Signal Vs Noise

Claude Shannon’s information theory divides data into two categories: signal and noise. The former holds information, the latter is worthless.

Knowledge is no different. Learning how to distinguish mere data from actual useful information is important to keep your sanity and avoid time wasters. 

TV news is a fine example of a medium with a low signal-to-noise ratio, unlike books chosen to solve a particular problem you have at hand.

I believe there are three ways to think about how to assess the worth of a knowledge source.

The first one follows Bacon’s aphorism scientia potentia est, knowledge is power. Knowledge is supposed to empower you as an individual or a community. News from pandemics or natural catastrophes and social media garbage only clutter the mind and generate anxiety: they are unlikely to have any impact on your life or others whatsoever, and even less likely to give you the tools to become an actor rather than a spectator.

My personal way to go about choosing books, videos, and blogs to consume is to begin with a problem you want to solve in mind. If I want to write a book about digital nomadism, I’ll likely be reading books about travel ethics, remote work, and the tech economy.

Seneca proposes my favorite way to look at it: 

[…] no one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend their time on useless literary problems__, of whom even among the Romans there is now a great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written first, whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other matters of this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure your secret soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a scholar__. But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the Romans also. […] there will be no profit in such knowledge__, nevertheless it wins our attention by reason of the attractiveness of an empty subject. […] though they pledge themselves for the truth of what they write, still whose mistakes will be made fewer by such stories? Whose passions will they restrain__? Whom will they make more brave, whom more just, whom more noble-minded__? My friend Fabianus used to say that at times he was doubtful whether it was not better not to apply oneself to any studies than to become entangled in these__.

We could call it Seneca’s criteria: knowledge makes people better.

The pursuit of knowledge is one of humankind’s noblest endeavors. If we want to keep it that way in an age where the volume of data never ceases to increase, it’s primordial to develop a personal compass to guide ourselves.