Ask HN: Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information?

I have, and I called it "info gorging", and I would occasionally indulge in it. But the problem is that you don't fully integrate what you've seen with what you know or believe. At best, you've accumulated a set of superficial ideas to be fleshed out later. At worst, you've given yourself a feeling of preemptive failure, looking at all the things you could do, and yet not doing them.

>Btw. you could say, just turn off the Internet and buy a book, but can you really pretend it doesn't exist? And how long can you stick to it?

Old fashioned discipline starts in the mind. You must be ruthless with yourself, and make a determination: I'm reading this book, and if I'm not doing that, then I'm staring into space. There is no third option, no fidget spinner, no screen, not even useful distractions like cleaning. If you accept your wayward thoughts, but not indulge them, they will pass.

In many ways, information is like fast food in that it can overstimulate you, yet leave you wanting more. There is no other way out of this cycle than to acknowledge this condition and cut yourself off. You need strong faith in yourself and in the wisdom of the path you've chosen.

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed, it causes cognitive paralysis and I just mindlessly browse HN, Twitter, Reddit etc. Or I just go on accumulating stuff.

I append to my list of to-read books, to my to-read papers, to-check-out languages and frameworks, to-read articles and so on.

With information overflow, I have become an information aggregator- I download dozens of podcast episodes, add a lot of RSS feeds to reader apps, bookmark a lot of Tweets, save a lot of articles to Pocket, and the list goes on.

I am always anxious, always worried that I am not getting any work done or making any intellectual progress. This feeling lingers strongly and I keep aggregrating "stuff".

Some of it is me. I am interested in wide variety of topics- wildly unrelated. I get a very little done, but keep adding to " to-X" lists.

I am seriously worried about this and it upsets my mental piece.

I have to brutally prioritize. Or learn to simply abandon wishes. Or I am going to be crushed, if I am not already.

Funny thing is I never waste time watching memes, following stupid social-media or playing games. I am having to choose from unhealthily large amount of stuff that will enrich me, make me better. This is was makes the matter depressingly worse.

No enrichment is actually happening because of the paralysis I talked about earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R1pwVAuUmM

Here are a couple of lectures, He argues that the internet is actually a form of information censorship(by multiplication).You can censor information by hiding it(by subtraction) or by presenting so many sources that is it impossible to find the correct one(by multiplication).

When I went into the bookstore looking for an Algorithm book, I went to the computer section. I didn't start at the first rack of books and scan until I found what I wanted. Nor did I look at the best-seller list.

True, but those materials were often of questionable quality.

I remember trying to learn C programming long time ago from an old book I found in my father's bookcase, and I also remember being completely confused by it. I recently found it again and skimmed through it - the explanations were terrible, the code was bug ridden and horribly outdated - the <conio.h> imports were everywhere, even though the code never used any code from it.

> These days, you type X into Google, and you get hit with an avalanche of tutorials, ebooks, video series, paid courses, online lectures, all available constantly and immediately

I find this a much better alternative - I usually pick a few ebooks that look nice, then start reading the first to see how it goes. If I find it tedious after a short while, I try another, and repeat until learned.

When you did find something unusual or highly detailed, it was cause for celebration.

So no, I don’t feel overwhelmed. It’s a welcome feeling that I can get better answers than ever.

> you could say, just turn off the Internet and buy a book

Yup. I could and I would say this. Because this works at least for me. Whenever I started back the habit of reading books (esp. paper books) it has worked just like this, like a charm. I stopped looking for my phone etc. Starting back on travelling and sports also help.

I (guess) am mostly full of doing other things that I don’t need Internet to fruitlessly try to fill the empty parts because there isn’t or less empty parts - free time, need for gratification, need to tire my body and brain, get excited/sad etc etc.

> but can you really pretend it doesn't exist?

Why would I want to do that? It exists and that’s okay. In fact it’s helpful for many and often for me as well.

> And how long can you stick to it?

For 7 months last time. Then I got infected by COVID and had to lie on the bed for quite sometime and phone slipped back in the bedroom (use case was rain sounds - helps/helped me sleep; and funny videos just to keep the mood afloat). Gotta get rid of it again.

Imho I don’t think there’s too much of Internet out there. It’s about how frequently and what all you try to keep accessing.

This is a very simple observation I’ve had - anybody who has got to do things is successfully able to use the Internet to get those things done by using it bare minimally or give up and get it done elsewhere - ie in the physical space, whatever that’s called - real world(?). In fact those people don’t even need books and travel to distract them away from this distraction.

― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

That's a good one to keep in mind while sailing the seas of information. A little experience will help as well - for example, a video 'promising to teach you quantum physics in 15 minutes' is surely utter nonsense. Given fifteen months of uninterrupted study, assuming you had a solid grasp of the relevant mathematics already, and a good instructor, then you'd perhaps have a decent grasp of the basics.

This doesn't mean you can't find an interesting article on quantum physics online without having a grasp of the basic mathematical approaches... but search engines really are garbage these days. I really can't believe half the autocompletes delivered from 'quantum physics of...' in the search box. QM of love? consciousness? manifestation? WTF. You have to know a little bit and make the searches more explicit. For example, 'quantum physics of beta decay' will return a lot of interesting articles, some even well-written.

In general, it's much more rewarding to go narrow but deep than broad but shallow when digging into a subject. As far as finding reliable sources for things like learning a programming language, generally the loudest opinionators are the least reliable, and Reddit programming language subreddits are often best avoided entirely - that only leads to anxiety paralysis (not a bad description as you put it). Again, often upping the specificity of the search leads to good results. For example, 'Learning the C programming language' can be way too broad. "Learning how to use C for network programming" gets better results, but you still have to dig through them. Sometimes the same thing keeps getting referenced, in this case "Beej's Guide To Network Programming Using Internet Sockets". I like it, everyone seems to think it's great, go with that.

This kind of background research takes time and effort, but then once you've got something that seems good, stop there. Browsing time is over. Now it's time for single-pointed concentration on a single text, that's the way to actually learn new things.

But I find myself reading constantly. So much so my wife keeps asking me to take a break and rest my eyes.

As a result, I feel like I actually know a little bit about a whole lot, which isn't that useful other than maybe trivia. Also, my memory has become pretty bad, which I attribute to reading too much, but it could just be age catching up with me.

We loved the whole idea how we had limited resources and we were forced to read the {man | info} pages, at least in a UNIX-like environment, and of course visit university or public libraries to use them as our source of valuable information...plus we would use it as an excuse to meet with other like-minded people.

Now we feel completely disconnected and detached from each other, hiding behind emojis and smiley faces.

It's a sad SAD world we are currently living in and the majority of people I personally know are looking for an escape plan to give up technology as a whole, (well as much as possible) so we can retain some form of attachment to our previous way of life that felt more humane.

Enough is enough for me...

So when I usually want to learn something, I first have something in mind I want to build. I pick a tutorial and give it 5 minutes and decide if it's useful enough to continue. Once I complete a tutorial, I start the building process. Once I'm building, the internet becomes a reference manual, which it is much better at.

I'm not overly interested in social media. I gave most of it up after the Snowden revelations around 2013-2014. As far as news, I take breaks when not much is going on and I notice it's overly manipulative. I generally stay away from opinion pieces and when the news article starts going into opinion after the first few paragraphs, I stop reading. Hope this helps.

I thrive on information, I might make 20+ different Google searches an hour on a random assortment of topics.

Modern smartphones + 4G really is a blessing in that regard. If I was born a decade earlier, I most likely would have read many more books.

I will say social media does overwhelm me, as a lot of it is low density information with very short lifetime. Facebook and Twitter are the worst, certain parts of Reddit as well.

I think I survive because my internet usage is heavily question driven. So it is very transactional rather than passive.

HN can be great as it can offer many jumping points for new questions.

And I say "usually" becase right now I'm learning a new cloud (Azure) and the docs insist on force feeding me, with equal parts minutia + core knowledge. I am indeed overwhelmed, trying to separate and apply the useful bits.

You would not believe how many daily social events made it into the local newspaper in my home town. There are accounts of my recent ancestors comings and goings, the family party that likely resulted in my Father's birth 9 months later... ;-)

There are whole swaths of things that never got recorded, and never will. The gatekeeping functions of publishing have been replaced by the savage and random fates. History of my family from Europe is gone, blown up, bombed, etc.

The internet makes sharing widely possible. It changes the forces that limit the availability of information. Sometimes getting rid of the gatekeepers, and replacing them with propaganda spewing fountains of drivel, sometimes enabling the common person with a knack for telling stories to connect with an audience that would have never found them before.

I'm glad the Internet Archive is here, trying to compensate for the loss of the wildly generative early internet.

>Btw. you could say, just turn off the Internet and buy a book, but can you really pretend it doesn't exist? And how long can you stick to it?

If it weren't for my current eye surgery issues... yeah, books are cool. Could I turn it off, and do without? Only if it's a challenge... and surely I can outlast anyone who grew up swimming in the internet. ;-)

Example: I still know how to drive from coast to coast using only paper maps and written directions.

Nothing prevents you from still walking to a store, skimming the titles, and picking one (more-or-less at random, it sounds, from your description)

Or going to your local library

Or checking what book(s) are required/suggested reading for a course on the topic at a local college/university

It can be just as hard to pick a "good book"[0] as a "good web page"[1] .. but I find it easier to determine relative quality of a book faster than a website - and a good book will have multiple citations (other books, papers, websites, etc)

A less-expensive option than the book route (unless you're visiting your local library, of course), is to browse through the magazine racks at a good newsstand or bookstore

And don't forget the power of borrowing books on your Kindle[2] or similar :)

---------------

[0] https://antipaucity.com/2012/12/10/finding-your-niche/#.YmqQ...

[1] https://antipaucity.com/2006/10/23/authority-issues-online/#...

[2] https://theexceptioncatcher.com/blog/2012/11/varying-your-re...

For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we’re adjusting.“ — Penn Jillette

There is nothing special this time around with the Internet other than the number of choices being orders of magnitude higher. And there are tools orders of magnitude more capable to sift through them (provided you have the skills to use those tools effectively).

I used to go down rabbit holes and get overwhelmed but have since learnt not to and instead keep focus.

I chose to use a note taking app called Obsidian to deal with that infobesity. And honestly offloading all that to a tool was a fantastic experience. To me, this Personal Knowledge Management buzz is a real thing. And it was a life saver, to me. [The simplicity of the tool and its almost immediate added value is simply too good to ignore]

But I can't do more shallow reviews, I always have the feeling that I'm missing something out, and I won't get intuitive understanding of a paper.

Is there a good heuristic/middle ground of consuming such information?

If you count the good articles divided by the total number of articles, the classical probability of the web's utility tends to zero. You can only access a constant amount of websites per week, whereas the Internet grows exponentially.

So don't sweat it, the top 5 results in any search engine are good enough.

Learning with video series/online courses rarely works for me also. Although I do like good Getting started tutorials for topics with flat learning curve

Ultimately, time is finite, attention is rivalrous, and information is not infinitely actionable. It also varies tremendously in quality, and different filter and incentive systems modulate that quality strongly. (This last fact itself is part of the pattern of hits and misses in Toffler's list of predictions.)

I've started to note that the DOI is the new URL. With all the issues of academic publishing, there's still generally a higher signal:noise ratio in that than in general Web content. Likewise books and other forms of traditional, gate-kept publishing. Much of the better online content itself is itself extracts or adaptations of such material.

What you note about physical places and being committed to your mission when that involves actually going to a place and being in the moment is valid, and is hard to replicate online --- networks obviate space, and records obviate time. But you can at least be cognizant of that and try to recreate the experience in some manner.

The Getting Things Done model of time-boxing, defining core tasks and objectives, and recognising that you can only achieve a very finite set of tasks in a day is useful.

There's feature of a newly-developed browser, Einkbro, that I've come to hugely appreciate: save page as ePub.

Unlike "print to PDF", Einkbro lets you save multiple articles as "chapters" of a single book. That book might be a day's reading, or a compilation on a specific topic. It recreates the affordances of a bundled publication as with a print newspaper or magazine, in which a single issue has a finite collection of articles which can be read, and when you're done, discarded. The Endless Scroll model of the Internet doesn't offer this. Compile your ePub, read it, highlight and/or take notes using your ePub reader. And when you're done, discard without regret.

(Other tools, such as Tree Style Tabs on Firefox, at least allow grouping of articles related to a given task.)

The first rule of research is to define your goal or objective:

- What are you trying to learn?

- What is a sufficient level of depth?

- What measures or indicators of quality are you looking for?

One of the tricks of literature research is to try to go directly to canonical sources. This is usually:

- Original books or articles on a topic.

- Textbooks or assigned reading from uni courses. Looking for course syllabi is tremendously useful.

- State of the art rarely proceeds especially rapidly, and even in the information technology / comp sci arena, landmark texts can be years or decades old. Present churn is most often self-promotion and product advertising rather than useful information. Another challenge is that many businesses treat support and documentation as monetisation flows (Red Hat, Oracle, ...), and choke off useful information. My take-away is to avoid their offerings entirely.

- Otherwise, official documentation is almost always preferable to alternatives, though there are exceptions with specific independent high-quality publishers. E.g., O'Reilly technical books of old (pre-2010), etc.

- Most technical knowledge tends to be far more modular and accumulative than is generally recognised. A 20- or even 40-year old Unix or C reference, plus a few specific updates on particular new developments, can remain surprisingly useful (Kernighan & Pike, The UNIX Programming Environment, Nemeth, Frisch). You do have to keep an eye out for dated information however. Even modern machine learning techniques largely date from the 1980s --- hardware made previous theory viable.

- If you do find yourself reading recent publications / web references, look to see what sources they cite. Those will most likely be the true canonical sources, most especially if several references point to the same sources.

- Beware information vs. mythology. Claims or recommendations made on the basis of tradition or present fads are not true information, and should be heavily discounted. This is a case in which more-recent (though not necessarily current) responses to canonical / original works may be of higher value.

References such as Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book and several variants on how to read a scientific article can also be useful for both identifying useful sources and most effectively extracting useful information from them.

Over the pandemic I got interested in late bronze age history, and I've been finding all sorts of interesting things cross-correlating papers in the past decade or so in different domains with ancient texts, etc. Fascinating stuff, and a lot I think is currently escaping the specialization blindness of modern academia.

There's no way I could have done any of that before the current plethora of information.

In fact, for one book series I had to contact the publisher to get a PDF version so I could search it for fragmentary names of sea peoples.

If anything, what I'm growing more wary of is the increased trend of gating information behind paywalls, and the signal to noise ratio caused by blogspam.

It's arguably much easier to find out what a Luwian bilingual inscription about Mopsus from the 8th century BCE says than it is to find out which application tracing provider has the best pricing model for small businesses.

I don't think that's a healthy direction for information, and suspect it's about to get MUCH worse as AI generated text becomes an increasingly low barrier to entry and increasingly higher altitude.

=== How To Think With Information Overload ===

Here's my five-to-thrive idea for learning about something without information overload. You can also do this with vetted internet articles too, but be picky!

1. Start with the most popular & best selling book on the topic.

2. Next, a popular, but slightly more technical book on the topic.

3. Third, a semi-technical book that builds on the ideas of the first two books.

4. Follow it up with a hard book that brings in problems & opinions from experts.

5. Last, a book that talks about the future of the topic.

...

While there are many different mediums in which you can get your information, I personally prefer books due to the amount of time that goes into them. The idea that you can absorb years of somebody’s life work in a few hours might just be the greatest gift we’ve been given.

=== Low Information Diet ===

As Michael Pollan says about plant-based foods: “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.” I needed to supplement my content consumption with information straight from the source, not manufactured in a plant by online personalities or agencies.

...

I had to train myself to stop clicking on clickbait by asking a question first. “Will I change anything about my life if I knew the answer to this question?”. The answer surely was no every single time, and I started to click less.

...

Your actions are a consequence of your thoughts. Your thoughts are a consequence of what you consume. And what you consume is largely a consequence of how you filter and refine your information diet. If you choose better inputs, you’ll get better outputs.

===

Some other things to be careful of is "pluralistic ignorance" and "sensory deprivation" when it comes to only getting your information from a screen. The internet, TV, and computers are beautiful, but also can cause these feelings faster than traditional ways of getting information. I personally opt for less screen time and more ways to learn from others and nature. That keeps the baddies like analysis paralysis, FOMO, and anxiety at bay. It also makes life much more serendipitous and organic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation

https://t.me/thecuriousloop

I note with interest the things you left out.

Radio, for one. Clubs and societies for another. (BPOE, Odd Fellows, Elks, Red Men, etc.)

Older houses have big porches in part because sitting on the porch, talking, and chatting with neighbors was part of the social life in the pre-TV era. (Also because there wasn't A/C.)

So was taking a walk around the town square in the evening, including with local musicians playing in the bandstand. Some farmers markets are still like that.

Square dancing was quite popular too.

And church activities, including church dinners, picnics and revivals.

> In the pre-Internet era

This is not something special about the Internet era! Older generation also felt overwhelmed by the information sources available to them.

This feeling of "information overload" is older than I am. The phrase dates from the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload

At https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21118893 I give a couple of older examples, like:

> The problems of adequate storage, preservation and service for the increasing flood of periodical literature coming into their collections are of special urgency for librarians. Many studies have been made, all of which view with deep concern the rapidly increasing rate of growth of American libraries.’ Such growth, if continued even at the present rate, will in a short time result in collections of almost unmanageable proportions, both as to physical size and servicing.

("The Use of High Reduction Microfilm in Libraries", J. Am. Doc. Summer 1950 - https://www.proquest.com/openview/14f723869613e43376c4a7646f... )

Looking now for "flood of publications", I easily found things like

> The last decade has witnessed the publication of an unparalleled number of books dealing with the social, economic, and political institutions of our own and other lands. Amid this flood of publications it is unusual to find one devoted entirely to the Constitution of the United States. - https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/437681 (1922)

> THE flood of publications recommending changes in education during the emergency appears overwhelming to the personnel of the schools - https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/440941?jou... (1943)

> just turn off the Internet and buy a book, but can you really pretend it doesn't exist? And how long can you stick to it?

I don't say that, because even without the Internet there's still overload.

Accept that you will not read every book in the library. Accept that you cannot know everything. Accept that others may point out something you missed and respond "Thank you!" rather than being embarrassed or ashamed.

but usually during specific instances - like when shopping.

i have to have someone - some entity - tell me what to buy. wirecutter. amazon's choice. etc.

the 'flood the zone (with disinformation)' strategy is working for Big Corporate.

doesn't look like democracy, nor humanity, is going to survive.

You can control how much information you're exposed to! It can be as simple as deleting a bunch of social media apps from your phone, or setting up filters so that only the emails you actually want are coming into your inbox.

Or maybe you just need a break from the internet entirely. Invite your friends over for a game night, or read a book. Whatever it is, taking time to step away from the information overload can help you reconnect with what matters most to you.