Overload

It is not a controversial statement to say we have an information overload problem. One has simply to exist in modernity to feel it. It is the water in which we swim. So fully immersed, we forget that, just as we cannot breathe under water, we cannot think while submerged in information. It may be time we start to remember this—assuming any of us can come up to the surface long enough to do so—and decide if it is time to just get out of the water, or learn to grow some gils.

Sweet, Sweet Ignorance

A peasant, assumedly fairly ignorant

In the past, most people lived in an ignorance so profound, we likely cannot imagine it. They were delightfully unburdened by the vast flow of knowledge we enjoy today, and enviously unaware of much outside their very narrow, very tangible world. As radio and then TV spread, we all became aware of the scope of the world and exposed to so much that did not directly affect our lives—who was in power in other countries, earthquakes in strange places, the personal lives and doings of famous people we’d never meet. But this was still a very narrow straw through which we were carefully fed knowledge, curated by the few, and distributed parsimoniously. It was was yet within our minds ability to process or, more often, ignore. Some few, however, were more eager than the others and able to gorge upon this new information. People with minds that, either by birth or training, could simply process a little greater flow of information than the rest of us. Like a rogue, self-improving AI, these few created ever improving methods of generating and distributing information (thanks, Claude).

Still, most of us just sipped at that straw and went about our own little lives with not much more than a vaguely broader sense of the largeness of the world, couched in the terms of the few narratives with which we were indoctrinated. But then, at last, those rogue AI’s invented the information flood that is the internet. And no one could escape its information-drenched tendrils. No longer were we content with sipping from our little straw of pre-processed, homogenized information. We were offered a firehose of the raw, unfiltered stuff and we eagerly clamped our mouths over the nozzle and turned it all the way on. Turns out, that probably wasn’t the best approach.

Some Thoughts on Mushrooms

We apparently used to be super jacked

Humans have a wonderful ability to process information and to pattern match. In more primitive times, this most likely kept us alive by enabling survival behaviors like being able to recognize dangerous mushroom by extrapolating from our knowledge of ones that were proven poisonous in the past or by extrapolating certain characteristics that differentiated the tasty ones from the kill-y ones (and, importantly, the fun ones). That ability is probably a critical reason we survived as a species. However, what if there had been a million types of mushrooms, each with the ability to change appearance every generation and 70% of them poisonous? That would have sucked and if this variability had extended to most of our food sources and predators, it certainly would have broken our pattern matching ability and, most likely, we would have died off. Our survival hinged on the threats and opportunities not overloading our own data processing abilities.

You can probably see where this is going. As we are so brilliant, we decided to create a world full of these millions of types of clever, ever-changing mushrooms, and are now trying to decide which ones to eat using the cognitive abilities trained long-ago on very boring, non-transforming mushrooms. Our mental equipment is no longer up to the task and we are now losing the ability to maintain a cohesive mental model of our world. Given that our very survival depends on maintaining enough cohesiveness to make decisions that benefit and protect ourselves and those we care about, we will do whatever is necessary to do so. Unfortunately, as we strive to create that order, we take great liberty with truth and tend to cram facts, ideas, and desires together in our own unique and flawed way. And as the inputs of information increase, so too does the entropy of our mental model. More information does not equal more understanding or knowledge. It is just more information that we try to compute. In the end, we have this cobbled together mess of random information, half-truths, lies, self-deceptions, emotions, as well as some beauty and truth. Oh, and probably a few mushrooms in there somewhere.

Logical Responses

We've all been there...

It seems that is what we are experiencing now, as truths and lies become equal, as conspiracy theories spread and are given nearly the weight of scientific theories, as those in power can say nearly anything and some sizable contingent of their tribe will not just simply accept it but internalize it, reconstruct their mental model of the world to justify it, and then spread it. It is not that we have recently become evil or stupid (we have always had plenty of both), it is simply that by overloading everyone, we have severely damaged our own ability to process everything. And just like a disease running rampant through the population, it will affect the most vulnerable first (and those people are not necessarily who you may think they are). It is not the ignorant that is the problem, as this is not an issue of knowledge. It is those who have either a depressed or hyper-responsive mental immune system, and are still immersing themselves in the flow.

Like our normal immune system, our mental immune system is built up by being assailed with threats that don't overwhelm it but enable it to create antibodies so it can better meet those threats in the future. We vaccinate ourselves for this purpose. Likewise, our mental immune system comes from being constantly threatened and challenged, and is probably largely developed while children (though for the sake of us all, I hope this is not the case). It learns how to see lies, deception, and manipulation for what they are and to keep them from infecting their mental model of the world. This is so critical because once a lie gets into that mental model, it is unlikely to ever be challenged or questioned.

A depressed mental immune system is common and simple, essentially letting almost anything in. Once new information is accepted, the mind is then left to try and re-pattern itself to accommodate it. When it tries to do this with conflicting and contradictory information, mental entropy increases, which can cause anything from confusion to insanity.

With a hyper-responsive one, the opposite occurs. Our mental immune system treats everything outside of ourselves or possibly our close circle (family, community, church, etc) as a threat and an attempted deception. Information is still allowed in, but only when it can support the existing mental model or be twisted to do so. This scenario is clearly on the rise and is a logical outcome. It is natural, in a world with millions of poisonous mushrooms, to not eat any except the ones you grow in your own garden. The larger issue in this case is actually the autoimmune response, where the mind stops trusting in and starts attacking its own mental model, leading to internal decoherence and, again, anything from confusion to insanity.

The Shape of Possible Solutions

The wifi is really subpar down here

There are two broad solutions to this issue. One, that is becoming more frequently espoused in mainstream contexts, is to self-limit access to information. To essentially take your mouth off the hose and go for a walk. People are encouraged to take a day off from devices, do dopamine fasts, and generally try to go back to a time with less information. While much of this is likely extremely balanced and healthy, and you should probably be doing it instead of reading this, it is a panacea and attempts to side-step the real issue. We have created a civilization where information is the medium in which we swim and to truly embrace it, thrive in it, and benefit from it, we can’t just get out and walk away.

Which brings us to the second solution—grow some gils. Okay, not literally (though that would be very cool), but where biology fails, technology might find a way. We have built this extraordinary density of knowledge and understanding so why would we ever want to just ignore it or walk away from it? And we don’t need to. Instead, we just need to develop better systems that actually helps us filter, sort, and judge information—a Maxwell’s Demon for knowledge would be nice, judiciously sorting truth and lies. Of course, truth is not so simple as thermodynamics, as there are no laws for it and if there were, we would be violating them right and left anyway. Given this fuzziness, no one solution will be perfect and any useful solutions will need to be flexible, dynamic, and likely utilize our greatest achievement—collective intelligence.

Brilliant Conclusion and Eminently Practical Path Forwards

So shameless...

These possible technological solutions will be explored in detail in a future essay. And, shameless plug warning, I am currently building my vision of one solution over at Vergint, if you want to check it out.