Sometimes It’s Better to Be Less Informed

There are times in life when being less informed is better than being more informed. I know that sounds shocking. We’ve always been taught that becoming well informed is a virtue; our civic duty. It seems appalling for someone to advocate ignorance.

But let me illustrate why being less informed may be beneficial with three recent examples from my own life.

Being Less Informed Can Help You Accomplish More

Two weeks ago I accomplished very little. I wrote a short post asking people to click on my affiliate links. I dashed off a quick funny story about kittens Friday afternoon just so there would be some content on the site. And I did one other thing that ended up being a waste of time, which I’ll come back to in a minute. That’s about it.

Last week, I accomplished a ton. I should take time to be proud of getting so much done, but I won’t bore you with a long list.

What was the difference? Simple. I stopped paying attention to the news.

This wasn’t a conscious decision. I think I had just gotten burned out on COVID news, or perhaps numbed. I get a couple of morning briefing e-mails. Instead of reading them closely, I just skimmed through them to see if there was anything that I personally could do something about, or that would impact my behavior.

But things like the number of infected and dead, or various debates among political leadership, I just ignored, figuring that fell into the category of “Horrible things I have no control over, and that will be out of date by tomorrow anyway.”

And then for the rest of the day, I didn’t look at any news. If there was anything important, I trusted I’d see it the next morning. Or I’d get a breaking news alert. Or everyone would mention it on Facebook. And without this distraction, I was able to get so much more done.

I don’t know what plans were discussed by politicians on Monday that were changed by Friday, and I wasn’t aware of various awful depressing statistics every day, but I can’t see how I’m any worse off for that. I’m certainly better off for all that I completed.

Being Less Informed Improves Your Mood

They say ignorance is bliss. And also that if you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention. But why would you want to be outraged? I’d rather be blissful.

I’m being a bit cheeky here. But remember that the business model of the news and social media is to generate outrage and present a skewed picture of the world to make things look much worse than they really are, because that’s what attracts eyeballs. The news wants to terrify you, and the social media algorithms want to stir up arguments.

Currently we’re going through something that genuinely is horrible, and I don’t want to minimize people’s suffering. But the news is doing us all a grave disservice by convincing us to obsess over the worst aspects of this. And you are doing yourself a disservice by spending excessive time watching the news, and allowing yourself to be manipulated.

I’m not above this myself. Which brings me to the other thing I did two weeks ago that I said I’d come back to: Paying attention to the news had put me in a foul mood. Then I had an interaction with someone that didn’t go the way I had hoped it would. In reaction to that, I wrote up a blog post, the gist of which was, “This guy sucks and I’m better than him.” Only I took 3000 words to say that.

I spent two days writing and editing this, coming up with just the right words. And then I realized it was a horrible thing to write and I shouldn’t post it at all. So all the work I put into it was a complete waste of time.

(Wasting that time was still better than publishing something I would have been ashamed of. Kind of like how when I feel myself sliding toward an internet argument, I’ll e-mail a comment to myself before posting it to make sure I still think it’s a good idea after some time. One of my gratitudes that night was that I was able to self-edit and stop myself from making a big mistake.)

Being Less Informed Can Make You More Respectful Toward Others

The third recent experience I had came when my wife and I were discussing a common misconception people have about Coronavirus. I thought to myself, “I’m going to post to Facebook about that.”

Then I remembered that it was Affable April, and I shouldn’t be posting something saying, “If you believe this, you’re stupid.”

I started brainstorming ways to reframe my point in a positive way. “Remember to keep in mind X.” Or “If you’re going to discuss Y, you should account for X.”

Then I stopped, and thought to myself, “What am I doing? What is the purpose of me posting this to Facebook at all?” This wasn’t anything that would help keep people safe, prevent the spread of the virus, or provide comfort. It had to do with comparing the effectiveness of responses between countries. The best case scenario was that I would be providing people with ammunition to use in pointless internet arguments.

But being honest with myself, I knew that my real goal was to say, “Ha ha, I’m smarter than the people who commit this fallacy, nanny nanny boo boo.”

Affable April or not, and no matter how I frame it, that’s not the sort of behavior I should be engaging in.

Being better informed increases your chances of being right, but it’s not all that important to be right.

It’s far more important to be respectful, kind, generous, build connections and friendships with people, be the kind of person that people like, respect, and admire, and to be happy. Snarkily pointing out people’s mistakes is antithetical to those goals, even if I’m right and the alternative is to leave people less informed. Especially when what they’re mistaken about is totally irrelevant to how they act and live their lives.

A Quick Note About Politics

This blog is a politics-free zone. I want to forestall anyone who might say, “Ignorance leads people to support the bad political side, whereas if they were more knowledgeable they’d support my side.”

It would be nice if that were true. But additional research and knowledge just increases people’s polarization. They’ll either seek out sources that agree with them, or dismiss the sources that disagree with them.

Since this blog is a politics-free zone, please don’t post any comments about specific politicians, parties, ideologies, or policies. I’ll just delete them, and that will be a frustrating waste of both our time. There are an infinite number of other places on the internet for you to argue about politics, and you are welcome to link to this article and post your political rant in one of those forums.

Conclusion: Knowledge Isn’t Always Worthwhile

When I say that sometimes it’s better to be less informed, I’m not defending the people who hold a spring break party during a pandemic, or people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Obviously you need to be informed about some things.

But any knowledge that isn’t helpful for living your life or doing your job is just trivia. There’s nothing wrong with learning trivia if you enjoy it. But you don’t have any sort of moral duty to it. And when it’s actively getting in the way of your productivity or happiness, you’re better off doing something else.