Filters in the Age of Information Overload

This article was originally published here.

One of my colleagues has advanced a compelling theory to explain why a palpable madness seems to be gripping our society and more and more people seem to be going off the rails.

“So much information is available now we are constantly bombarded with, that it has exceeded the processing capacity of the human mind. That is making a lot of people destabilize inside, and as the information glut increases, this problem will continue to worsen.”

Recently I wrote an article describing my thought process on navigating controversial topics with a high degree of ambiguity. It specifically focused on how critical it is to avoid getting attached to any specific interpretation you have of what is occurring.

This is both because, due to the ambiguity present, it is challenging to be sure of any interpretation (so becoming attached to a specific one becomes a barrier to seeing the truth) and because it is not healthy for your mind or spirit to covet and treasure some rare idea it has become in possession of. Since this has been a common issue I’ve observed with the nanotech in vaccines issue, I chose to use it to illustrate the point, but this same thing applies to countless other subjects too.

When I reviewed that article, I realized there was a critical point I forgot to mention — how do we, as human beings, effectively deal with an overwhelming volume of information? This issue is a variant of a common issue meditation schools have dealt with throughout history, and they can provide some insights on both the topic at hand and the practice of medicine in general.

Note: Henceforth, I will use the term “subconsciousness.” Arguments can also be made that “unconsciousness” is more correct. I thought this over for a while, and I am not ultimately not sure which should be used here.

Focusing on Value

In many environments you are in, a massive amount of data is present that the conscious mind cannot keep track of. However, to a large extent, the subconsciousness does and directs your focus to what in the environment has “value” for your conscious mind to be aware of.

One classic example is the “Cocktail party effect,” where you can be in a room where many people are having conversations that blur together. Still, for some reason, you can immediately zero in on the one conversation where your name was mentioned. Most of you have probably experienced this numerous times, and the same principle holds in many other instances as well.

I have seen various explanations put forward to explain why the “Cocktail party effect” occurs, and from all of them, it’s clear some part of the brain is evolved to make this possible. One region that has been put forward as being responsible for this is the “reticular activating system.” At this point, I don’t know if the RAS is the region of the brain ultimately responsible for this effect, but going forward, I will state that it is to help convey the central points of this essay.

The filtering function of the RAS has been hypothesized to have evolved so that early humans (and likely the primates we came from) could rapidly detect sources of food (e.g., berries) and danger (e.g., predators) in their environment.

Since so much existed in their environment, and the stakes were high for missing many of them (e.g., a brief delay in spotting a predator could equate to death), the RAS was necessary. There needed to be an effective mechanism to rapidly draw attention to essential things while simultaneously not failing to observe any part of the environment.

We no longer have to deal with those high stakes in modern times, but the RAS persists. In turn, the “value” it seeks are things our culture has habituated us to value, such as an opportunity for money, a product we want, or a potential mate.

In human interactions, recognizing the importance of the RAS is immensely valuable. This is because your words and actions are often far less important than what the other party has been primed to look for.

Put differently, if someone’s initial impression of you is positive (or they assess you as having value to them), their RAS will filter for things that show value in you. Conversely, if someone’s initial impression of you is negative, their RAS will filter for signs you have no value and should be disregarded.

This is why people can repeatedly try to do everything right and make a positive impression on someone, but they are only seen negatively, and regardless of how hard they try, they keep looking worse and worse.

Conversely, sometimes when you talk to individuals trapped in clearly abusive relationships (to the point outside observers can tell the abuse is happening), the abused party does not register most of the abuse and cites a couple of semi-decent things the abuser did as proof they are a good person, and sometimes will even try to defend the abuser once outside parties get involved.

This might seem hard to believe, but I’ve seen it numerous times in the ER, and many of my colleagues have also seen it in their respective fields.

Note: The concept I am describing here is often described as “confirmation bias” (where you only see things that conform to your pre-existing beliefs).

Filters Create Your Reality

One point Scott Adams helped bring general public recognition to is that we all hold filters (often arising from subconscious biases). Much of the reality we believe to be true is not because it is the objective reality. Instead, our notion of reality appears because our RAS makes us aware of things in our environment that affirm the reality we filter for.

As a result, people come to believe their filtered world is reality because it’s what they see around them all day long. Scott Adams, in turn, refers to this phenomenon as two people watching the same film but seeing a completely different movie.

One of the things I hate about the media is how good it is at priming people to have a specific filter and then continually selectively feeding people only information that affirms that filter. I think my dislike of this comes not from the media’s behavior but the fact that so many people continuously fall prey to it, even when they are fully aware of it being done to them previously. Three of the most noteworthy recent examples we have seen of this priming were:

Trump is Hitler.
The sky is falling (because of COVID-19).
The COVID-19 vaccines are 100% safe, 95% effective, and essential for returning to normal.

Although none of these were objectively true, because of how effectively the media primed much of the population’s RAS, many were left with a deep conviction these filters were true and that the evidence for it was so overwhelming anyone who could not “see” it was unforgivable.

This, in turn, led to something I had not seen before with the American propaganda apparatus — families and long-term friendships were broken apart simply due to people having divergent viewpoints on these issues and not ascribing to the media’s narrative.

Note: One of the things I found the most surprising was just how effective this propaganda push was. The best example I can think of is how most medical professionals I met fell for all three. For instance, as James Miller (the honest doc) has highlighted in a recent interview, many doctors and government leaders who directed the COVID-19 response established many of their beliefs on these narratives based on what CNN told them than reviewing the medical evidence themselves.

One of the things that gives me a great deal of joy in life is realizing that something I’d observed many, many times in my life had a quality I’d never recognized before, either because an existing filter removed it or because the complexity was beyond my present ability to grasp. This can hold for both very simple things (e.g., a blade of grass) and fairly complex ones.

For example, as the years went by, I began to gain a greater and greater appreciation for the fact most of human communication has nothing to do with the specific information being conveyed but rather is predominantly about what is going on in the body, mind, and spirit of each participant. Most of this is rarely overtly expressed but heavily influences both what each participant conveys and how they interpret what is said to them.

This is important because (unless you are very good with hypnosis) it is the realm where you have to focus to reach people who will not listen to what you say and the evidence you present.

Furthermore, this broader spectrum of what’s contained within communication holds for every one of its mediums, including writing. For that reason, the primary thing I aim for here is to address those other areas of communication (e.g., I try to write in a heart-centered manner), as I feel it is more important than the specific information of the subject at hand.

Another example can be seen in the practice of medicine. Since I was young, I loved puzzles, but as time passed, I realized all artificial systems have a predefined limit to the complexity they can reach.

Conversely, with human beings, there is an almost unlimited degree of complexity present, and one of the key things that brings me joy in practicing medicine is realizing something is present in the human system I had never recognized before despite having it staring me in the face with every preceding patient.

It’s specifically for this reason that I ask colleagues to send me complex patients they can’t figure out (provided they are mentally balanced and thus comfortable with navigating the uncertainty of the disease). In this regard, the COVID-19 vaccine disaster has been a remarkable educational experience.

This is because I’ve seen so many things go wrong in the body with these patients I never previously appreciated could go wrong in the first place. So really looking into those problems opened my eyes to a variety of physiologic and subconscious mechanisms in the body I had never registered the importance of addressing before (and in some cases didn’t even realize existed in the first place).

Filters and Medicine

One of the subjects I’ve tried to bring attention to with the Substack is medical gaslighting, the phenomenon where the medical system injures someone and then is told the injury is all in their head and had nothing to do with what the medical system did to them.

On the surface, that sounds pretty bad, but unless you’ve directly experienced this, it’s hard even to begin to describe how awful it is to go through. Since this has happened to quite a few people close to me, I feel strongly about raising awareness on this issue.

From researching it, I’ve been able to establish medical gaslighting has been a mainstay of Western medicine for at least 140 years (from the complications of mercury poisoning — which Western medicine used to give out like candy for everything), and I suspect but cannot prove it has a far longer history.

Because of how long medical gaslighting has existed, I don’t think it is an issue specific to an individual doctor or the current medical industry’s monopolistic business model. Instead, I think it’s either a reflection of a malignant collective consciousness within the medical field or something intrinsic to human nature that becomes problematic once dangerous pharmaceuticals are involved. So I feel to end it, what is inside each of us is where the focus must lie.

The aspect of human nature most commonly cited to explain why doctors gaslight is that they understandably do not want to acknowledge medical injuries. This can either be for selfish reasons to avoid a lawsuit (although this is hugely misguided as patients are much more likely to sue when they feel they are being gaslighted) or because of how difficult it is for anyone to acknowledge they hurt someone else they wanted to help.

This cognitive dissonance (the psychological defense mechanism that causes people to do this) is much greater for doctors as their entire identity (you have to give up a lot to become a doctor) is based around being bestowed with the ability to heal the sick, and society does everything to inflate that pedestal doctors are placed upon.

However, I do not believe cognitive dissonance is the primary issue. Instead, I would argue it’s an issue of filters. In a recent article on the overlap between the predatory behavior of the statin industry and the COVID-19 industry, I discussed how many unquestioned assumptions we all carry to navigate the world.

As the complexity of your field increases, the number of assumptions you need to make increases as well. In medicine, it is virtually impossible to practice medicine without regularly utilizing a massive number of unquestioned assumptions.

For example, as I shared in the article, despite the fact I’ve prioritized identifying erroneous assumptions throughout my career, I still frequently discover new ones. Because many of the assumptions taught during your medical training conveniently lead to concluding “pharmaceuticals (and other medical interventions) are not harmful” or “patients who believe they were injured by medicine are ill for a different reason,” it is inevitable gaslighting will occur.

While the numerous unquestioned assumptions of medicine are certainly an issue, I believe they are a symptom of a much broader issue and the theme of this article. It is immensely difficult to be fully aware of a complex system, so as a result, people typically “see” what their existing filters and all those unquestioned assumptions have been programmed to see.

When patients come in, typically, a lot is going on, and the most common response any physician will have during the brief visit is to cycle quickly through each filter they have been trained in for evaluating patients and see if any of those filters detect a disease the doctor knows to recognize.

Since almost none of (pharmaceutically funded) medical training teaches you the filters for identifying pharmaceutical injuries (but it does say teach the filters for recognizing signs of a psychiatric illness), doctors often can’t see the clear signs their patient has a pharmaceutical injury.

I have essentially found three ways to get around this issue, which I must acknowledge were adopted partially due to my personal history with medical gaslighting.

Perceiving Without Filters

In ancient China (which had an enormous amount of warfare), there was a common saying — it is easier to raise an army of 10,000 men than to find a general to lead them.

Note: 10,000 was an idiom of the time that meant “a lot” rather than being a specific value.

I believe (although despite my best efforts, I cannot say with certainty) this quote gets at the fact that on a battlefield, there are so many different things occurring that if a general loses sight of one of them, that can be enough to crush their army and potentially decide the outcome of the war. For example, here are two lines from the classic The Art of War reflecting this idea:

“To see victory only when it is within the ken* of the common herd is not the acme** of excellence. Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat.

*ken means “knowledge, understanding, or range of sight or vision.”
**acme means the point at which someone or something is best, perfect, or most successful.”

Note: Fictional works such as this also depict the view through which a general of that era saw the battlefield.

One of the significant differences between the modern era and many previous ones humans grew up in is that the world is much safer now, so there is much less pressure on individuals to have a continual awareness of their environment (e.g., leaders like CEOs often have very cushy jobs and far fewer people now have the basic survival skills necessary for if a war were to break out).

As a result, much of this skillset has been lost, and people in turn, cannot apply it to the other areas of life it is often essential for.

“If you could be fully present to an ant for the time it took to walk down your nose, you would be enlightened.”

and

“If you could be fully present for the time it took a leaf to fall from a tree to the ground, you would be enlightened.”

are two common phrases in the Eastern spiritual systems that reflect this same concept. Each of these phrases serves to illustrate the fact that there is so much going on around you at any given moment that your mind filters out that (while providing one with the illusion they perceive a continuous reality) that it is extraordinarily challenging to be fully aware of much of what is right in front of you.

Note: This issue is especially apparent in traumatized individuals who regularly disassociate.

In turn, innumerable practices were designed to gradually increase your awareness within each aspect of your being and each person and thing around you. These practices, in turn, all share many similarities since they reflect the same process.

This ability to be more aware of what’s around you comes more naturally to some. In medicine, those with this skill set tend to be the doctors who most able to fully connect with the patient and recognize something they were never trained to look for. Conversely, this capacity greatly decreases as people become more disconnected from their bodies and predominantly live in their minds (which sadly characterizes the modern digital age).

This I believe, is one of the key factors explaining why older doctors who were not raised in the digital age tend to be better at connecting with their patients and seeing things their colleagues cannot recognize.

Unfortunately, the entire push within medicine has been to have everything become automated (e.g., lots of tests and imaging or treatment algorithms doctors must follow) in place of the doctor creating a human connection with their patient and using that awareness to discern what their issue is.

I believe this transition has happened because it makes it much easier to sell billable medical services repeatedly. I also think it’s a shame it’s happened because a lot of conditions cannot be treated with the automated model, and I have lost count of how many people I and colleagues have seen who we felt had a relatively straightforward issue dozens of respected physicians utilizing automated medicine were stumped on.

Filters and Information

When I was younger, I was a competitive debater, which often required arguing a point I believed was utterly incorrect. From doing this, I came to appreciate how it was possible to effectively argue almost anything if you correctly framed the debate and rearranged the available information to support your narrative.

This gave me a deep appreciation for how illusory “certainty” or “truth” was and how often things we were sure were true was simply the result of a selective presentation of reality. This is also why I’ve been so driven throughout my life to establish what is objectively true and not simply a subjective representation of reality … which is very challenging when you dive into it.

Similarly, this is why when I write articles, before publication, I catch and address counterarguments that would be raised to them as my past training in debate made me able to take the role of someone who seriously disagrees with everything published here and is searching for ways to discredit the article.

I would now like to tie all the themes of this article together. Whenever humans are exposed to an excessive amount of information (which can often be a surprisingly low threshold), they lose the ability to be present to all of it. Instead, their RAS uses a pre-existing filter that detects the parts of that information which has value to them.

In politics, this is often depicted through the concept of “nuanced ideas and simplistic truths.” In the case of nuanced ideas, a few different premises need to be put together to understand the broader point the speaker is hinting at. In the case of simplistic truths, a single and simple premise (the audience most likely already agrees with) is instead stated.

The advantage of simplistic truths is that most audiences will understand them, and if they conform to the audience’s pre-existing biases, they will emotionally support the speaker. The major disadvantage of simplistic truths is that they cannot address complex subjects.

For many complex issues, was their nuance fully understood, most people on both sides of the political spectrum would likely reach a shared position they could agree upon. Instead, however, since only simplistic truths are utilized, things remain indefinitely polarized.

Sadly, when a nuanced idea is presented, many people can’t put the individual premises together into a larger picture because they cannot be present to that much information at one time (or have emotional barriers to doing so). When this occurs, they often get angry, and search for an individual premise they can attack for challenging one of their simplistic truths.

Because of the need for nuance to address many of the polarizing and dividing subjects we face in this era, I decided to adopt that approach with this Substack. By virtue of being anonymous, I can do that here as it doesn’t matter if people get angry at me, and even if they do, there is nothing for them to latch onto.

This greatly helps my mission because it makes audiences much more likely to try and appreciate the nuanced thought I present, rather than having the simplistic interpretation of “AMD is bad, therefore that idea is bad” (which would happen far more frequently if they knew who I was — for example consider how Ryan Cole, an upstanding individual, has been treated).

In most (but not all) cases, when someone’s awareness expands to a broader reality than it is accustomed to within the body, mind, or spirit, there will be a natural strain created by it and a tendency to want to tense up and withdraw from that expansion.

One of the best metaphors I have seen for this is the human response to pain, which people often cope with by tensing some part of themselves in response — even though the most effective way to mitigate pain is typically to relax into it.

Note: This is a foundational concept within Chinese medicine, as they believe blocked energy creates pain, and tension restricts the flow of the body’s energy.

The process I am describing also regularly occurs with mental ideas. In turn, I would argue that this is what happens when someone has a response to a nuanced idea where they contract something inside themselves not to have to experience the strain of it being opened to a broader reality (e.g., by shutting their mind down and attacking the messenger).

Although most commenters here are quite open to nuanced thoughts, I notice a common theme in their responses whenever I encounter a hostile party. They will not be able to see most of what I am saying, let alone appreciate the nuanced point being conveyed. Instead, they focus on a few statements within the response they can attack for violating their simplistic truths.

Note: I am not sure if it’s the best use of my time to engage these people (since it prevents me from having the time to write things that benefit everyone), but I try to at least initially because I feel I should be able to defend what I put forward — and in many cases, a very positive discourse emerges, or they inform me of a mistake I need to correct.

My general rule is to give it a few tries and then stop once I feel the other party is not acting in good faith and is primarily concerned with eating up as much of my time as possible.

Because we live in an overwhelming sea of information, being fully present to all of it is nearly impossible. This forces everyone to utilize their own filters or filters provided by nefarious entities like Google.

Since I have used the internet since its early days, I gradually acclimated to the ever-increasing flow of information and taught myself how to evade the increasingly sophisticated censorship — and to be honest, I am not sure what to suggest here for people who were not gradually habituated to our current reality.

The major challenge we all run into when we see a large pool of information is being present to it and knowing how to filter for its key points. Because there is no formal training or guidance for this, people typically focus on what their RAS is already primed to spot in a sea of information and whatever elicits a strong emotional trigger for them (hence why much of the internet is inane clickbait).

Neither of these is very helpful if one’s goal is to determine what is actually true. Instead, they frequently lead one to simply pick out (and often selectively interpret) the “facts” (which may be incorrect) from the broad sea of information that conform to their pre-existing biases. The ways I have found to get around these issues are as follows:

I have some type of intuition that tells me which thing (e.g., a data point, article, or book) I need to focus on in a broad set of data. Often I don’t know why I felt pulled to it, but typically I discover very useful things from this process. Many people I’ve talked to who are successful analysts have told me they have a similar intuitive capacity.

Note: This is difficult to explain, but this process is not the same as having a bias to look for things that affirm your pre-existing viewpoints.

I have gotten a natural sense of the biases behind different sources of information. I don’t believe biases are intrinsically bad; we are human, so every source will have them (e.g., I am biased against the COVID-19 vaccines and upfront about it). However, it’s important to consider what information a biased source puts forward due its bias cannot be trusted and which can.

For example, Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for non-controversial topics (e.g., summarizing medical or scientific concepts) no one would be particularly motivated to lie about. In contrast, on any commonly censored or controversial subject (including unorthodox perspectives on the previously mentioned scientific and medical concepts), Wikipedia’s only value is learning the existing narrative.

Similarly, I will often read a source I know is heavily biased against a subject I believe in so I can rapidly identify if there are any valid concerns presented by those skeptics I need to address or in some cases, cannot address and effectively disprove my belief.

You need to recognize when you have reached the point of diminishing returns with a source; if it is telling you things you already know, there is no value in reading it other than to confirm your existing beliefs. In the previous article, I mentioned that I spent a lot of time reading conspiracy literature.

Still, I eventually stopped because I realized it was getting repetitive, and it reached the point where I would know most of an article’s content shortly after I began to read it.

Whenever possible, try to drill to the core of what the topic you are reading about actually is, and then search for the things that tell you what you need to know about that core as opposed to the countless superficial expressions of the subject (which can be almost endless to read through to). This is essentially the same process I use in many other facets of life, including working with patients.

You need to consider if what is being presented can justify the claim. For example, a common way people who challenge the system are attacked is to make a variety of allegations against them which are based on assumptions, unproven allegations, inferences about the individual’s state of mind, or hypothetical scenarios about the individual the author emotionally puts forward as fact, even though there is no way to know if any of that is true.

Similarly, many pieces of evidence I’ve seen put forward that “prove” graphene oxide is in the vaccines at best potentially suggest it (e.g., there are a variety of patents for using graphene oxide — but most patents never make it to the marketplace).

Conversely, many others have no relation to the subject at hand (e.g., leaked Pfizer documents that said it was in the vaccines actually said it was used as part of the testing process on the vaccine during its production process — which has nothing to do with it being in the vaccine itself). On these points, I want to be very clear that I despise Pfizer, but at the same time, I cannot level accusations against them that cannot be defended.

When all of these suggestive points are woven together, they can create a compelling narrative (especially if they are being read with a filter seeking to confirm a pre-existing belief). Still, when you cut through them, you often find nothing to substantiate them.

Similarly, one of the things I realized over time with conspiracy theories is that while many of them were provable beyond a shadow of a doubt, many others were a collection of speculative inferences and partial evidence woven together to argue for something you couldn’t prove.

Many believe the two being blurred together under the same label (“conspiracy theories”) was a deliberate tactic by industry (or the CIA). This was done so that whenever evidence was put forward showing industry did something very bad, rather than address it, industry could simply emotionally associate that evidence with the highly speculative conspiracies and thereby have the public emotionally dismiss the corporation’s crimes.

Note: Writing here truthfully makes me very nervous because I am constantly worried something I put forward will either be incorrect or harm a significant number of people, and this has forced me to fact-check and question a lot of what I had previously thought I could just say (and had previously done so in numerous conversations).

Allow your mind to expand so it can become fully conscious of a large amount of information without wanting to withdraw from it. I believe this skill is fundamentally the most important skill for navigating this entire issue.

At the same time, it is also the hardest to develop, and I owe much of my ability to do it to having trained the skill in areas unrelated to medicine or writing. However, if this is your goal, you can gradually move towards tolerating an increasing amount of ambiguity and excessive information without getting overloaded.

Oddly enough, I have also found if you avoid substances, have healthy sleep cycles, use blue light filters on screens (e.g., f.lux) and stay away from unhealthy lighting (e.g., fluorescent tubes), your ability to be aware of larger volumes of information also increases.

Whenever I write here, I often have the idea of the article form in my mind, and what allows me to put it into text is if my mind can expand enough to be present to the entire piece. Frequently after this process begins, I will notice there are certain parts of the picture my mind does not want to look at and feel darker or as though they have shut down.

This typically means that there is a contradiction or error in that part of my thesis I am trying to run away from and ignore. In turn, I find it is only once I get to the point I no longer feel that anywhere in my mental construct of the article that it is ready for publication.

It took me a bit to realize this, but that process is very similar to what I had gone through previously with meditation practices, and that is likely where my approach to writing came from.

Note: One of the debates I always have with editors in writing is whether or not I should break up longer sentences. The argument for doing this is that it makes it easier to follow what I am saying. In contrast, the argument against doing so is that it breaks the continuity of the point I am making, and some of the meaning gets lost when the statement is fragmented. I am still not sure which is correct, but I currently default to the longer sentences.

Conclusion

One of the most common political debates is if the Constitution is good or bad. The essential argument is that since the Constitution was written over 200 years ago, it is not suited for the modern world and needs to be replaced. The counterargument to this is that because the political system is so corrupt, anything that replaced the Constitution would be far, far worse than the current one (which has many positive things going for it).

Many spiritual leaders I have spoken to have shared a common concern with the modern era; that most existing religions are in the same situation as the Constitution. When they were developed, the world was very different (it was a simple agrarian society).

The modern era has many unique needs and challenges, such as the insane overload of information and our over-identification with intellectual ideas. These changes are particularly concerning because they have replaced some of the most important things in life, such as our connections to ourselves (e.g., the digital age has made many lose the ability to feel) and those around us.

As a result, the current reality we face was never explicitly addressed within these texts. The world is so different now, no one could have predicted how things are at the time these were written. For the same reasons, I do not support rewriting the Constitution, I also do not support revising the classic religious texts. However, there is also an alternative solution to this dilemma.

Teach people to focus on grasping the timeless essence of those teachings by allowing their minds to expand enough to see the nuances within those texts rather than having a superficial reading that fixates on specific simplistic phrases and then rearranges them to support whatever the agenda is of the reader.

Postscript: After writing this I realized I made two major omissions. The first is that if you watch the evolution of American media over the decades, the time between transitions to new scenes has continually decreased which both causes and is reflective of a profound loss in the attention span of each American.

Many of the qualities I argued are necessary to be able to perceive become much harder to perceive with a shortened attention span. The second is that a good argument can be made one of the primary causes of attention deficit disorder are vaccine injuries.

A Note From Dr. Mercola About the Author

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician in the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate his exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and I’m grateful to share them. I also respect his desire to remain anonymous as he is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.