

Ask HN: Does digesting a lot of knowledge has any merit? - shubhamjain

We as geeks, spend much time on Internet, digesting content from sites like this, reddit, medium, wikis. I was just curious, does this reading of bits and pieces of knowledge from every field provide any merit in our life?<p>We learn about a super-fast enzyme, cure of cancer, history of human zoos, enterprise sales process but is the time better spent in focused learning? or is it something we find use of, at some point or other?
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brd
I think the misphrasing of your question provides the answer you're looking
for. You don't digest knowledge, you digest information. Knowledge is the
internalization of that information.

When you are able to convert information you've digested into knowledge, I'd
say it's worth it. The rest of the time, you're just learning and potentially
memorizing some information that will likely have little impact on your life.

With knowledge, it becomes something that improves your mental model of the
world. Knowledge is a topic of conversation you can bring up or discuss
reasonably.

Put another way: knowledge is what makes a person interesting; information is
how you win Jeopardy.

~~~
galfarragem
Knowledge is an idea/concept that you understand on a deep level and is
interconnected with other ideas. You can't easily forget it.

Information is an idea/concept that you don't really understand on a deep
level or can easily can interconnect with other ideas. Assuming that our
memory is full most of the time (unless you are making some kind of
defragmentation aka meditation/relaxation) to get new information your brain
must make space in your memory first. Lots of information is continually being
lost.

 _IMHO, empirically, each person has:_

-"ROM" (memory to store knowledge, normally increasing along your life).

-"RAM" (memory to store novelty, normally decreasing along your life).

Probably genetics provide minimum and maximum sizes that these 2 memory types
can ever reach.

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DaFranker
Rather than asking such a vague, generic, unhelpful question, ask yourself
whether the knowledge you're obtaining from the information you digest (see
brd's comment about knowledge vs information) will: 1) Give you more
prediction power, and 2) Allow you to later act on this prediction power to
take a different action that will have a more beneficial outcome than the
action you would have taken without that knowledge.

Taking better actions is the whole point of knowledge. In that respect, some
of it (e.g. specific knowledge of current politics for someone who is not an
activist and doesn't even vote) can be beyond utterly useless or actively
harmful. On the flipside, some (e.g. knowing there is a tiger behind the first
door, and no danger behind the second) have huge visible effects (taking the
second door, improving survival chances from 50% with zero knowledge to 100%
with knowledge of the tiger).

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brandonlipman
This is a great question to philosophize over. All the reading that we do
(especially as tech people) does seem slightly gratuitous. I find that I will
most likely retain/remember only a small percentage of what I consume.

Recently I have started writing. Much to my surprise I really love writing. It
helps me decompress and organize my thoughts. Since I have started writing I
have a much greater appreciation for great writing and notice how great
journalist construct their arguments/information.

So digesting does not have merit. It is merely an means to an end.
Triangulating and reconstructing knowledge is where the benefits and real
learning take place.

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azeirah
Nope. I've come to realize that even "smart-content" is nothing but pointless
entertainment. This is after five years of consuming everything to become
"really smart".

It's only in the rare case that HN, Reddit or Medium provides anything of
value.

~~~
vijayr
Is there a better way? How do we decide what to read and what not to read?
Also, how do we decide what to do with the information that we already have in
our heads?

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brudgers
The pleasure I get from entering text in boxes certainly makes me biased, but
I find that reading with an eye toward writing a comment shapes my
understanding. Though magnitudes less than ordering my thoughts via actually
writing [hopefully] thoughtful comments.

I suppose that the emphasis on What I read shaping what I write has pruned my
reading. I skip more stuff likely to devolve comments into the flames of
political debate and name calling. Anyway, passive consumption is different
from polyglot interest.

