Chapters 17 & 18
Rolf's Points
(What's mentioned in the book)
Three types of opinion volcano inducing news items:
1. No interest - e.g. sports
2. Fundamentally unknowable - weather, stocks
3. Too complex for our brains - outbreak of war
Comprehension of a text decreases with the number of hyperlinks it contains
by Nicholas Carr
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
- Herbert Simon
Nobel Prize winning economist
Vale's Points
(What's supplemented when Vale was reading)
"Think before you speak, but read before you think"
Don't form emotionally fueled opinions before you truly understand a topic. It's unhealthy and irresponsible behaviour.
"It's a serious mistake to think we need to form an opinion about everything."
Here I am forming opinions about every chapter.
Even though it's a good exercise to ask people what the ten most important items in the news last month was, I feel like people can come up with excuses like
"Oh it's the collective news that makes me intelligent, yaknow? Like the ability to pivot between pieces of news, widely diverse ideas, I am so well-read"
Also Wikipedia has mouse-over links