The Internet is not narrowing the cognitive gap, but widening the cognitive gap, stupid people are immersed in spam, more and more stupid and stubborn, smart people silently absorb real information, more and more intelligent and rational.
--Kun Peng Theory
First, you think it is information, and many times it is just information
Kun Peng's theory in "The Message? Information? correspondence? communication? The difference between information and message is specifically discussed.
Many people mistake messages for information directly, especially in China, which is basically mixed into one word.
Of course, even if it is mixed up, it is not a good thing to talk about it casually.
However, when it comes to rigorous disciplines such as information theory and communication science, the result is complete confusion.
Information is something that eliminates uncertainty, and it is valuable.
Messages are encoded messages, such as: saying it is encoded with sound; writing it is encoded with symbols...
Information is like an airplane, information is the passenger.
Messages may or may not contain information.
Just like "AAAAAAAAA", it is the message.
However, its information entropy = -log₂ (1/1) = 0, there is no uncertainty.
That is to say, it cannot transmit any information, there is no amount of information.
Therefore, many messages may be encoded in large quantities, but they do not necessarily contain any information, that is, they have little value.
This actually reveals a truth:
With the sending of messages more and more convenient and fast, especially the popularity of the Internet, everyone can become a message sender, the amount of messages is more and more, is a geometric, exponential growth.
This is the so-called information explosion, in fact, it should be an information explosion.
The information carrying information is growing rapidly, and the tide is rising, and the information is bound to grow, but it is not a year-on-year growth.
Because what is valuable in this world is always scarce.
At this time, there is a difference between the whole and the individual.
For the eternal whole, as long as the information grows, it is a good thing, and whether the information is flooded or not does not matter.
However, for an individual with a finite life, the entire life time of his existence is fixed, at most 100 years× 365 days× 24 hours = 876,000 hours.
After the increase of information, it will naturally occupy more people's time, but the information and information do not grow proportionally, which causes the amount of information obtained per unit of time to probably not increase, and even the probability will decrease.
Therefore, the Internet is not narrowing the cognitive gap, but expanding the cognitive gap.
Stupid people are immersed in spam, more and more stupid and stubborn, smart people silently absorb real information, more and more intelligent and rational.
From this, we can draw the following conclusions and implications:
First, don't think that if you look at it more, you will get more information.
People's time is fixed, the amount of reading is basically fixed, if you do not selectively receive messages, because the message is more ≠ more information, so it is a waste of time, equivalent to a waste of life.
Second, the more developed and developed communication technology, the lower the average proportion of information in the message, and we can look at human history to wonder whether this is the truth.
We can understand that information is valuable, information is always scarce, just like the number of passengers is fixed, the more aircraft are built, the result can only be that each aircraft carries fewer and fewer passengers.
The knowledge economy is on fire because it provides screening and filtering services in an era of information flooding, telling people what information is, thus saving people's time.
Time = money, then saving time is saving money, saving money is creating value, so the knowledge economy is valuable.
In fact, what it does is no different from traditional publishing houses, newspapers, and magazines, but the same business has changed into fashionable clothes and used more advanced tools in advance than others.
Third, the purpose of human access to information is to eliminate uncertainty, but the more short-term uncertainty, the stronger the uncertainty.
In the past, Kun Peng said in "Investing in Slow, Not Fast, Buffett Wins in Slow Money", in the world of probability, the more short-term, the more likely it is to approach half to half.
Therefore, the more short-term the more uncertain, the more short-term the more difficult to distinguish between true and false, the more short-term the more noisy, the more short-term the more prone to random events, the shorter the more likely to punish good and evil.
That is to say, the shorter the period, the more difficult it is for manpower to do, and the more resigned it is to fate.
Then, the best way we can choose may be the only way to do it – let time judge, let the bullets fly for a while, and walk and see.
Reducing the input of instant messages (such as news, various current events and financial commentary, etc.) by 90% every day, and reading famous classics that have been cruelly tested by time, that is the real acquisition of information and value.
Moreover, according to the practice of Kun Peng's theory, this will also reduce most of the unnecessary anxiety, because we are often salty and eat turnips.
There is a saying that is particularly in place: "To be a shareholder, it is really tiring, with tens of thousands of pieces of principal, with the heart of the United Nations, and finally economists, historians, military scientists, political scientists, trade experts have all become a shareholder, speculating in stocks or losing money." "
Fourth, human beings are driven by information, and can even be said to be controlled, and the things that can control people in this world must be big things, and they will definitely make people flock to them.
Therefore, today's information is less than 90% manipulated, and the world you see through the message is often the world that people want you to see.
Some people say that to think, to think independently, this is right.
But who can guarantee that you will not change your face in the face of the bombardment of the message and your heart will not beat?!
In the past, we thought that Buffett was ok, but the old man was the same person, and this epidemic was also a little panicked.
Therefore, if you want to let your brain become a racetrack for other people's ideas, only if you can't afford to hide is king.
Second, the content secret revealed by information entropy
Kun Peng has been engaged in content-related work for more than 20 years.
Some things become habits over time, so I always think involuntarily about what I have learned in connection with the content.
For example, through the study of information theory and information entropy, I found that they are actually revealing to us a study, writing articles, writing novels, speaking... Content-related tips.
That is, in order to improve the efficiency of learning or the attractiveness of the content of creation, it is necessary to mix uncertainty and certainty, not all certainty, or all uncertainty.
People's favorite content structure is: deterministic + uncertain = know + not know = expected + unexpected.
And they can't be clearly distinguished, they have to be interspersed, you have me, I have you.
Certainty is the equivalent of a ladder, uncertainty is knowledge at height, certainty is real, and uncertainty is emptiness.
Isn't the ladder made up of "real + empty"?
It is precisely this structure that enables people's cognition to continue to improve upwards.
Why do professional papers only professionals like to read?
It is because for many people, the content is full of uncertainty, in a common saying, like the book of heaven.
Of course, if it's all deterministic content, it's not going to work.
Just like some CEOs speak, as soon as he says the first half of the sentence, others can guess the second half of the sentence.
As a result, people will think that what he says is empty words, clichés, nonsense.
So, we pay attention to the fact that those who speak particularly well are really not just how skilled they are, but mainly because the content they are talking about is shallow and deep, there are many things you know, but there is a lot of knowledge that you don't know, or you didn't expect.
Another example: writing an article, the most attractive thing is that you can use a popular metaphor to tell a difficult truth, a popular metaphor is deterministic, and the truth is uncertain, and the combination of the two makes it very easy for people to understand.
Third, the essence of cognitive upgrading is to eliminate information entropy
Schrödinger said that life feeds on negative entropy.
In addition to eliminating entropy by metabolism, people also eliminate entropy by improving cognition.
Metabolism guarantees human survival, in the era of industrialization, our metabolism must rely on the value of the exchange for the corresponding information.
Where does value come from?
Value is created by constantly giving your time to solve problems.
In this world of probability, to solve a problem is to eliminate the uncertainty of each thing.
The degree of uncertainty in one thing is information entropy.
Then, a person's life is actually a life of constantly eliminating the entropy of things.
There are two outcomes in this process:
One is to exchange value and ensure their own survival;
The second is to improve the level of cognition, enhance their ability to eliminate information entropy, and make their unit time more and more valuable.
For example, when we learn about stock investing, we are eliminating the uncertainty of buying and selling stocks.
Moreover, the simpler the operation, the higher the degree of uncertainty, and the more you need to study well.
Stock investment is a very simple operation, there are only two actions: buying and selling.
However, its degree of uncertainty is very high, because the key moment of buying and selling tests not skills but human nature.
So, to understand something very difficult and eliminate its uncertainty, you need to enter information corresponding to the size of the information.
This is the law of ten thousand hours, which is the truth behind deliberate training.
There may be shortcuts to exams, but there are never shortcuts to real learning and cognitive upgrading.
If you think about it, if you can really rely on a few articles to become a master, then world peace will have been achieved a long time ago.
The philosopher Montaigne said: "The biggest problem in this world is that the wise are always full of doubts and caution, but the fools are always in the hands of the truth and their blood is boiling." ”
The philosopher Russell explains that this is because "we are born with ignorance, but not stupidity, which is the result of later education." ”
This article is original by "Kun Peng Theory", please retain this information when reprinting
Please pay attention to this headline number, Kun Peng theory since its inception in early 2016, the founders are Feng Lipeng, Teng Dapeng, including today's headlines, Snowball, Sohu, NetEase, Sina and other well-known websites or self-media platforms of special experts or special columnists, has published more than 6,000 original articles and Q&A, article dissemination has been reprinted more than 8 million times, the total number of articles read nearly 2 billion.