3 ms·

So, what does that mean in terms of a user manual for human brains? We should discount low information dense sources ? or sources that are a long way off in gr

So, what does that mean in terms of a user manual for human brains? We should discount low information dense sources ? or sources that are a long way off in graph terms?

mromanuk 7y ago
Well, sugary drinks/other crap, healthy food and food in general, has a label with their nutritional facts. Maybe we will benefit from a a similar label next to every piece of info we are going to consume. “This newspaper is high in doubtful info and low in facts” probably a third party should label all the content
- PaulHoule 7y ago
  From an information theory viewpoint, information means something in particular. For instance a black hole event horizon has the highest area information density in the universe but it like a frame of television static. In particular, once you are exposed to information it ceases to be information anymore. I think the behavior of "scanning" where you reload the front page of Hacker News or Google News or look at the newspaper over and over again hoping to get something new is particularly pernicious. You are exposing your brain to "information" in once sense but not real information in the sense of learning. Contrast a compulsive reading habit, where you are getting new information that you need to incorporate into long term memory as opposed to a compulsive video game habit for something like League of Legends or Advance Wars where you are recombining the same elements over and over again. I found that switching from the first to the second helped me feel less anxious, but I still read plenty about topics like 1970-era mainframe transaction processing or whatever I am into.
lostmyoldone 7y ago
This is obviously all extremely speculative, but it's such an interesting topic I can't really keep myself from posting anyway. I've had this idea for the better part of my life, that I try to avoid read especially large canonical works deeply, and with few exceptions prefer to read several sources shallowly to reading a few deeply. The exceptions are when I try to learn something entirely new, like a new mathematical topic, or when I encounter something that is both completely at odds with my current mental model, and not obviously false. From a learning perspective, it could be seen as to adding some kind of noise to input data, and to also have a kind of indirect - but rather strong - validation set through the knowledge contained in the canonical works, as understood by others. Could this prevent some kinds of over fitting? I honestly don't know, but maybe it could? It's obviously anecdotal, and extremely so, but it actually seems to be the case that my generalization abilities, my capacity to apply knowledge across disciplines, and to identify behavior on certain scale has had a rather unusual trajectory. Sometimes it almost appears as if I know things I don't remember ever having learned, or even though about. As if the "data points" have become so numerous that the brain somehow becomess able to generalize over things that one would (superficially) believe to be facts. Before I realized what was happening, I have had several people, some within highly skilled fields, come to believe I worked in their field after conversing with them for a while. When they realize I'm not, many became confused, and some to the point of being unable to continue the conversation. Nowadays I generally manage to avoid those situations, but it really was - and is - the strangest thing when it happens.

So, what does that mean in terms of a user manual for human brains? We should discount low information dense sources ? or sources that are a long way off in graph terms?

mromanuk 7y ago

Well, sugary drinks/other crap, healthy food and food in general, has a label with their nutritional facts. Maybe we will benefit from a a similar label next to every piece of info we are going to consume. “This newspaper is high in doubtful info and low in facts” probably a third party should label all the content

PaulHoule 7y ago
From an information theory viewpoint, information means something in particular. For instance a black hole event horizon has the highest area information density in the universe but it like a frame of television static. In particular, once you are exposed to information it ceases to be information anymore. I think the behavior of "scanning" where you reload the front page of Hacker News or Google News or look at the newspaper over and over again hoping to get something new is particularly pernicious. You are exposing your brain to "information" in once sense but not real information in the sense of learning. Contrast a compulsive reading habit, where you are getting new information that you need to incorporate into long term memory as opposed to a compulsive video game habit for something like League of Legends or Advance Wars where you are recombining the same elements over and over again. I found that switching from the first to the second helped me feel less anxious, but I still read plenty about topics like 1970-era mainframe transaction processing or whatever I am into.

lostmyoldone 7y ago

This is obviously all extremely speculative, but it's such an interesting topic I can't really keep myself from posting anyway. I've had this idea for the better part of my life, that I try to avoid read especially large canonical works deeply, and with few exceptions prefer to read several sources shallowly to reading a few deeply. The exceptions are when I try to learn something entirely new, like a new mathematical topic, or when I encounter something that is both completely at odds with my current mental model, and not obviously false. From a learning perspective, it could be seen as to adding some kind of noise to input data, and to also have a kind of indirect - but rather strong - validation set through the knowledge contained in the canonical works, as understood by others. Could this prevent some kinds of over fitting? I honestly don't know, but maybe it could? It's obviously anecdotal, and extremely so, but it actually seems to be the case that my generalization abilities, my capacity to apply knowledge across disciplines, and to identify behavior on certain scale has had a rather unusual trajectory. Sometimes it almost appears as if I know things I don't remember ever having learned, or even though about. As if the "data points" have become so numerous that the brain somehow becomess able to generalize over things that one would (superficially) believe to be facts. Before I realized what was happening, I have had several people, some within highly skilled fields, come to believe I worked in their field after conversing with them for a while. When they realize I'm not, many became confused, and some to the point of being unable to continue the conversation. Nowadays I generally manage to avoid those situations, but it really was - and is - the strangest thing when it happens.