How unnecessary knowledge clogs memory and prevents the assimilation of new

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

What reduces intelligence more - marijuana or social media? And why is watching TV more rewarding than YouTube and coubs? We have the answers.

University of London psychologist Glenn Wilson conducted an experiment in 2005 with office workers. The conditions resembled real work: the usual activities were constantly interrupted by SMS, calls, letters and messages on social networks. At the end of the day, experts measured the IQs of the study participants. The result was impressive: such distraction lowers IQ by 10 points!

Talking about this experiment, for comparison, they always cite smoking marijuana, which dulls a person half as much: by 5 points

According to the How Much Information study conducted by the University of California in 2009, the amount of information consumed per week has grown 5 (!) Times since 1986. From 250 thousand words a week to 1.25 million! And if a person does not install the dam on his own, then the risk of choking and drowning in this stream is more than likely. Although most of us have the illusion that we are managing information flows. For example, giving up TV in favor of the Internet.

Have you noticed with what pride they say now: “I don’t watch TV, I don’t have a TV at home”? Steve Jobs said, “When you’re young, you watch TV and you think the broadcasters are conspiring to make people stupid. But when you get a little older, you understand: this is not so. People want it themselves. And this is much worse. A conspiracy is not scary. You can shoot the freaks! Arrange a revolution! But there is no conspiracy, the TV companies are simply meeting the demand. This is the truth."

Characterizing television as a huge piggy bank of meaningless shows, mediocre TV series and intrusive advertising, advanced users and socially active people have gone online, where they read and watch "only what they want." But in reality, we are only talking about changing analog technology to digital.

At the same time, the TV, among all its dubious advantages, has one definite advantage: the flow of information is limited

It can be 3 or 150 channels, but in any case, the number is quantifiable (we are not talking about Smart TV). And if, after going through all the buttons on the remote, you did not find anything suitable, then turn off the TV. Because, no matter how much you want to lie on the couch or postpone an important matter, you will not watch boring, incomprehensible or frankly annoying programs.

We are by no means campaigning for TV, but we will be objective: the flow of information there is clearly structured, the program schedule puts all the dots on the i's. If you do not anticipate interesting films, you can safely turn off the TV: it is useless to wait for surprises. And the Internet has no structure, no program, no end point. There is no end in sight to the flow of information, and there is always a feeling that now, after the next click of the mouse, something very valuable or just curious will appear. As a result, much more time is spent, and at the same time a person is constantly haunted by a feeling of incompleteness and dissatisfaction. It is this feeling that prevents you from turning off your computer: ten others instantly replace one video on YouTube, flashing bright pictures on the screen.

What makes us click on the next video or go aimlessly from site to site? Curiosity? Probably. But much more often, in our opinion, it is unwillingness to leave the comfort zone.

Endless content on the Internet allows you to feel safe: no need to strain, make efforts, solve difficult issues, take responsibility and do something

In addition, the virtual world seems to have been specially created to support our procrastination tendency - the constant postponement of important or unpleasant tasks for later. Thanks to the non-stop flow of information, we always have an excuse for idleness: we need to check our mail again, look at messages on social networks, read a couple of news, watch a clip that was posted in the feed for friends. When all these points are completed, another letter or message comes. The circle does not close, aimless wandering around the network does not stop.

By the way, it is aimless surfing, the so-called surfing, that psychologists consider the most severe form of Internet addiction. “Orders create new orders, advertising makes us want to consume, competitors' actions require a response. Modern man spends most of his time on processing this stream and generating it for others. People are linked into such a chain of information consumption and production, and few people in the chain think: where did this event come from? Who said that responding to it is the most productive investment of our time? - asks the founder of Ecwid Ruslan Fazlyev.

There is another reason for surfing the Internet. Among the fifteen neural networks of the brain, which we talked about a little above, there is the so-called pleasure network, one of the activators of which is the anticipation of learning new things. In an experiment conducted by Colin Camerer and his colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, volunteers read quiz questions and rated their interest in getting an answer.

The more they wanted to know what was going on, the more active their pleasure network became

It is obvious that this ability of the human brain stimulates scientific discoveries, inventions, progress in general. But let's be honest: most of us satisfy the need for new knowledge in a much more prosaic way. You only need to look at the data of the Pew Research Center to be convinced of this.

In particular, in Russia, 85% of people used the Internet to communicate with family and friends, and only 13% to study.

Table 10.1. Internet usage in different countries 153

Most people use the Internet to communicate and get information. The minority is for career and commerce

Which of the following have you been doing online in the past 12 months? (the question was asked to adult Internet users)

The question was asked to the owners of smartphones and people who use the Internet at least from time to time. Pakistan is not included due to insufficient sample size. Source: Spring 2014 Global Attitudes survey

And although the Internet provides unique opportunities for self-education, career and business, porn sites occupy the maximum traffic worldwide (according to the American site Online Schoots, 12% of the world's sites contain porn content), and the Gangnam Style video has collected more than two billion views in a short time.

However, if only fans of “strawberries” and strange dances became potential victims of an intellectual stroke, we would not be writing this book for you - people who are purposeful and focused on being happy, healthy and successful. For those who sincerely believe that it is possible to achieve success in an era of progress only by obeying the not always comfortable rules dictated by the new era. After all, isn't digital technology, for all its obvious shortcomings, helping to improve our efficiency in today's world?

And here we are once again returning to the cherished "efficiency". This word, like a mantra, is repeated by all fans of round-the-clock use of gadgets. This is one of the key stereotypes: the more information is available, the more effective we are. What is not an excuse for information overload and its dire consequences? Meanwhile, if you define efficiency as the ratio of the effort invested and the result, it turns out that many people have lost it over the past ten years. They began to exert more effort and time, but the result, at best, remains the same.

Why is this happening? This illusion is based on the ignorance that if you do not use the information you receive, you are actually consuming garbage.

By itself, overactive consumption does not make us either smarter or more efficient, it does not change our lives for the better

Moreover, a significant part of this information is simply not needed: it cannot be used, directed towards increasing the notorious efficiency. But the value of any information lies in its practical use. But even if we found relevant content, we often do not have enough time to analyze it, and memory to save it (after all, we already know about the features of short-term and long-term memory). We consume this information passively, which means that there is no chance of remembering and applying it in the future with today's volume of information consumption of 1.25 million words per week. As the writer and psychologist Rudolf Arnheim said: we are captivated by the illusion that perception is tantamount to knowledge and understanding.

Of course, admitting this fact is not easy: the disappointment is too great. First you need to be honest with yourself. Summing up the day, evaluate how much information you have learned today. What part of it do you consider not just curious, not abstractly important for all of humanity, but useful for you personally? How much of this information in the near or distant future should work for your success? We believe that sincere answers will put everything in its place. […]

Besides, what kind of efficiency can we talk about if companies are suffering billions of dollars in losses due to such inquisitive employees? “Today's information workers are distracted on average every three minutes: by messages, letters, calls. As a result, about 25-50% of the working time is spent remembering: “Where did I stop?” Intel research showed that due to such interruptions the company loses billions of dollars annually. Modern technologies literally make us stupid,”writes E. Smart.

The readiness to answer a letter or a call at any second can be explained by the fear of loss, a feeling much stronger than the possibility of gain

This feature of ours is actively used by marketers, persuading to buy a product or service, so as not to lose money or not to miss a chance. The fear of loss, described by Robert Cialdini in his book The Psychology of Influence, provokes us to instantly respond to the phone, regardless of who is next to us at that moment. What if, by ignoring the call, we will lose something valuable?

It's funny how technology tries to help us focus in this situation. Forest (application for iOS, Android and Windows) suggests planting a tree in your phone before starting work. A person independently chooses the length of time that he will devote to business, without opening any applications on a smartphone. If it doesn’t stand it, the tree will die, it will cope - it will be successfully planted in the virtual forest. Users note that the incentive not to destroy the tree is very effective. In the era of virtual values, worrying about a drawn tree is much more understandable than taking responsibility for one's own life.