Information Overload - do you feel it today?

[Melooon]

I found this great video today about the start of the idea of information overload in relation to computers, media and what sounds like an prediction of social media!

Theres one section in it that stood out to me (at 2:25) "There is a danger you become dependent on the briefer; the man who can package information in a way thats [short and] comprehensible [the risk is that the briefer will be more of an actor than a thinker]" "The first thing that comes to your mind is almost always wrong even if it sounds plausible; yet when you're information overloaded you act on the first thing you think you understand" - that sounds like an almost perfect prediction of the risks of social media evolving.

Id like to hear peoples opinions on it now that we are 40 years into the home computer age - do you suffer information overload? Have you suffered it? Has it gotten better since taking part in the web revival? Or has it gotten worse??

What do you do to combat it, and what has worked to make it better for you?

[Memory]

"There is a danger your become dependent on the briefer; the man who can package information in a way thats [short and] comprehensible [the risk is that the briefer will be more of an actor than a thinker]"

This reminds me of something I said in another thread about being succinct vs long-winded and how people tend to ignore you if your posts are too long. It's not necessarily a good or bad thing. The ability to present information in a way that can be understood by the layperson while not sacrificing its integrity is a skill of its own. It is performative to an extent, so I get the actor comparison, but it's not necessarily invalidating. It's like the quote about separating your thinkers and your fighters, so all your fighting is done by fools and all your thinking is done by cowards. If you separate your thinkers from your presenters, you have your thinking done by people who can't communicate their ideas and your presenting done by people who can't think (so, basically social media :P).

The most influential thinkers tend to be really good at presenting information in an easily digestible way. Think of people like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Confucius, etc. Ignoring for the moment that some of the people I listed have egregious personal flaws, they're well known as much for their intelligence as their ability to express the information they have.

It's also worth noting that just because the format is longer doesn't mean it's more accurate. Fascists love to dress up their dogma in long manifestos that make adherents feel smart for reading them.

I think that if someone is truly interested in a topic, they're likely to search out longer articles. I like the rotating summaries of articles on Wikipedia's front page. It's good for getting quick bites of information from a (relatively) reliable source, and if something strikes your interest you can always dive deeper into it. However, I don't think that satisfies the same itch as the information people get from social media, which is basically gossip.

When you're scrolling through social media and see short, quippy factoids, even if it's not something you're particularly interested in it's easy to absorb and repeat them whether they're true or false or just the partial truth. Then when everyone thinks they know something about everything they start to devalue those comprehensive/long-winded authorities and consider them elitist, so it's important for experts to not alienate non-experts.

As to the main question of whether I feel overloaded with information, I don't think so. I'm always looking for something new online to digest, whether it's news, music, videos or conversation here in MelonLand. What tends to make me feel overwhelmed is a constant barrage of negative information, like when the world seems like it's coming undone. I still try to keep aware of the bad things so that I'm not ignorant of the hardships in the world, but I avoid being consumed by them. It's a hard balance to strike without seeming apathetic, but you're no good to anyone if you exhaust yourself with worrying.

[JINSBEK]

This is an amazing find. Thank you for sharing it, Melon! I want to also recommend the 2011 BBC documentary series, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. It covers much of the same subjects. Right now I am going to comment only on the clip you shared from The Information Society, I have not yet watched that full documentary.

That point that Kissinger makes: “And the briefer in turn, may have more the qualities of an actor than of a thinker. Anyone who has ever studied a subject seriously, knows: that the first thing that comes to your mind is almost always wrong.” I can give a potent, if thankfully “harmless”, example.

The ancient Mesopotamians have this myth which explains the creation of humans with disabilities. It is a beer-fuelled friendly competition between two of their major gods: Enki, a God of Earth and Wit Who created all senior Gods, Who created man to work the earth and perfect it for the Gods and to free the Gods from earthly toil so that they may focus on Godly administration, and Who later sneakily saves a man and his family from the Deluge, by instructing him in the construction of a great boat and to fill it with pairs of every living creature. (Why did the other Gods demand the obliteration of humanity? Because their incessant complaints and wish-begging were so noisome that the God of Storms decided to wipe them out—their constant whining were louder than His most terrible storms!) And Ninmah, the Great Goddess of Nurturing and Nursing. I give all this context for a reason.

So in the aftermath of the creation of humanity, everyone is elated. Lady Ninmah joyfully downs beer with Her husband Enki, and cajoles Him in good spirit that though He made men, She can make their fates happy or unhappy. She demonstrates, making one disabled man after another:

“This one’s blind!”
“Well, I will give him deft prowess over music, fit for the ears of a king!”

“This one can’t move his legs!”
“Well, he can still write, and serve a king as a scribe as beautifully as any other!”

“This one’s infertile!”
“And yet she can weave! And weave textiles and garments worthy for a queen!”

And so on, and so forth.
And in this manner Enki apportions a happy fate to all the unfortunate humans Ninmah presents to Him. And then, finally, He turns the tables on His Wife, and says, “Now, You should decree a fate for My creature, give him his daily bread too.” He makes a man so enfeebled—its eyes can barely see, it cannot even lift its head, its spine is so weak all it can do is squirm, the feet do nothing, the hands cannot grasp, it cannot even reach for the bread that Ninmah so offers it, it cannot bring the food to its own mouth, it can’t talk, it poops and pees itself: look, He makes a baby. One should note, babies have not existed until this point… Lady Ninmah cries, “The man you have fashioned is neither alive nor dead! He cannot support himself!” And it’s at this point that the recovered tablets suffer a gap… The myth resumes with that pathetic creature Umul in Lady Ninmah’s lap, and Enki raises Umul up in praise, saying that he will be fit to build the greatest of His houses… It is fragmentary here, but Enki proclaims that not only should His virility be praised, but Her wisdom be confirmed—the implication here, is that Ninmah’s feminine wisdom to nurse and nurture the weak and feeble is correct, so that they may grow strong, like any other, to have a happy and worthy fate on this earth.

I mention all this, because there is a YouTube video on this myth. An animation by Overly Sarcastic Productions. At the time of writing, it has 1.4 million views. You may guess from the name of the creators that it is… not of serious scholarly or cultural calibre. Yet to 1.4 million people. It has introduced—cursorily—two drunken, malevolent, capricious gods, completely glossed over the fact that the final enfeebled human is a baby and simply makes out Umul to be the most fucked up human imaginable, the first of all babies, that from this point in Mesopotamian myth all men start as babies, the mercy and grace shown by both Gods here… It paints Enki as psychotically boasting about his own penis, rather than explaining, sensitively and humanely, the ancient Mesopotamian views on man’s role on earth, the roles of the Gods, the roles of Father and Mother respectively. NOPE IT’S JUST ENKI AND NINMAH ARE DRUNKARDS AND ENKI LOVES HIS OWN DICK HAHAHAHAHA LET’S ALL LAUGH AT THE ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIANS FOR MAKING SUCH A ZAAAAANY CREATION MYTH

Now one can argue, so these YouTube makers misrepresented and mischaracterised a dead culture! So what? Well, it’s not like people in the present can learn a thing or two about how to view their disabled brethren, how to help foster greatness even in those of lesser physical abilities, and how to be kind to one another and offer each and every man an opportunity to earn their daily bread with pride. No no no, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with depriving people of the real humanity of this story, is there?

The average viewer will not look into the myth, will not look at the tablets, will not explore the rest of Mesopotamian mythology or culture as a whole, obviously will not consult someone experienced in Assyriology for an actual critical understanding of this myth, will not gain anything but some misguided, perverse satisfaction at somehow being intellectually and morally superior to the drunk Gods of Old.

…It is a healthy habit to have, I suppose, to question everything that is presented to oneself, but it is tiring and saddening to know that most of what you will glean from many online sources will be partial, and sometimes completely misrepresentational. I don’t like it. I deal with this information overload by looking into things myself… And it is isolating. Really, really isolating, at times.

[VioletHeaven]

Id like to hear peoples opinions on it now that we are 40 years into the home computer age - do you suffer information overload? Have you suffered it? Has it gotten better since taking part in the web revival? Or has it gotten worse??

What do you do to combat it, and what has worked to make it better for you?

I don't suffer from information overload, not really. I'm the kind of person to hear about something interesting (like the story of Enki and Ninmah that my partner retells), then dig into the source material to try to gain a greater understanding. I read the translations of the original tablets, and I read into other mythology to try to understand it. I feel like the problem of information overload almost coincides with the rise of easily accessible mass aggregators, first with online tabloids, and now with generative AI trained with the sum of all human knowledge. I don't think that most news sites that try to understand and simplify knowledge are bad, sometimes they can be very useful to communicate a different perspective on a topic, but I think the loss of detail can be very important. Especially now, like how the video you linked mentions, people are so specialized in one topic that they trust experts in topics they're not familiar with, rather than trying to gain a perspective and knowledge of their own. They trust that the great information aggregator that is Wikipedia (and the internet as a whole) is correct.

Now, I don't think it's wrong to skim Wikipedia in an attempt to gain a surface level understanding, or find something neat to share with others, but the problem arises when these facts aren't interrogated. People don't try to further their knowledge, they'll just put their own spin on it, and communicate it again. That is how you get people claiming that wormholes are real and have been discovered, when in actuality, the published paper is trying to seek help in correcting an error in their measuring instruments. Then when corrections have been made, nobody shares it, because nobody bothered to care about the topic aside from experts in that field, and the generalists who heard about it.

Computers are wonderful. They let us connect to other people, to other opinions, to comparable libraries of Alexandrias worth of knowledge. But they have incredible potential for misinformation, for destroying critical thinking (why think about a topic when you can google the answer?), and for almost lowering the collective intelligence of the public due to the overload of information. Imagine you go to a library, you go to the history section in the archives, and you skim the titles until you find the source you want. Sure, the curation might be up to the librarians, but the information doesn't jump out at you in flashy headlines or in talking head news reports or in a series of catchy, witty tweets. It's a book, and you can choose to read it. Information overload only happens when you have it being forced down your throat in a series of 30 second videos, rather than carefully curating the sources you want to read over the next month.

In my opinion, concept of a generalist that the video you mentioned isn't so much someone who knows a bit of everything, it's someone who is willing to interrogate sources of information using the technology provided, even if they come from a position of very little initial understanding of a topic, rather than blindly relying on the opinion of an expert (or someone who positions themselves as an expert) on the internet.

Now one can argue, so these YouTube makers misrepresented and mischaracterised a dead culture! So what? Well, it’s not like people in the present can learn a thing or two about how to view their disabled brethren, how to help foster greatness even in those of lesser physical abilities, and how to be kind to one another and offer each and every man an opportunity to earn their daily bread with pride. No no no, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with depriving people of the real humanity of this story, is there?

The average viewer will not look into the myth, will not look at the tablets, will not explore the rest of Mesopotamian mythology or culture as a whole, obviously will not consult someone experienced in Assyriology in an actual critical understanding of this myth, will not gain anything but some misguided, perverse satisfaction at somehow being intellectually and morally superior to the drunk Gods of Old.

…It is a healthy habit to have, I suppose, to question everything that is presented to oneself, but it is tiring and saddening to know that most of what you will glean from many online sources will be partial, and sometimes completely misrepresentational. I don’t like it. I deal with this information overload by looking into things myself… And it is isolating. Really, really isolating, at times.

I suppose a great part of my perspective on information interrogation comes from my theological beliefs in Judaism. There are many stories in the Torah, and then the Talmud, about Rabbis interrogating God, arguing with each other, and trying to gain a greater understanding rather than blindly trusting one another. That's where the joke "Two Jews, three opinions" comes from. Also humorous headlines where two Jews are kicked out of prison in Afghanistan because they would not stop arguing... I digress. Anyway, I suppose I strongly believe that you should form your own opinion, based on available evidence, almost especially if you hear an interesting discussion or topic. Sure, the OSP video might try to communicate the facts, and clearly at least 1.4 million people were communicated to, but it never tried to inspire people to dig deeper, to read the actual tablets, to learn more about Mesopotamian mythology. They just hear a funny story about how drunk gods created the most disabled person imaginable, rather than a story about loving and nurturing a baby so he can become strong like other men.

I don't know if it's a failure of the education system, or of society as a whole (social media, news aggregators...) that less and less people are fostering this healthy habit of questioning everything.

Yesterday, I saw a little girl refusing to believe her mother's opinion, and demanded to have her phone so that she could "look up the facts herself" because her daddy "always tells her to never believe what anyone says about anything unless they can prove it". Well, she did, and while she doesn't yet have the capacity to understand the concept of light scattering based on wavelength... she must have felt very accomplished for looking it up herself, and making her own assertion of the facts. I was very proud of her, too.

I think it's natural for kids to question everything - Why should I sleep at this time? Why do is this fruit sour? Why is the sky blue? - and it falls on parents to foster that, and answer those questions, and give them something more to think about and reflect on. The fact that now every kid has a smartphone and is instead fed a curated algorithm of content that doesn't inspire further questioning... that's information overload. They're overloaded with information so they don't have to think or ask questions. Then they grow into adults who continue those habits because they never learned how to do otherwise.

...I'm grateful for Melonland existing. I have a space to ask questions, to think and let my thoughts flow, to have to find my sources before I repeat a fact. I can very easily write a long form response to a topic I'm interested in, because I trust that most people here will reflect, ask questions, do their own research, et cetera. Sometimes they'll even disagree and I think that's wonderful!

But... this is one island in a swamp of flashy information overload. Like Jinsbek, I tend to feel very isolated and lonely when it comes to my need to learn and express information. ...Most people don't want that. They just want a 5 second fact they can repeat to someone else. I'm grateful I'm here, and I'm grateful for having someone like him in my life.