Information glut

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"Knowledge is not intelligence"
----------------------Heraclitus of Ephesos

"Information is not knowledge"
----------------------Albert Einstein

This article is the funny but very disturbing wail of pain from a man who exposed himself to near-lethal doses of punditry, sound bites, and infotainment for close to 24 hours. He is a brave man. This frail young woman would not have survived what this person endured.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 63_pf.html

I withdrew from the political side of the internet about a year ago. I couldn't handle the shrieking. I am an aspie. My brain can hold a lot of information, a lot of sound bites, a lot of stories. Yet five minutes of exposure to today's media gives me an almost hallucinatory information glut and makes me boil with rage. Forget war-CNN is the real polar opposite of Buddhism. I prefer Buddhism.

The information glut is bad. Yes, I am going to deliver a big fat moral judgment, which I try not to do too often even though I'm Catholic. Bad, bad, bad, I say! We don't need Derrida; the news is deconstructing itself, piling dichotomy on dichotomy, series upon series, clause upon clause until the whole thing collapses into its millions of essential parts, only to start again. It is impossible to be a simple informed citizen (which is desirable) in this climate because to be informed you, like that poor columnist, have to obsessively monitor the news 24/7 to know all the movements and controversies about. Stop the world, I want to get off! I'm not saying we should abolish technology, but all lives, even Michael Savage's, need a touch of simplicity and relief from anger. A certain portion of our society is degenerating into a sea of TMI, and I am determined not to be among that portion.

What solution do I propose, you ask? The abolition of 24-hour news channels and the forcing of all bloggers and radio pundits to spend a year wandering through a natural setting, like the mountains or the desert, observing a strict vow of silence. At first this would be torture for them, but then they will discover that there is more to life than pubs and dems screaming at each other.

Thoughts?

I say... let the information run free!

But teach thyself the fundamentals of philosophy so that thine might sift through information thus and glean from thine glorious flow only that which exists as valuable morsels to nourish thy brain and make smarter thee.

Last edited by Izaak on 24 Mar 2008, 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Passively watching the news for whatever length of time is not very challenging. Most of the guys thoughts about the news seem to be on a very basic level, even just playing with phonemes at times. Put five TVs around a person on any channels you like, their brain is going to get "soggy" like his just out of stimulus overload. After a point it all becomes meaningless noise.

...And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu... [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to "skip a bit, brother"]... And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." Amen.[1]

from wikipedia, not my brain

Dost not sound like Monty Python?

Unless it involves XBOX and some Bawls energy drink, the breakfast of Halo 2 champions!! !! !!

I like Rockstar better. Bawls tastes like A&W cream soda to me. Not bad, but not that great either.