The Intellectual Obesity Crisis智力肥胖危机

Information addiction is rotting our brains信息成瘾正在腐蚀我们的大脑

“Our minds are hurt more often by overeating than by hunger.”
“暴饮暴食比饥饿更容易伤害我们的心灵。”

— Petrarch ——彼特拉克

We evolved to crave sugar because it was a scarce source of energy. But when we learned to produce it on an industrial scale, suddenly our love for sweet things became a liability. The same is now true of data. In an age of information overabundance, our curiosity, which once focused us, now distracts us. And it’s led to an epidemic of intellectual obesity that’s clogging our minds with malignant junk.
我们进化到对糖的渴望，因为它是一种稀缺的能量来源。但当我们学会以工业规模生产它时，我们对甜食的热爱突然变成了一种负担。现在数据也是如此。在信息过剩的时代，曾经让我们专注的好奇心现在却分散了我们的注意力。这导致了智力肥胖的流行，恶性垃圾堵塞了我们的思想。

The analogy of information as sugar is not just rhetoric. A 2019 study by researchers at Berkeley found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as food. Put simply, the brain treats information as a reward in itself; it doesn't matter whether the info is accurate or useful, the brain will still crave it and feel satisfied after consuming it (at least until it starts craving more).
将信息比作糖不仅仅是一种修辞。伯克利研究人员 2019 年的一项研究发现，信息对大脑产生多巴胺的奖励系统的作用与食物的作用相同。简而言之，大脑将信息本身视为一种奖励；无论信息是否准确或有用，大脑仍然会渴望它并在消耗它后感到满足（至少直到它开始渴望更多）。

For hundreds of millennia, this wasn't a problem, because on the plains of the savanna, information was as scarce and precious as sugar. But this all changed with the rise of industrial society and the web.
几千年来，这都不是问题，因为在大草原的平原上，信息就像糖一样稀缺而珍贵。但这一切随着工业社会和网络的兴起而改变。

We now live in an attention economy, where people are trying to draw our interest by any means possible. Since low-quality information is just as effective at satisfying our information-cravings as high-quality information, the most efficient way to get attention in the digital age is by mass-producing low-quality “junk info”— a kind of fast food for thought. Like fast food, junk info is cheap to produce and satisfying to consume, but high in additives and low in nutrition. It's also potentially addictive and, if consumed excessively, highly dangerous.
我们现在生活在注意力经济中，人们试图以任何可能的方式引起我们的兴趣。由于低质量的信息与高质量的信息一样能有效地满足我们的信息渴求，因此在数字时代获得关注的最有效方法就是大量生产低质量的“垃圾信息”——一种快餐为了思考。与快餐一样，垃圾信息生产成本低廉，消费起来也令人满意，但添加剂含量高，营养含量低。它还具有潜在的成瘾性，如果过量食用，则非常危险。

Junk info is often false info, but it isn't junk because it's false. It's junk because it has no practical use; it doesn't make your life better, and it doesn't improve your understanding. Even lies can be nourishing; the works of Dostoevsky are fiction, yet can teach you more about humans than any psychology textbook. Meanwhile, most verified facts do nothing to improve your life or understanding, and are, to paraphrase Nietzsche, as useful as knowledge of the chemical composition of water to someone who is drowning.
垃圾信息通常是虚假信息，但它不是垃圾，因为它是虚假的。它是垃圾，因为它没有实际用途；它不会让你的生活变得更好，也不会提高你的理解力。即使谎言也能滋润；陀思妥耶夫斯基的作品虽然是虚构的，但比任何心理学教科书都能教会你更多关于人类的知识。与此同时，大多数经过验证的事实对改善你的生活或理解没有任何帮助，用尼采的话来说，它们对溺水者来说就像水的化学成分的知识一样有用。

Common types of junk info include gossip, trivia, clickbait, hackery, marketing, churnalism, and babble. But in fact, any information that you can't use is junk info. A typical example on social media would be a photo of a freshly cooked burger, captioned with “Look what I just made!” but posted without a recipe so you can't even recreate it. Such an image might make you briefly salivate, and possibly spur you to make a burger of your own, but it provides no discernible value to your life.
常见的垃圾信息类型包括八卦、琐事、点击诱饵、黑客行为、营销、煽动和胡言乱语。但事实上，任何你不能使用的信息都是垃圾信息。社交媒体上的一个典型例子是一张新鲜烹制的汉堡的照片，标题是“看看我刚刚做了什么！”但发布时没有食谱，所以你甚至无法重新创建它。这样的图像可能会让你短暂垂涎欲滴，并可能促使你自己制作汉堡，但它不会为你的生活提供明显的价值。

Most people don't think very hard about what they post on social media, and such people are naturally able to post at a faster rate than more careful minds, so trivialities (e.g. “feeling tired, might go to sleep, lol”) quickly saturate these platforms. But the junk info that spreads furthest of all is that which evokes strong emotions, and this hasn't gone unnoticed by those, such as journalists and commentators, who are most desperate for your attention.
大多数人不会认真思考他们在社交媒体上发布的内容，这些人自然能够以比更细心的人更快的速度发布内容，因此琐碎的事情（例如“感觉累了，可能会去睡觉，哈哈”）很快使这些平台饱和。但传播最广的垃圾信息是那些能引起强烈情绪的信息，而这一点并没有被那些最渴望得到你关注的记者和评论员等人忽视。

The easiest strong emotion to evoke is outrage; it requires nothing more sophisticated than a simple story of oppression, tailored to the appropriate political tribe. And yet outrage, for all its cheapness, is highly addictive and highly contagious, making it the weapon of choice for anyone who wants to be noticed in the online cacophony. Even once-respected outlets like the New York Times now resort to “ragebait,” sensationalist stories calculated to infuriate both the newspaper's readers and its political opponents, ensuring maximum attention.
最容易唤起的强烈情绪是愤怒。它所需要的只是一个简单的压迫故事，为适当的政治部落量身定制，没有什么比这更复杂的了。然而，尽管愤怒很廉价，但却很容易让人上瘾，并且具有很强的传染性，这使得它成为任何想要在网络喧嚣中受到关注的人的首选武器。即使是像《纽约时报》这样一度受人尊敬的媒体现在也诉诸“愤怒诱饵”，即耸人听闻的故事，旨在激怒报纸的读者和政治对手，确保获得最大程度的关注。

Market forces and social pressures have caused junk info to dominate the web because it's cheap, easy to produce, and good at stealing your attention. Its ubiquity means it's always within easy reach of netizens, and as a result, millions of people are now hooked on it. It's why they endlessly scroll their Twitter timelines or check their Instagram notifications, or repeatedly click refresh on the YouTube homepages, or keep renewing their subscriptions to the Times.
市场力量和社会压力导致垃圾信息在网络上占据主导地位，因为它们价格低廉、易于生产，并且善于吸引您的注意力。它的无处不在意味着它总是很容易被网民触达，因此，现在有数百万人迷上了它。这就是为什么他们无休止地滚动 Twitter 时间线或检查 Instagram 通知，或反复点击 YouTube 主页上的刷新，或不断更新对《纽约时报》的订阅。

The vast majority of the online content you consume today won't improve your understanding of the world. In fact, it may just do the opposite; recent research suggests that people browsing social media tend to experience “normative dissociation” in which they become less aware and less able to process information, to such an extent that they often can’t recall what they just read.
您今天消费的绝大多数在线内容不会增进您对世界的了解。事实上，它可能只会起到相反的作用。最近的研究表明，浏览社交媒体的人往往会经历“规范性分离”，他们的意识和处理信息的能力下降，以至于他们常常记不起刚刚读过的内容。

But despite being “empty calories,” junk info still tastes delicious. Since your dopamine pathways can't distinguish between useful and useless info, consuming junk info gives you the satisfaction of feeling like you're learning—it offers you the sensation of mental nourishment—even though all you're really doing is shoving virtual popcorn into your skull.
但尽管垃圾信息是“空热量”，但它的味道仍然很美味。由于你的多巴胺通路无法区分有用和无用的信息，因此消费垃圾信息会给你带来学习的满足感——它为你提供精神滋养的感觉——即使你真正做的只是推虚拟爆米花进入你的头骨。

Eventually, the addiction to useless info leads to what I call “intellectual obesity.” Just as gorging on junk food bloats your body, so gorging on junk info bloats your mind, filling it with a cacophony of half-remembered gibberish that sidetracks your attention and confuses your senses. Unable to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant, you become concerned by trivialities and outraged by falsehoods. These concerns and outrages push you to consume even more, and all the time that you're consuming, you're prevented from doing anything else: learning, focusing, even thinking. The result is that your stream of consciousness becomes clogged; you develop atherosclerosis of the mind.
最终，对无用信息的沉迷导致了我所说的“智力肥胖”。就像狼吞虎咽地吃垃圾食品会让你的身体膨胀一样，狼吞虎咽地吃垃圾信息也会让你的大脑膨胀，让你的大脑充满一些记不清的胡言乱语，分散你的注意力，迷惑你的感官。由于无法区分相关和不相关，你会对琐事感到担忧，并对谎言感到愤怒。这些担忧和愤怒会促使你消费更多，而在你消费的过程中，你无法做任何其他事情：学习、集中注意力，甚至思考。结果就是你的意识流被堵塞了；你的大脑会出现动脉粥样硬化。

We now live in a state of constant distraction caused by an addiction to useless information, and this distraction is so overpowering it even distracts us from the fact we're being distracted. You'll probably read this article, briefly consider the damage junk info has done to you, and then return to aimlessly scrolling Twitter.
我们现在生活在一种因沉迷于无用信息而导致的持续分心的状态中，这种分心是如此强大，甚至使我们无法意识到自己正在分心。您可能会阅读这篇文章，简要考虑垃圾信息对您造成的损害，然后返回漫无目的地滚动 Twitter。

But before you do that, let's try to work out some kind of solution.
但在此之前，让我们尝试找出某种解决方案。

The most straightforward way to improve your information diet is to develop a habit for meta-awareness; to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. When you find yourself reaching unprompted for your phone, or hovering over the Twitter icon, invoke the “10-10-10 rule:” ask yourself, if I consume this info, how will I feel about it in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years? Doing this may help you realize that the brief sugar-rush offered by junk info is so transient and insignificant in the grand scheme of your life that it's simply not worth your time.
改善信息饮食的最直接方法是养成元意识的习惯；去关注你正在关注的事情。当你发现自己不自觉地伸手去拿手机，或者将鼠标悬停在 Twitter 图标上时，请调用“10-10-10 规则”：问问自己，如果我使用此信息，在 10 分钟、10 个月后我会有何感受？ 10年？这样做可能会帮助你认识到，垃圾信息带来的短暂甜蜜在你人生的宏伟计划中是如此短暂和微不足道，根本不值得你花时间。

And if your cravings can't be beaten by mere reasoning, then consider rearranging your lifestyle so junk info is simply not an option. The way I beat intellectual obesity was by trying to become the best writer I can be. Writing requires you to filter out bad information because you have a duty to your readers to not be full of shit. Writing also forces you to periodically shut out information altogether so you can be alone with your thoughts. This regular confrontation with yourself helps you keep your bearings in a world constantly trying to lure you away from your brain.
如果仅仅靠推理无法消除你的渴望，那么请考虑重新安排你的生活方式，这样垃圾信息就不再是一个选择。我战胜智力肥胖的方法是努力成为最好的作家。写作要求你过滤掉不良信息，因为你对读者有责任不要充满垃圾。写作还迫使你定期完全排除信息，这样你就可以独自思考。这种与自己的定期对抗可以帮助你在一个不断试图引诱你远离大脑的世界中保持自己的方位。

Ultimately you'll have to determine the info-diet that works for you. But if you insist on endlessly consuming whatever the web serves you, know that this banquet culminates in a bitter dessert: at the end of your life, when you're weighing your regrets, you probably won’t say “Man, I wish I’d spent more time browsing the web.” On the contrary, you'll have no recollection of that tweet by a stranger telling you they prefer pasta to pizza, or that gif that amused you for five seconds, or that Times piece that made you mad for a whole minute. And when you notice the myriad holes that all this junk has left in your memory, then it’ll finally be clear that you weren’t consuming it as much as it was consuming you.
最终你必须确定适合你的信息饮食。但是，如果你坚持无休止地消费网络为你提供的任何东西，请知道这场盛宴将以苦涩的甜点告终：在你生命的尽头，当你权衡你的遗憾时，你可能不会说“伙计，我希望我我花了更多的时间浏览网页。”相反，你不会记得陌生人告诉你他们更喜欢意大利面而不是披萨的那条推文，或者让你开心了五秒钟的动图，或者让你生气一分钟的《泰晤士报》文章。当你注意到所有这些垃圾在你的记忆中留下的无数漏洞时，你最终会清楚地意识到，你并没有像它消耗你那样消耗它。

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