Part of our information overconsumption problem has to do with the fact that we don’t know a lot about how brains work. On top of that, a lot of what we’re told is wrong. I vividly remember my 5th grade teacher telling me that human beings only used 10% of their brains. And I remember a psychology teacher in high school telling me I had a subconscious mind that was recording everything I saw and heard for all my life.
What supernatural mythology we create about our brains! It’s unfortunate that these two myths lead us down the road to information obesity.
The first myth, that we only use 10% of our brains, is really pervasive. Even more pervasive though are web pages dedicated debunking it and trying to figure out where it came from. It’s been attributed to William James, Albert Einstein and a whole bunch of others. It’s particularly pervasive amongst the new age crowd who use it as “evidence” that we’re blessed with psychic powers. It’s total nonsense.
The second myth is a little more nuanced— that there’s a subconscious mind and it records all of our memories into a giant, permanent repository. Google around for the subconscious memory and you’re going to get a bunch of stuff that seems nearly supernatural. But the research generally agrees that memory doesn’t work that way. We’d have far more accurate eyewitness testimonies if we had infallible, perfect subconscious memory.
While we certainly have not figured out everything about how memory works, or how the brain works, but what we do know is that our brain, like everything else, obeys the laws of physics. And unfortunately these myths give us license to consume limitlessly, with no regard to the actual quantity or quality of sources we take in. If we consumed food with the same kind mythology about our bodies, we’d be even more morbidly obese than we already are.
While it’s unknown what that capacity is, it’s ironic that we are far more selective about what information goes into our iPods than we are our own minds. Coming to terms with the fact that we have a finite capacity to store information in our heads, is the first step to a healthy information diet.