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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

• 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.