Daniel Levitin on Information Overload

RSA Spotlights – taking you straight to the heart of the event, highlighting our favourite moments and key talking points.

Modern society is in a state of data deluge, and our brains are struggling to keep up with the demands of the digital age.

In this excerpt from the event, Daniel Levitin explains how our brains organise a flood of information, and how we can harness that understanding to be more efficient, and less stressed in an increasingly wired and distracted world.

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[pogmog]

It's funny how well this Victor Hugo quote from 1862 fits what was said:

“A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the all too angular contours of pure thought, fills up the gaps and intervals here and there, binds them together, and dulls the sharp corners of ideas. But too much reverie submerges and drowns. Thought is the labor of the intellect, reverie it's pleasure. To replace thought with reverie is to confound poison with nourishment.”

[Elfos]

I question the accuracy of his statements. I wouldn't say that the mind wander mode is our brains' natural state, I'd say it's more an unintended side effect. The mode our minds are supposed to be in is focused, but we do need to have the ability to shift focus. If our focus is kept on one thing for too long, it gets burned out, we kind of need the jumping around thing to keep its activity balanced/versatile. However, I will say the mind wander is advantageous, but not in the way he said. He said it's like a recharging thing, whereas I see it as a way to connect seemingly unrelated things to gain further understanding and contexts of those things. 

[NKPyo]

Wait, doesn't he work at Minerva Schools? He's awesome.