Don't Eat Everything

Controlling your information diet

As I get older, I've come to realize is that one of the most important things that you can do is control your information diet.

Why you ask? Well, science has long pointed to the notion that our ideas are heavily influenced (and often limited) by the information we consume. See Constraining effects of examples in creative generation task. In short, even when you try to be original, you are "trapped" by information you recently consumed and is shown in experiments that are conducted in the study.

If you prefer analogies over scientific papers, here's the first passge of "A Study in Scarlet" to help you grasp what I'm trying to convey:

a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. In essence: Don't Eat Everything.

Written with ❤️ by Krayon
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