#172: Trick questions
Believing that everything will be better if only we gather more information commits us to endless searching and casting about, to one more swipe of the screen in the hope that the elusive bit of data, which will make everything clear, will suddenly present itself. From one angle, this is just another symptom of reducing our experience of the world ... See more
theconvivialsociety.substack.com • The Answer Is Not More Information
Israel strikes Iran. A compulsion to doom scroll, but watching myself as I do it. There’s worry, but also a scanning for both clarity and novelty. The main problem is that the same factoids are being repeated over and over; it’s quite hard to obtain new and developing information. What’s happened in the last 30 minutes? It’s a weird paradox; you ob
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My point turns out to be relatively straightforward: maybe you and I don’t need more information. And, if we think that the key to navigating uncertainty and mitigating anxiety is simply more information, then we may very well make matters worse for ourselves.