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?

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?

[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 → brd]

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.

[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).

[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 → azeirah]

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?

[arisAlexis → azeirah]

It's addictive though.

[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.

[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.