source: https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/the-intellectual-obesity-crisis
Notes
信息就像糖，让人上瘾
对无用信息的上瘾导致了我所说的“智力肥胖”，这样来比喻垃圾信息挺有意思。AI会生成更多这样的信息，新的肥胖症要产生了，得写一个用AI来筛选AI的工具或者prompt。之前看一个大佬已经把这个workflow做出来了，每天用AI过滤自己订阅源的文章，根据自己的prompt 总结。
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.
你今天消费的绝大多数在线内容不会提高你对世界的理解。事实上，它可能恰恰相反;最近的研究表明，浏览社交媒体的人往往会经历“规范性解离”，他们变得不那么有意识，也不太能够处理信息，以至于他们经常无法回忆起他们刚刚读过的东西。
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，对无用信息的上瘾导致了我所说的“智力肥胖”。就像吃垃圾食品会让你的身体膨胀一样，吃垃圾信息也会让你的大脑膨胀，让它充满了不和谐的半记忆的胡言乱语，分散了你的注意力，混淆了你的感官。无法区分相关和不相关，你会对琐事感到担忧，对谎言感到愤怒。这些担忧和愤怒促使你消耗更多的时间，而你消耗的所有时间都阻止了你做其他事情：学习，专注，甚至思考。其结果是你的意识流变得堵塞;你发展的心动脉粥样硬化。
古时候，糖主要来自甘蔗和蜂蜜，难以大量生产。所以，古人的菜肴不放糖，主要依靠食物本身的甜味。可以想象，古代的大部分食物，尤其是日常食品，应该是不好吃的。
一旦糖大量生产，人类就疯狂地爱上了它。我们喜欢糖，喜欢到现在的大部分食物，都必须添加糖，比如饮料、糕点、奶制品，甚至鸡排的配料都包含糖。
对糖上瘾，已经成了一种常见病。百度百科有一个”糖瘾”条目，解释上瘾原因是”甜味会带给人愉悦的感觉。“
科学家认为，糖会增加多巴胺的分泌，使大脑兴奋，感觉不到饱腹。通俗地说，就是糖会让你吃得很愉快，从而吃了还想吃，即使已经抱了。
过量摄入糖，是体重超标的根本原因。糖本身只是一种甜味剂，没有营养，只有热量，最终都转化为体内脂肪，让你越来越胖。世界卫生组织一直在呼吁少吃糖。
作者列举了，信息与糖的相似之处。
（1）低成本的大量生产。信息革命之后，人类就像生产糖一样，大量生产信息。
信息不仅生产成本低，传播成本更低，可以接近零成本地到达消费者。
（2）上瘾机制相同。2019年，加州大学伯克利分校的一项研究发现，信息也会刺激大脑产生多巴胺，跟糖的作用机制相同。
所以，看到一则吸引人的信息，跟吃一件甜点，带给你的满足感是一样的。你会对信息上瘾，看了还想看，具体表现就是放不下手机，划了又划。
（3）垃圾信息泛滥。就像垃圾食品流行一样，人类对信息上瘾的后果，就是垃圾信息的大量供给。
生产商发现，那些最刺激多巴胺的信息，有最多的阅读量，可以赚到更多的钱。于是，垃圾信息就被大量生产，变得无处不在。
人类已经陷入了这样一种境地，最容易获得的食品是垃圾食品，最容易接触到的信息是垃圾信息。
（4）思维”发胖”。就像垃圾食品让人体发胖一样，垃圾信息也会让思维发胖。
垃圾信息降低你的思考水平，将没意义的内容充斥你的大脑，分散你的注意力，堵塞你的思考，让你思维迟缓，判断力下降。
综上所述，信息上瘾与糖瘾一样有危害，需要积极防治。健康生活不仅少吃糖，还要少接触垃圾信息。
但是，就像躲不开糖一样，生活中根本没机会躲开垃圾信息。我们只能自我克制，反复告诫自己，远离垃圾信息，防止信息上瘾。
科技爱好者周刊（第 306 期）：信息就像糖一样上瘾 - 阮一峰的网络日志 从这里看到
Origin
“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.
我们进化到渴望吃糖，因为糖是一种稀缺的能量来源。但当我们学会以工业规模生产糖时，我们对甜食的热爱突然变成了一种负担。数据现在也是如此。在信息泛滥的时代，我们的好奇心曾经让我们专注，现在却让我们分心。这导致了智力肥胖症的流行，恶性垃圾信息堵塞了我们的大脑。
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).
把信息比喻成糖并非空穴来风。伯克利大学的研究人员在 2019 年的一项研究中发现，信息对大脑多巴胺奖赏系统的作用与食物相同。简单地说，大脑将信息本身视为一种奖励；信息是否准确或有用并不重要，大脑仍然会渴望得到它，并在食用后感到满足（至少在它开始渴望得到更多信息之前是如此）。
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.
几百年来，这都不是问题，因为在草原上，信息就像糖一样稀缺和珍贵。但随着工业社会和网络的兴起，这一切都改变了。
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时代，人们想尽一切办法吸引我们的兴趣。由于低质量的信息和高质量的信息一样能满足我们对信息的渴求，在数字时代，吸引注意力的最有效方式就是大量生产低质量的 “垃圾信息”—一种思想快餐。就像快餐一样，垃圾信息生产成本低廉，消费满足感强，但添加剂含量高，营养价值低。它还可能让人上瘾，如果过量摄入，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.
垃圾信息往往是虚假信息，但它之所以是垃圾，并不是因为它是虚假的。它之所以是垃圾，是因为它没有实际用途；它不会让你的生活变得更好，也不会提高你的认识。即使是谎言也能滋养人的心灵；陀思妥耶夫斯基的作品虽然是虚构的，但却比任何心理学教科书更能让你了解人类。与此同时，大多数经过验证的事实对改善你的生活或提高你的理解力毫无帮助，套用尼采的话说，它们就像水的化学成分知识对溺水的人一样有用。
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.
垃圾信息的常见类型包括八卦、琐事、点击诱饵、黑客、营销、哗众取宠和胡言乱语。但事实上，任何你用不到的信息都是垃圾信息。社交媒体上的一个典型例子是一张刚做好的汉堡的照片，标题是 “看我刚做了什么！“，但却没有附上食谱，因此你根本无法重新制作。这样的图片可能会让你短暂地流口水，可能会刺激你自己做一个汉堡，但它对你的生活没有任何明显的价值。
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.
大多数人在社交媒体上发布信息时都不会深思熟虑，这些人发布信息的速度自然也比心思缜密的人要快，因此一些鸡毛蒜皮的小事（如 “感觉累了，可能要睡觉了，笑”）很快就会充斥这些平台。但是，传播最广的垃圾信息是那些能唤起强烈情绪的信息，而记者和评论员等最想得到你关注的人也注意到了这一点。
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就是愤怒；它只需要一个简单的压迫故事，并根据相应的政治部落量身定做，就能达到复杂的效果。然而，愤怒虽然廉价，却极易让人上瘾，并具有极强的传染性，使其成为任何想在网络喧嚣中引起注意的人的首选武器。即使像《纽约时报》这样曾经备受尊敬的媒体，如今也开始使用 “垃圾新闻”，这些耸人听闻的报道旨在激怒报纸的读者和政治对手，以确保最大的关注度。
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，因为它价格低廉、易于生产，而且善于窃取你的注意力。垃圾信息无处不在，网民触手可及，数百万人因此沉迷其中。这就是为什么他们无休止地滚动 Twitter 时间线或查看 Instagram 通知，或反复点击刷新 YouTube 主页，或不断续订《泰晤士报》。
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.
你今天浏览的绝大多数网络内容都不会增进你对世界的了解。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都会下降，以至于他们常常无法回忆起刚刚读过的内容。
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.
尽管垃圾信息是 “空卡路里”，但吃起来还是很美味。由于你的多巴胺通路无法区分有用信息和无用信息，因此消费垃圾信息会让你感到满足，觉得自己在学习—它为你提供了精神营养—尽管你真正做的只是把虚拟爆米花塞进你的头颅。
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，沉迷于无用信息会导致我所说的 “智力肥胖症”。就像大吃垃圾食品会让你的身体臃肿一样，大吃垃圾信息也会让你的头脑臃肿，充斥着一知半解的胡言乱语，分散你的注意力，混淆你的感官。由于无法区分相关和不相关的信息，你会对琐事感到担忧，对虚假信息感到愤怒。这些担忧和愤怒促使你消费更多，而在你消费的所有时间里，你都无法做其他事情：学习、集中注意力，甚至思考。其结果是，你的意识流变得堵塞；你患上了头脑动脉粥样硬化症。
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状态中，这种分心是如此之大，甚至让我们无法分心。读完这篇文章，你可能会简单思考一下垃圾信息对你造成的伤害，然后继续漫无目的地滚动 Twitter。
But before you do that, let’s try to work out some kind of solution.
但在此之前，让我们先想办法解决这个问题。
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.
改善信息饮食最直接的方法就是养成元意识的习惯；注意你在注意什么。当你发现自己在不经意间拿起手机，或在 Twitter 图标上徘徊时，不妨引用 “10-10-10 规则”：问问自己，如果我消费了这些信息，10 分钟后、10 个月后和 10 年后我会有什么感觉？这样做可能会让你意识到，垃圾信息所带来的短暂快感在你的生活中是如此短暂和微不足道，以至于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.
如果仅凭理智无法战胜你的欲望，那就考虑重新安排你的生活方式，让垃圾信息无处遁形。我战胜智力肥胖的方法就是努力成为最好的作家。写作要求你过滤掉不良信息，因为你有责任让你的读者不满嘴跑火车。写作还迫使你定期完全屏蔽信息，这样你就能与自己的思想独处。在这个不断试图引诱你离开大脑的世界里，这种与自己的定期对抗有助于你保持清醒。
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，你必须确定适合自己的信息饮食。但是，如果你坚持无休止地消费网络为你提供的一切，那么你要知道，这场盛宴的高潮是一道苦涩的甜点：在你生命的尽头，当你权衡自己的遗憾时，你可能不会说：“天哪，我真希望我花更多时间浏览网络”。恰恰相反，你不会记得有陌生人在推特上告诉你他们更喜欢意大利面而不是披萨，也不会记得那张让你开心了五秒钟的 gif，更不会记得那篇让你生气了整整一分钟的《泰晤士报》文章。当你注意到这些垃圾在你记忆中留下的无数漏洞时，你就会终于明白，不是你在消费这些垃圾，而是这些垃圾在消费你。