There's Too Much Knowledge!
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There's Too Much Knowledge!
A lighthearted edition of the newsletter for a heavy week.
Hey readers. Parker here.
I saw a funny TikTok the other day from comedian Tom Fell. Okay, like the aging millennial I am, I saw it because it was also posted on Twitter/X/whatever-we’re-calling-it-these-days. Anyway, I thought it was good and funny, and figured that I’d share it with you here:
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And here’s a quick transcript:
There’s too much knowledge! We were never meant to know this much! It’s truly impossible to keep track of everything! My brain is constantly bombarded by information that I don’t have the capacity to retain or learn. We’re filled with facts, but have no idea how to interpret them or understand why they’re true. We’re continuously hit by a barrage of information, and are shooting it back straight from the hip.
The internet’s where we come to have people condescend to us about things they learned yesterday. I’m an expert in nothing! I don’t remember where I ‘learned’ anything! I can’t focus at all, and I don’t even have ADHD! My most commonly cited sources are an article I saw, this podcast I listened to, and my friend’s friend who I was talking to this past weekend!
In with the entire history of conflict in the Middle East, and out with my cousin’s wife’s name and what she does for a living! Hello, Golden Bachelor contestant names and ages; goodbye, whatever medicine my wife is allergic to! It’s awesome I know Travis Kelce’s stance on vaccines, but totally forgot what a safe PSI for my tires is! My default state is confused, ignorant, or mentally exhausted! It’s easier than ever to cherry-pick facts to support whatever opinion you have!
If you made it this far, stop scrolling and go outside!
Now, brains aren’t like computers with 1:1 information in/information out ratios, but I’m not going to pretend to have any clue what I’m talking about when it comes to neuroscience. Oh boy, though, this video hit home for me, a person who can rattle off random stats from the 1998 Chicago Cubs season but can’t remember my mom’s phone number without looking it up.
It’s been a long week filled with a lot of heavy news related to the war happening in Israel and Gaza, and to be perfectly honest, I’ve been unsure how to write about it. The age of hot takes seems to have given a lot of writers the confidence to believe they can solve millennia-old geopolitical disputes with a blog post, but I’d like to think that I’m humble enough to know that if I tried, I’d just be making it up as I go along, providing #content for the sake of #content and not actually providing anything of use to readers or the world.
Next week, I think I will write about the war in the context of my actual area of expertise: the press.
In the meantime, I hope everyone has a pleasant and relaxing weekend. I’ve got a bit of Spider-Man 2 to play, and tomorrow is my wedding anniversary (6 years! Time flies!) — something I, thankfully, have not forgotten in all the information overload!
Parker
There's Too Much Knowledge!
Thank you for not talking about the war. There are way too many bad takes out there with everyone talking without all the facts.
Happy anniversary!
I like your approach of talking about the war through the context of your own practical experience. Too many are throwing out hot takes to fill a topic checkbox and it’s causing an overload of unnecessary clutter in the landscape. I’ve been avoiding talking about it in any capacity simply because I’m not confident in my ability to convey the nuance of the situation. Taking it this way allows you to convey the nuance of just one area without trying to provide a solution to a complex situation.