaps together may add up to one big crisis. Accordingly it may facilitate our understanding if we think of this info-apocalypse as essentially consisting of four separate problematic aspects which we might reasonably refer to as (i) content shock (ii) echo chambers (iii) constant distraction and (iv) fear of missing out.
Content Shock.
It's been said that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and the amount of information now available on-line is expanding so rapidly that none of us can possibly keep up. The gap between this total collective human knowledge and the time to consume it grows larger every second. In truth we can say that much new knowledge and skills is now available out there for us to learn, but it's so buried that many/most of us hardly even know it exists let alone how to effectively access it.
Echo Chambers.
It's something of a truism that as human groups grow in size they tend to (and indeed do) become more diverse and less stable, eventually fracturing into subgroups. Each new group tends to develop its own "in-house"
language and culture which improves communication inside the tent. However, this at the same time makes it harder for knowledge to move in and out of the tent because of the need for prior "translation". Each group develops a separate identity based partly on how it's different and these conceptual walls can lead to polarisation and indeed prejudice e.g. religions, politics and most other fields. The tendency is for each group to live largely in its own echo chamber which it believes to be "true" reality, and may strive to maintain this belief by demonising other groups. And in today's age of social media with its personalised targetted content, we can see these echo chambers becoming even more insular as we’re exposed to less and less information outside our own chosen groups.
Constant Distraction.
Sellers, software developers and even hackers are gaining unprecedented access to data on human behaviour and are using this information to capture our attention and addict us to their product(s). The virtual globe is awash with business models based on advertising and/or spreading misinformation through "creative" editting in order to generate the maximum number of clicks for the least amount of effort. And most (if not all) of this content marketed specifically to our own inclinations, is increasingly proving to be a powerful distraction keeping us from pursuing more useful information for our own goals.
Fear of Missing Out.
Today there is more enticing/interesting ("I'd love to read or watch this") content readily available than ever before. But perhaps having more choices is not necessarily a good thing, given its potential to quickly become
overwhelming. Rather than simply the number of options, however, what more precisely makes this plethora of choices overwhelming is the number of good options where letting them go (aka loss aversion) is painful for us. In addition having so many good options means we often have to make decisions in which there isn't a clear best. Evidently these kinds of decisions can be extremely psychologically challenging for us. Where we have too many good options combined with not enough foreknowledge on which is best, we can find ourselves constantly second-guessing our choices.
These above four "challenges" tend to point the average person (i.e. who doesn't deliberately foster awareness) towards a media diet of "junk food" where s/he engages with what's presented, clicks on distractions and never is quite sure which is best when offered good options. As a result the Internet can look more and more like an information desert full of mostly junk information. And more worryingly it seems that many people living on this junk media diet may believe they’re getting more informed and smarter when in fact the opposite is happening.
On the other hand (flip side) it's a fact that there is more breakthrough and diverse knowledge now available than ever before, much of it free or at least affordable for the average person. And this is encouraging in that if we're careful about what we consume we have the opportunity to live in an information utopia. Like as Charles Dickens pointed out in A Tale of Two Cities - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us" - our human condition is not at all one-sided. Those who learn to access breakthrough knowledge quickly while minimising the "noise" can develop a much underrated skill and gain a huge advantage in today's world. Such deliberating people can live in a veritable information cornucopia with lots of juicy fruit.
In order to gain this skill and its accompanying advantage we'd have to change our individual approach to media from a reactive to a proactive one. Those who control the stream of our news feeds, default settings and guide
notifications do not have our best interests in mind. Indeed these feeds are designed solely to keep our attention for as long as possible in both the short and long term...a business model fundamentally in conflict with our own life goals. Our individual core challenge then is how to find the signal within the noise, the needle in the haystack, the really useful breakthrough knowledge in a sea of distraction...essentially how to live in an info-utopia rather than an info-apocalypse.
Real learning seems to require us to distinguish between incremental knowledge and breakthrough knowledge...it's easier to find something once we know what we’re really looking for. With incremental knowledge we merely acquire further confirmation of what we already know to be true, but such may be quickly forgotten. On the other hand breakthrough knowledge introduces us to a new way of looking at the world through challenging our
fundamental beliefs about how things work...and it tends to stick with us. And our consciously seeking out this latter type of knowledge with its potential to fundamentally change our lives, also helps us to avoid mindlessly consuming content simply because it has a good title, shows up in a news feed or just sounds kinda interesting. It's also reasonably certain that evidence which proves our existing ideas to be wrong is exponentially more valuable than confirming evidence...a core value for real science which grows by what is proven wrong rather than what is proven right.
Although the rate of overload may be increasing, information overwhelm is an age-old problem. Collective human knowledge has been growing exponentially at a faster rate than our ability to process it for a long time. Even the Roman philosopher Seneca reportedly asked...what is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a lifetime? The learner is not instructed so much as burdened by the mass of them. Today we are immersed in a tsunami of available fact, context and perspective which provides a sensation of loss of autonomy and of personal responsibility for being informed. And we are constantly faced with the problem of how to effectively cope within this "drowning" environment.
One promising approach may be to forge mental models as representations of phenomena observed across time, across fields of study and across domains of life. Such could potentially deliver much of value because the
knowledge they impart would be more condensed, retain more value over time and be broadly applicable across fields. Here's a couple of practical examples:
- The 80/20 rule of thumb i.e. the idea that 20% of efforts or input causes 80% of results or output..a rule applicable to business, creativity, health, relationships and many more domains.
- Opportunity Cost which is the value of the choice of a best alternative cost when making a decision. This applies across our entire lives because it encourages us to reflect on what the potential alternatives to a decision might be and indeed prevents us from "impetuously" going with the first choice that comes to mind.
With such mental models we can begin to see the underlying patterns at work in every area of life, and it becomes much easier to spot the signal in the noise.
Learning how to learn ultimately helps us to find breakthrough knowledge and apply it to our lives in order to get a good result in the least amount of time. Relatively few people seem to understand that this involves its own distinct skills set and as a result most of us do not improve. And as it relates to information overload, this learning skills package would include:
- Understanding the scientific method in order to identify high quality information.
- Understanding the value of diverse knowledge.
- Understanding the cognitive biases that lead to us to trust information we perhaps shouldn’t (e.g. "backfire" effect, confirmation bias, groupthink, halo effect).
Whilst everyone with the Internet has more or less equal access, not everyone has an equal understanding of how to use that access...some people may be living in an info-apocalypse and others in an info-utopia. And if we don’t take it upon ourselves to learn the skills to manage our online environment, and to willingly spread this knowhow to others, our society is likely to grow even more polarised...perhaps with shades of Huxley's Brave New World.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
January, 2019.