Our Obsession With New Things Helped Us Evolve, But Now It's Slowly Killing Our Brains

Our ability to respond to the new and different is part of what makes us human.

We’re simply more interested in whatever is outside of that status quo. Generally, this interest serves us well. In an evolutionary context it has likely saved us from extinction several times.

While our affinity for seeking the new offered an advantage in a world without the Internet, it has never been tested in a world like today. The pace of information generation is crazy.

Gallagher fears the consequences of failing to become more discerning about our consumption.

Neophilia

Neophilia arises from the dual dynamic of seeking out something new and then getting used to it, which frees “and perhaps even spurs [us] to search for the next stimulus.” Put differently, neophilia is our affinity to novelty.

We’re attracted to the new and novel, often at the expense of “old” and status quo. We gravitate towards narratively sexy stories (derived from theories based on very little data) at the cost of knowledge.

“Like most behavior, neophilia occurs on a spectrum,” she writes. Our ability to survive and thrive derived from balancing “the sometimes conflicting needs to avoid risk and approach rewards.”

Evolution

We’ve been programed by evolution to think that vital information is likely to come from the new or unfamiliar. All living creatures do this to some extent.

Other things like an exciting IPO or the new coffee shop that just opened lure us in as well. They are new and unknown.

Some of us are more risk taking than others. Most of us want “to be neither scared stiff by too much novelty and change nor bored by too little.”

To balance our risk tolerance and our need for security, we generally seek the new and different in our “intellectual, creative, and recreational pursuits than in domains that require continuity and familiarity, such as … close relationships or professional commitments.”

In other words, we follow Alexander Pope’s advice: “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”

Extremes

While not necessarily important to individual success, the extremes are important to the success of the group as a whole.

Some of us live fast and die young. By experimenting and exploring, these people push the envelope for the rest of us. The cautious among us, the other extreme, “might have avoided a major recession.”

Wherever you sit on the spectrum, you can more skillfully consider your response to novelty and change.

Environment

Our mental and physical environment helps shape our attitudes to novelty and change.

Information Obesity

We are now in the age of information obesity.

Incomplete Thoughts

Information is abundant today and access is near frictionless. Novelty abounds. Gallagher calls this “a mental version of the perfect storm.”

We feel as if consuming more information makes us better off. Yet when the information we consume is novel, we lose track of what’s important.

Novelty is non-linear in dosage. What is good in small quantities is horrible in large quantities. In small doses the side effects are manageable. In large doses they take over.

It becomes harder to distinguish signal from noise.

In the past, our consumption of information contained a much higher ratio of signal to noise.

As the difficulty to create, disseminate, and consume information reduced, the amount of noise increased at a pace that signal couldn’t match. The signal is still there but now more than ever, it’s getting lost in the noise.

We’re also confusing information for knowledge. And we’re psychologically wired to over-react to information (novelty and noise). One consequence is that we lose sight of meaning.

Over to You

Is it our ability to selectively focus on what’s important that’s helped us adapt? If noise is easy to produce and the demand to produce it is unrelenting, does this place more importance on our information consumption habits? What role does the filter bubble play?