The Information Diet: a book non-review

I while ago, I started reading a book called "The Information Diet." While I don't remember much from the book, I still think it's a great book--mostly just because of the title. I really like the idea of comparing information consumption with food consumption. These days there is an infinite amount of information available. This is pretty close to being literally true, as the amount of information available for free on the internet would take many lifetimes to consume. This means that we need some way of filtering information, or we will choke trying to swallow too much of it.

It seems that humans evolved to take in as much information as possible. Our body's are relatively weak compared to other animals, but our brains are like mutant super-versions of animal brains. This indicates that information was key to our early survival as a species. Personally, I still feel the instinctual urge to take in as much information as I can. I could sit in front of my computer all day and read or watch articles and videos on science, politics, math, parenting, self-improvement, etc. Is this really useful? Pretty clearly not, but brain always seems to say, "Oh, this next video (or article) looks really important. Don't miss that one." It's an exhausting cycle. It's also frustrating, because the information always does seem to be useful or valuable. But if you really want to know if something is worthwhile to watch or read, you can't just think about the benefit of it, you also have to think about the cost (Econ 101, right?).

So much information is free nowadays, that it often seems like there is no cost. This is why it's important to start thinking about information as analogous to food. If someone provided you with infinite food forever, when would you stop eating? If you're smart, you'll stop eating when you're full, in spite of your inbuilt instincts to keep on eating until you can't hold any more. What is the cost of eating too much food? Feeling gross, being unhealthy, feeling lethargic, and being unable to be productive. Too much information consumption may have similar negative effects. But there are also some costs for information over-consumption that are not shared with food. What is the cost of reading one more article? You spend your time, your attention, your memory, your focus. Even your memory and focus, which you may think you can stretch infinitely can be affected by taking in too much information. Are you really going to remember the most important information of ten different articles that you read?

Another negative effect of taking in too much information is that you're body doesn't clearly signal to you when you've had enough, as it does with food. This means that information consumption can consume your time, a lot more of it than food consumption can. You can only spend so much time eating in one day, right?

So how do you decide what information to actually consume? Let's go back to the food analogy. Most people can sketch out what a healthy diet looks like: a good balance of carbs, protein, fat. Use high quality ingredients, make sure there are vegetables and some fruit, cook them in a way that preserves nutrition. Throw in some variety to make sure that you are getting different nutrients vitamins and minerals. And of course you want to exercise to actually make use of the energy that you are taking in.

The following is not going to be an exact cross-over, so bear with me, but the purpose is to see how the idea of diet (continuous consumption out of infinite possibilities) can be used for information.

- High quality ingredients: this goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. Your information sources should be high quality, because this is what you are feeding your brain (actually food feeds the brain too, so that's another reason to eat high quality food. 

- Healthy cooking: This is analogous to integrating information consumption into your life in a way that enhances life, rather than degrading it. Reading from a bright screen late at night is unhealthy cooking. Listening to a podcast or audiobook while you make coffee or commute to work--that's healthy cooking, generally.

- Carbs, proteins, and fat: All of these are sources of energy, so you can think of these as different kinds of information that move you forward in life. There's no real good analogies, but you could think of them as fiction (carbs), non-fiiction news (protein), and other non-fiction (fat). Or make up whatever analogy works for you.

So the one-to-one comparison between eating and consuming information doesn't seem to work that well, but the overall concept is very useful. Both are things that we will do for the rest of our lives. It would be a good idea to create good habits around the processes.

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption (Amazon affiliate link).