What to do about information overload?

bobcat

bobcat

Well-known Member
Location
Northern Calif
We now live in an ocean of information each day, and we are drowning in it. What's even worse is it's going to get deeper.
In today's exploding world of facts and generative AI “stuff,” we’re all facing massive overload.

Around the year 1850, estimates suggest only a few petabytes (1 petabyte = 1 million gigabytes) of cumulative data existed worldwide.

Then in 1900, due to the printing press, newspapers, and the early telecom industry, cumulative global data increased to around 100 petabytes.

Then in 1950, radio, TV, and early computers marked a turning point. The total amount of data grew to around 500 petabytes.

Then by 2000, the internet era fueled a data explosion, and global data increased to 2 exabytes (2 billion gigabytes) with emails, digital photos, and web content as major contributors.

Now in 2024, With the prevalence of smartphones, social media, and cloud storage, global data creation is estimated at around 120 zettabytes (1 zettabyte = 1 trillion gigabytes) per year.

It's pollution in our lives is like smog, and according to research published in Nature Human Behavior, information overload is now considered an environmental pollutant, costing the global economy an estimated $1 trillion annually.

Sadly, some of it is useful information and things we really need to know, but to sift through it all is a herculean task.
Just having to decide on a medical plan can be mind-numbing. This exponential growth in information is sure to overwhelm all of us, if it hasn't already. Will we need for AI to crunch it all, or do we just unplug?
 

IMO we often get bogged down trying to solve the worlds problems instead of concentrating on solving our own.

Starting with the back of an envelope or a yellow pad to jot down the things that are most important is still a good place to start and helps to narrow the choices.

Another thing is to learn how to tighten up our searches in an effort to narrow the responses.

So far the biggest annoyance for me has been the dramatic rise in self described experts offering dubious information and solutions.

If all else fails, find a young person that has never known anything different and ask for a little assistance. 😉🤭😂
 

bobcat said:
Sadly, some of it is useful information and things we really need to know, but to sift through it all is a herculean task.
Just having to decide on a medical plan can be mind-numbing. This exponential growth in information is sure to overwhelm all of us, if it hasn't already. Will we need for AI to crunch it all, or do we just unplug?
Click to expand...
What's the problem? In the fifty-two years of William Shakespeare's life he managed to write 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His wife, Anne Hathaway, bore him three children, he had a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of an acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Shakespeare produced most of his known work. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories. He then wrote mainly tragedies, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth which were considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

April the 23rd is St. George's Day. He of George and the Dragon. ( But it's a myth that post-dates the real George by several centuries,) St. George is the patron saint of England. April 23rd is also the day that Shakespeare was born on in 1564 and by amazing coincidence it's the day, fifty two years later, in 1616, that he died on.

No matter how much information anyone tries to absorb, they won't come anywhere near Shakespeare and he did it in the Elizabethan Era, when candle power was the only light at night.
 
When you go into a restaurant, and you get a menu; that doesn't mean you have to eat everything on it. I understand what you mean by info overload. The other night @ 2AM, I wondered if we yawn in our sleep and Google gave me the answer.( yes, but very rarely) In the history of the world, we've never had that ability. Just because we can access it, it doesn't mean we have to. I never heard of Bad Bunny, but if you're under 21, you have. His songs have been listened to over 16 billion times.

Without knowledge, we're cave people chasing game.
 
We can be selective about what information we take in. I got about halfway through a book on cosmology and at that point I said to myself, 'meh, who cares?'. I'm more interested in how the human brain works and for about ten years was reading a lot about neuroscience and psychology. I even gave some talks about it at a Toastmasters Club that I used to go to. That was when I was trying to get over my extreme fear of public speaking. I now know exactly why I had that fear and why I am the way I am. What I don't know is how to fix it.

I forgot what else I was going to say. :ROFLMAO:
 
The crap puked up by those Eliza-bots (which are not AI at all) is pretty worthless.

You get back a handful of "facts" of dubious provenance stuffed into a template (notice how much alike they all look?) padded with other phrases selected almost at random to look similar to proper grammar while being basically nonsense.

When anyone posts that junk my eyes practically glaze over and I worry about the future for the gullible laymen who fall prey to it.

Many people never read much, sat through lectures by those who studied their subject matter empirically, engaged in discussions with others in their fields, or attended classes beyond bonehead-level surveys in school. Or we can also get so focused on our own field of study we forget that everything is connected. Others have a hard time zooming out to see the forest instead of the trees.

We all have our blind spots, and we can all fall back on operating by reptilian brain, muscle memory, and reflex for extended periods of time. Some people exist in this "dog with thumbs that can speak" state more hours of the day than others.
 
I step away. Don't take click bait. Well, usually. I have found some channels I like when clicking on suggested videos on YouTube front page or on the side bar.

Pick up the book. All that said, I do spend too much time on the internet.
 
I feel rather sad about how increasing complexities in modern life are affecting the most vulnerable people that cannot possibly cope. Please read some of the below brief stories from low IQ Americans that the rest of us tend to ignore and misunderstand. Our government needs to IQ test all K12 children and filter out all such persons that they should then directly help like they are supposed to be doing with often ignored mentally ill.

One thing that could help would be a program with counseling listing occupations and jobs that those with low IQs can handle in order to save and place such people into those jobs with support instead of more expensively and inconsiderately letting them suffer from market forces into homelessness and despair.

"I Wish I Could Be Normal": People With Low IQs Are Opening Up About Their Deepest Hardships In Life, And It's Absolutely Gut-Wrenching

"I Wish I Could Be Normal": People With Low IQs Are Opening Up About Their Deepest Hardships In Life, And It's Absolutely Gut-Wrenching
 
David777 said:
I feel rather sad about how increasing complexities in modern life are affecting the most vulnerable people that cannot possibly cope. Please read some of the below brief stories from low IQ Americans that the rest of us tend to ignore and misunderstand. Our government needs to IQ test all K12 children and filter out all such persons that they should then directly help like they are supposed to be doing with often ignored mentally ill.

One thing that could help would be a program with counseling listing occupations and jobs that those with low IQs can handle in order to save and place such people into those jobs with support instead of more expensively and inconsiderately letting them suffer from market forces into homelessness and despair.

"I Wish I Could Be Normal": People With Low IQs Are Opening Up About Their Deepest Hardships In Life, And It's Absolutely Gut-Wrenching

"I Wish I Could Be Normal": People With Low IQs Are Opening Up About Their Deepest Hardships In Life, And It's Absolutely Gut-Wrenching
Click to expand...
A person's ability to bullsh*t is far more important than their intelligence. I've had managers who didn't even understand the basics of software engineering, but but because of their ability to network and con people, they got promoted into leadership positions. They were good examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
 
HermitHogan said:
A person's ability to bullsh*t is far more important than their intelligence. I've had managers who didn't even understand the basics of software engineering, but but because of their ability to network and con people, they got promoted into leadership positions. They were good examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Click to expand...
That happens. But, in defense of some managers, management does require some skills that technical staff sometimes lack. I got passed up for a management position once in favor of a guy with a business degree. I admit, I was pretty pissed. But, eventually I saw that his position required him to do things I would rather not do. And, I think they needed me to keep doing the things I was good at.
 
Grampa Don said:
That happens. But, in defense of some managers, management does require some skills that technical staff sometimes lack. I got passed up for a management position once in favor of a guy with a business degree. I admit, I was pretty pissed. But, eventually I saw that his position required him to do things I would rather not do. And, I think they needed me to keep doing the things I was good at.
Click to expand...
The manager I was referring to had poor management skills and no technical skills. That project was a total mess, and it was a shame because it could have been a fun project. I was writing software that did statistical analysis testing on satellite circuitry.
 
I’m feeling the overload on tech data. There’s so much to know. The one thing I miss about work was the sharing of info.
 
HermitHogan said:
A person's ability to bullsh*t is far more important than their intelligence. I've had managers who didn't even understand the basics of software engineering, but but because of their ability to network and con people, they got promoted into leadership positions. They were good examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Click to expand...
This is so true. The tricky thing to figure out is if the one doing the bullsh*tting actually believes what they say, or do they know that what they are peddling is BS when they say it. But either way, if you can convince others who wouldn't know a steaming pile of crap if they tripped over it, that you are a very stable genius, then you can walk away with all the marbles.

I think the people you describe don't read much because they don't think they need to. The problem is they don't know what they don't know. They have a lack of awareness of their own abilities and limitations (No insight, or it's very limited). It's one thing being the narcissistic type, but overconfidence has been the downfall in many battles.

In my view, it's very important to recognize the limits of your knowledge and skills, especially when what you do or say is going to affect a great deal of other people. Once others around you discover that you don't listen, then they stop talking. It's like flying a plane with a lot of passengers, and you think you know more than the crew in the control tower.
 


Back
Top