Too Much Information

Information, — for lack of a better word — is good. In case it’s not obvious, either ipso facto or from the hyperlink, I’m channeling Gordon Gekko’s speech on greed from the movie Wall Street.

Information is right. Information works. Information clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Information, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

But, information, like greed, can be a trap and a producer of negative outcomes. Greed, in its positive alter ego ambition, is indeed what has “marked the upward surge of mankind.” Greed, when it motivates theft, deceit, or the use of force (direct or via government), is destructive. Greed itself isn’t the problem, the disrespect for others is.

So it goes with information. Technology has brought us access to information that is not only unprecedented in many ways, but unanticipated by all but a very few. We’re at a point where we can use the Internet to look inside our refrigerators while at the grocery store. It truly is a remarkable time in human evolution. But, that plethora of information, misused, can be destructive as well. Here, again, it’s not the information itself, but its coupling with disrespect for others, that is the problem.

We’ve all been exposed to the friend who, for whatever reason, “over-shared” something about himself. Most of us have heard or used the cliche response, “too much information.” Or, more aptly for our text-based world, “TMI.” A modern, Internet-based version of TMI can be phrased as “some things cannot be unseen.” Generally, these are trivial crossings of the boundaries of propriety, and thus are pretty harmless. We find a more insidious manifestation of TMI in the growth of people’s embrace of relativizing, i.e. the notion that there are no objective truths or realities, as a means of defending and rationalizing away their cognitive biases and defending their preconceptions.

First, there’s the fact that anyone, at very little cost, can create a web page where he can present whatever he wants, with whatever logic or lack thereof he wants, rooted in whatever presumptions, assertions, allegations, implications, or fabrications he wants. If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’ve spent enough time on the Internet to come across such content, whether directly or via a social media share.

That last part is what erodes our sense of objective truth. It’s really easy to see a hot headline that feeds your leanings and share it out to the world. Is there any truth to the headline? Is the headline backed up with facts and logic? Is the source page prepared with respect for logic and veracity? Or is it selling snake oil and fabrications? Sure, we can look at a shared headline, notice that the source URL is mycompletelyfabricatedcrackpottheories.com, and wave it off, but it’s very easy to let a germ of an idea get stuck in our heads, even when that germ is a deliberate lie. That’s the history of the autism-vaccine link, which was first “reported” by a man who, as it turned out, was selling something and fabricated study results to that end. Some ideas catch on like viruses, even if they’re originally rooted in rot, and we are left having to fight to find good information in a sea of bad.

Second, there’s a laziness that’s introduced. When there’s so much information out there, people can (and often do) dismiss challenges to their beliefs without even bothering to present information. I’ve had this exchange more times than I can count:

A: “Here’s a link that validates all that I’ve told you.”

B: “I could just as easily find a link that refutes all you’ve told me.”

I’ve heard this too many times to count.

Note that B doesn’t share or find the link, but rather asserts that it must exist. It is an implicit refutation of objective truth, of the idea that there are correct and incorrect answers. It’s horse-shit, of course. Water is wet. Hydrogen atoms have one proton. Gravity works.

The human mind is a marvel of information access. We can, with incredible speed, recall the lyrics to one of our favorite songs, remember what our childhood bedroom looks like, know where the letter “a” is on a QWERTY keyboard, and recall what chocolate cake tastes like. We trust the information we recall, because generally speaking it’s accurate. But, we also know the limits of that accuracy. Sometimes, we misremember things. Sometimes, we “fill in the blanks” with fabricated recollections. And, sometimes, we simply know that something we seem to recall doesn’t feel right, that it shouldn’t be trusted.

As our access to information grows (there’s only one direction for it to go – up), we should keep this in mind. We all know that there’s a lot of easily-dismissed garbage on the Net, but we should be cautious when it comes to that which confirms our biases. The quality of information on the internet isn’t binary true-false. There’s often a blend of strong and weak, good and bad, objective and biased, honest and deceitful. We benefit most when we remain suspicious of what we read and where we read it. When we see a “share” of something ridiculous, we should challenge that share. And, when we see someone advance a crackpot theory based on some nutter’s ramblings on a fringe website, we should take care not to let seeds of doubt take root in our minds.

Is there TMI available to us? Are we so deluged by information that we cannot find wheat amongst the chaff? Only if we allow it to be so.