However, I think the answer to the question he raises is most likely obvious to anyone that has spent any deal of time surfing Wikipedia as I sometimes find myself doing. I simply do not retain even a fraction of the information I am exposed to, but I remain a functional person. I am swayed further, though, by the research of a German scientist named Gerd Gigerenzer who has made a name for himself by proving just how simply our minds actually work, even in the presence of an overwhelming amount of information. His research as the Director of the Max Planck Institute of Human Development has shown that most human thought processes follow simple rules, called heuristics, even when challenged to solve complicated tasks.
Consider how baseball players catch a ball. It may seem that they would have to solve complex differential equations in their heads to predict the trajectory of the ball. In fact, players use a simple heuristic. ... The heuristic is to adjust the running speed so that the angle of gaze remains constant —that is, the angle between the eye and the ball. The player can ignore all the information necessary to compute the trajectory ... and just focus on one piece of information, the angle of gaze."
I believe that even though we are now exposed to the largest tsunami and resulting flood of information humanity has ever seen, we human beings will continue to follow very simple, but effective rules as our astrolabe. What simple rules do you navigate by? http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gigerenzer03/gigerenzer_index.html
I also strongly recommend Gerd's book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious to those further interested.
I may or may not agree. I do believe that we are inundated with a ridiculous amount of unnecessary, in your face information as well as important, relevant information. However, I think it's too hasty to say that you don't retain any of the information you come across. Even without knowing it, our brains latch onto tiny bits of information through words, images, tv jingles etc. I mean, how many times have you admitted to knowing a random fact or song lyric and simply said "I think I heard/read it somewhere" Whether deliberately researched, or through the flash of a commercial or advertisement, we are absolutely saturated by our own information age whether we like it or not. Also, the baseball analogy makes sense in theory, but I don't really think the two situations are interchangeable. Our brains are anything but simple and what we are exposed to, by force or by choice, leaks into our lives and stays there. That is the lifeblood of the media, and it's not even close to slowing down.
ReplyDeleteI both agree and disagree with you on this one.I disagree because, as Jenni said, these two situations aren't exactly similar. And as Tammet said, we have to actually comprehend all the information and be able to apply it to other situations.
ReplyDeleteAnd to agree and bring up another point, our brains are powerful organs, and we have yet to truly see what their capable of. In any case, as Jill has pointed out before, its a new age and time, and just as the younger generation will grow up, adapting to the new social norms, eventually we'll adapt to having an overload of information.
While I admit I'm not the best multi-tasker, the more you do it, the better you'll get.
@ Jenni:
ReplyDeleteI hope you haven't gotten the wrong idea- I only admit to retaining a fraction of the information I'm exposed to; that is to say, I only operate on a small percentage of the huge amount of information presented to me, but I do retain some of it. It would be impossible for me to read wikipedia and retain every detail of every article I read, and I don't think anyone would even hope to.
Also, I don't think Gigerenzer's research implies that our brains are simple, in fact, I think it reflects exactly the opposite. It takes complex pattern recognition and critical thinking ability to adapt a heuristic to these overwhelming amounts of information, something even our best and most rational artificial intelligences have immense problems with. The fact that humans can apply and adapt these heuristics to ANY type of information is what makes us, as humans, so intelligent.
I believe, and I think Gigerenzer's research would reflect this, that we use these heuristics to apply necessary information to a problem while ignoring the unnecessary. So while I may remember a jingle I heard on TV, I won't be using it to solve calculus problems. I think this model for human thought precludes most if not all harm from an overwhelming amount of information. Because while quantity is a factor in the process of human thought, significance/quality makes a much deeper impact upon our decision-making.
Chris' clarification is exactly how our society responds to its information overload. We have thousands of little tidbits of information thrown at us via the internet, yet we are only able to fully retain a small bit of it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do feel that subconsciously we retain a higher percentage of the information that we think. This is why we have many "deja vu" feelings even though we have no recollection of anything relatable to the information.
To further clairify my point I'm going to ask you a question. Do you remember doing a research paper with multiple sources? You can remember most of the facts, yet it's almost impossible to remember your sources off the top of your head. Yet, when you reread a quote and look at the source you think, that's right, I remember that name. Once you forget about the quote again, I can guarantee that you'll forget the source.
I feel that this article is trying to prove that we will remember the jist of the information, yet it's impossible for us to remember all of it. We'd be crazy for trying to retain it all! More importantly, the irrelevant information goes in one ear and out the other, yet it will stay in our subconscious.