The Intellectual Obesity Crisis - by Gurwinder - T

🎀 Highlights

when we learned to produce it on an industrial scale, suddenly our love for sweet things became a liability. The same is now true of data.

our curiosity, which once focused us, now distracts

Information addiction is compared to overeating in this article - just like our bodies crave sugar, our minds now crave endless information that may not be useful.

constant flood of data in the digital age has led to an epidemic of intellectual obesity, clogging our minds with junk information.

In an attention economy, low-quality information floods the internet, satisfying our brains just like fast food satisfies hunger. This junk info, abundant on social media, ranges from gossip to outrage-inducing stories. The craving for more information, regardless of its quality, has reshaped how we consume and value knowledge.

we need to optimize our mental diet by curating high-quality, useful information.

We're all just info-holics in need of a digital detox!

"The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" by Nicholas Carr

A 2019 study by researchers at Berkeley found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as food.

the brain treats information as a reward in itself; it doesn't matter whether the info is accurate or useful,

on the plains of the savanna, information was as scarce and precious as sugar.

most verified facts do nothing to improve your life or understanding, and are, to paraphrase Nietzsche, as useful as knowledge of the chemical composition of water to someone who is drowning.

Market forces and social pressures have caused junk info to dominate the web because it's cheap, easy to produce, and good at stealing your attention. Its ubiquity means it's always within easy reach of netizens, and as a result, millions of people are now hooked on it. It's why they endlessly scroll their Twitter timelines or check their Instagram notifications, or repeatedly click refresh on the YouTube homepages,

The vast majority of the online content you consume today won't improve your understanding of the world.

people browsing social media tend to experience “normative dissociation” in which they become less aware and less able to process information,

often can’t recall what they just read.

But despite being “empty calories,” junk info still tastes delicious.

it offers you the sensation of mental nourishment—even though all you're really doing is shoving virtual popcorn into your skull.

addiction to useless info leads to what I call “intellectual obesity.” Just as gorging on junk food bloats your body, so gorging on junk info bloats your mind, filling it with a cacophony of half-remembered gibberish that sidetracks your attention and confuses your senses.

you become concerned by trivialities and outraged by falsehoods. These concerns and outrages push you to consume even more, and all the time that you're consuming, you're prevented from doing anything else: learning, focusing, even thinking.

We now live in a state of constant distraction caused by an addiction to useless information, and this distraction is so overpowering it even distracts us from the fact we're being distracted.

develop a habit for meta-awareness;

pay attention to what you're paying attention

The way I beat intellectual obesity was by trying to become the best writer I can be. Writing requires you to filter out bad information because you have a duty to your readers to not be full of shit.

when you notice the myriad holes that all this junk has left in your memory, then it’ll finally be clear that you weren’t consuming it as much as it was consuming you.

A typical example on social media would be a photo of a freshly cooked burger, captioned with “Look what I just made!” but posted without a recipe so you can't even recreate it. Such an image might make you briefly salivate, and possibly spur you to make a burger of your own, but it provides no discernible value to your life.

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satisfaction of feeling like you're learning—it offers you the sensation of mental nourishment—even though all you're really doing is shoving virtual popcorn into your skull.

low-quality information is just as effective at satisfying our information-cravings as high-quality information, the most efficient way to get attention in the digital age is by mass-producing low-quality “junk info”

Like fast food, junk info is cheap to produce and satisfying to consume, but high in additives and low in nutrition.

When you find yourself reaching unprompted for your phone, or hovering over the Twitter icon, invoke the “10-10-10 rule:” ask yourself, if I consume this info, how will I feel about it in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years?

realize that the brief sugar-rush offered by junk info is so transient and insignificant in the grand scheme of your life that it's simply not worth your time.

keep your bearings in a world constantly trying to lure you away from your brain.

whatever the web serves you, know that this banquet culminates in a bitter dessert: at the end of your life, when you're weighing your regrets, you probably won’t say “Man, I wish I’d spent more time browsing the web.”